Measure Z victorious despite heavy oil industry spending against it.

Just before 8pm, when the Yes on Z party is scheduled to begin at La Casa Del Sazón in Oldtown Salinas, the Mexican restaurant is almost entirely empty. Two men crunch on chips and salsa at the front of the room, nearest the large screen where a national newscast is projecting a Donald Trump presidential victory. “Everyone went home drinking,” one says.

But around 8:15, a crowd starts to trickle in, gathering around the bar. Within minutes, the first results are published, and about a half-dozen Measure Z supporters gathered around a laptop start chanting, “55-45, 55-45!” The 10-point margin holds up through the night as vote are tabulated, and around 9pm, it’s time for a Champagne toast.

“It’s looking good for us right now,” says Tomás Morales Rebecchi, a Ventura County organizer with the nonprofit Food & Water Watch. “I remember to months ago, it wasn’t looking that great.”

Although some partygoers at Sazón are talking in crass terms about Trump supporters (“They’re a bunch of redneck pigs,” one woman says over a glass of wine), Rebecchi thinks Z might’ve actually benefitted from the anti-establishment mood: “They’re angry with the establishment, and the establishment is regulators. We have a lot of Republicans who agree with us because water is important and they think government has failed.”

Measure Z was crafted by a group called Protect Monterey County after the county Board of Supervisors’ voted not to put a moratorium on fracking. They returned with a more far-reaching measure that also bans wastewater injection, as well as the expansion of the oil industry by putting a stop to new wells.

Oil companies Chevron and Aera threw down large sums for a No on Z campaign, outspending the yes team by about 33 to 1, and the mayors of South County cities and Salinas lined up as outspoken opponents of Measure Z, claiming it would kill jobs. (Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter, Gonzales Mayor Maria Orozco and King City Mayor Robert Cullen, who ran for City Council, were all re-elected.)

Maria Corralejo volunteered her Greenfield garage as a Yes on Z headquarters and made pozole to feed volunteers. She says it’s time now for activists to sit down with Greenfield Mayor John Huerta, who appeared in No on Z commercials: “Now we have a really good discussion and remind him of who’s putting him into office and what we want to see from him from now on,” she says. “I think this should be a wake-up call for all of them.”

Robert Chacanaca, president of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, also sees the clear victory as a repudiation of the no camp’s claims about job losses. The labor council, which represents 64 unions and some 30,000 members, went through a two-step endorsement process to say yes on Z with unanimous support both steps of the way. “There are no union jobs in the industry,” Chacanaca says. “When you say, ‘What jobs are you talking about?’ they say, ‘Gas station attendants.’ Really? We weren’t impressed.”

With tens of thousands of mail-in and provisional ballots left to count, the industry group Monterey County for Energy Independence was not ready to concede as of Wednesday morning. “The campaign will release a statement when we have the results,” spokesperson Karen Hanretty writes by email.