De La Fuente not ready
to concede Mayor's race

By Jeff Shuttleworth, Bay City News Service

June 7, 2006

OAKLAND (BCN) - Oakland City Council President Igancio De La Fuente said today that he's not ready to concede the Oakland mayoral contest even though the latest election results show that former congressman Ron Dellums has more than the 50 percent total needed to avoid a November runoff.

Interviewed in a downtown Oakland courtroom where his son is having a preliminary hearing on charges that he sexually assaulted four different women between 2003 and 2005, De La Fuente said he wants to "wait and see" until all the absentee ballots in the race are counted.

De La Fuente said he's been told that there are about 5,000 absentee ballots that still need to be counted and it may take several days to count them.

De La Fuente said, "I want to wait until every vote is counted.''

In the latest tally, with all 275 precincts reporting, Dellums has 30,643 votes, or 50.2 percent of the total, and De La Fuente has 20,117 votes, or 33 percent.

City Councilmember Nancy Nadel is in third place in the six candidate race with 7,891 votes, or 12.9 percent. The three other candidates have less than 2.5 percent of the vote each.

De La Fuente said that if he's able to get into a runoff with Dellums in November he's hopeful that he'd be able to make up the large difference between the two candidates in Tuesday's election.

He said if there's a runoff, "It would be a good opportunity to look at our differences one-on-one and have a healthy debate. That's what democracy is all about."

The hearing for De La Fuente's son, Ignacio Rafael De La Fuente Jr., will start at 1:30 p.m. today and is expected to take several days, according to his attorneys.

Copyright © 2006 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.

####