Election night is an opportunity to catch the vibes of campaigns coming to an end.

Erik Chalhoub here, bleary-eyed after looking at numbers through the late night yesterday, June 2 and into today.

The first election results for the primary have continued to roll in and won’t be finalized for weeks, but there’s a pretty good sense of how things are going to shake out in the end. Catch up on the latest Monterey County results on montereycountynow.com or keep reading this newsletter below.

Election night is always a big moment for us at the Weekly, marking the culmination of months of reporting and digging into the candidates and the issues. We share that with readers in various articles from the time candidates begin filing to when the polls close.

As is tradition, Weekly journalists fan out across Monterey County to attend candidates’ election night parties in various venues, which range from low-key gatherings at homes to festive parties at restaurants. Not every candidate responds to us to let us know where their gatherings are, and at the same time, we cannot be everywhere at once, so it becomes a jigsaw puzzle of figuring out where we should be with the limited resources we have and a quickly approaching deadline.

So oftentimes, you’ll see election night photos of candidates and groups who came up short in their races, as was the case (so far) with Measure C in Pacific Grove and the county auditor.

But beyond the food at these parties, we get to see the people behind the dais in a casual setting, where their true personalities shine. We also get to see who is supporting (or not supporting) a candidate or measure, which is far more telling than just seeing an endorsement on a campaign flyer.

Editor Sara Rubin attended county auditor candidate Burcu Mousa’s party at Stonies Taphouse in Salinas, which, despite Mousa trailing opponent Enedina Garcia by 3,500 votes, was a jubilant gathering attended by people from across the political spectrum. Those included leaders in local progressive politics such as Demetrio Pruneda and George Riley, and leaders from the Monterey County Republican Central Committee.

There were also people who intimately experience a campaign alongside the candidate, Rubin notes. That included Mousa’s parents from Greenfield, Mine and Ahmet Antikaci, her husband Shadee Mousa and 12-year-old son, Demir, a student at Buena Vista Middle School.

“He was periodically dancing and training his eyes eagerly on the television awaiting results,” Rubin says. “He told me that his experience of the campaign was marked largely as an opportunity to accompany his mom to weeknight events and skip homework—sorry, teachers.”

I attended a small but energetic gathering at District 2 Supervisor Glenn Church’s Royal Oaks home, who decided to spend the night in a low-key setting as he cruised to his second term.

Here, I was greeted by Church’s friendly rescue dog Shasta, who, I learned, always barks at visitors she’s never met before. Somehow, she was chill with me, much to the surprise of everyone there.

What I found refreshing in this race was how respectful both candidates were toward each other. Either in public or in my conversations with them, both Church and Ramon Gomez praised each other’s campaigns, and Gomez congratulated Church late Tuesday night as the results showed him the clear leader. It’s a far cry from the national politics of today.

No matter how you voted, thank you for being involved in the election. Keep reading to see the results of your participation.