Wendy Askew runs ahead of Steve McShane in the race for District 4 county supervisor.

For Salinas real estate agent Greg Hamer, the choice was easy. He voted for Salinas City Councilmember Steve McShane in the District 4 Monterey County Board of Supervisors race, not just because he considers McShane a friend, but because, he says, McShane has shown up in ways that opponent Wendy Root Askew hasn’t.

“He seems to really champion Salinas and the other communities,” Hamer states. “I’m sure Wendy is nice, but I’ve never even seen her. Did she even campaign in Salinas?”

For yoga teacher Cindy Davis, the choice was also easy. She voted for Askew because Askew, a legislative analyst to current District 4 Supervisor Jane Parker, knows how policy sausage is made.

“I voted for Wendy, even though she did not do much outreach in Salinas, because I trust Jane Parker as a mentor… and the blizzard of McShane campaign materials left my mailbox smelling like flop sweat,” she writes.

As of 10am on Nov. 4 – the latest numbers reported by the Monterey County Elections Department before the Weekly’s print deadline – Askew was ahead of McShane. With 26,090 of the total votes counted, she had 13,963 compared to McShane’s 12,127. In all, 44,588 ballots were cast, meaning the race was by no means decided as of Wednesday morning.

It’s a bizarre district when it comes to geography.: The majority of District 4 rests on the Monterey Peninsula, but includes a swath of the more moneyed – and more conservative – areas of South Salinas. Over the past few years, before announcing his intent to run, McShane has inserted himself into Peninsula life, helping the conservative Compass Church in Salinas establish a location in Marina and changing party affiliations from Republican to Democrat. Backed by conservative business interests and having raised over $600,000 based on campaign funding reports, he’s been running a hard-charging ground game ever since.

Askew has been more dogged and subtle in her approach. With a child in pandemic-era schooling, Askew has been balancing her day job, her parent job and her race to replace her boss, who opted to retire from the job she’s held since 2008.

“I’ve never been so proud of my neighbors in Monterey County for truly caring about important issues,” Askew said during an Election Day interview. “I knew people were paying attention and cared about the things I cared about, but to see them show up for those things has been awesome.”

Those things, she says, include neighbors taking care of each other during the pandemic, as well as paying attention to the Peninsula’s long-standing water issues.

McShane, whose campaign team knocked on 15,000 doors during the race, gathered his campaign staff, with social distancing protocols in place, at the location of his former plant nursery on Highway 68.

As he spoke to reporters outside his headquarters, a bell chimed indoors. It had chimed about 30 times on Election Day, signaling that his team had spoken to a voter who hadn’t cast a ballot yet, but would after hearing from his campaign.

“By my stats, I walked more than 250 miles, with a mask and hand sanitizer and 10 feet from people’s doors,” he says. “I think that makes a difference.”