Deputy Tom Letras of Ceres failed in his election bid to unseat Sheriff Adam Christianson, who proved to have more campaign money as well as the power of incumbency.

With all of the 357 election precincts reporting, Christianson was elected to a third term with 22,136 votes, or 65.70 percent, over Letras who garnered 11,486 votes, or 34.09 percent. At least 1,351 who voted on June 3 didn't bother to cast a vote in the sheriff's race.

Letras, a 1990 graduate of Ceres High School and Ceres resident, went into the race understanding that he was the underdog. He spent the past several months suggesting that under Christianson's "bullying" style of leadership that the department suffers from low morale. He also made campaign fodder of the county taxpayers footing the $9.4 million bill to defend harassment lawsuits filed by those under Christianson.

Christianson raised $140,000 as of May compared to Letras' $31,372.

The Nov. 3 election goes down in Stanislaus County as having one of the most dismal of turnouts. Of those 211,277 registered to vote in the county, 83 percent didn't participate. The good news is that 35,810 rose to their sense of civic responsibility to determine who would serve in a number of other key races.

District Attorney Birgit Fladager handily defeated her opponent, defense attorney Frank Carlson. Fladager captured 23,113 votes (70.07 percent) massively outdistancing her from Carson, who collected 9,764 votes (29.6 percent). Of those who went to the polls, 1,804 failed to vote in that race as well.

Treasurer-Tax Collector Gordon B. Ford, who was unopposed, received 27,963 votes. Being unopposed gave cause for 7,424 county voters to skip marking their ballot in that race.

Lee Lundrigan, the current Clerk-Recorder, is on her way to another four-year term. She collected 28,727 votes (98.73 percent). She was unopposed, the main reason why 6,713 under votes existed.

County Auditor-Controller Lauren Klein was unopposed as well and collected 26,492 votes (98.73 percent). Under votes in her race were numbered at 8,975.

Things were a bit more interesting in the race for County Assessor, which pitted incumbent Don H. Gaekle against challenger and Turlock City Councilwoman Amy Bublak. Gaekle handily defeated his opponent with 20,397 votes (63.29 percent) to Bublak's 11,727 votes (36.39 percent).
Two county supervisors were also re-elected.

District 4 Supervisor Dick Monteith won the race with 4,987 votes (58.12 percent), compared to 3,551 votes (41.45 percent) collected by Dave Lopez.

Terry Withrow, the District 3 supervisor, fared better in percentages. Withrow received 3,508 Votes (64.38 percent), far ahead of Scott Calkins' 1,927 votes (35.36 percent).

County Superintendent of Schools Tom Changnon was re-elected to another four-year term after his election in which no challenger appeared. The former Keyes school district superintendent collected 26,586 votes (98.1 percent) while 8,709 decided not to vote when they were at the polls.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, is headed to the November election facing Turlock Democrat and beekeeper Michael Eggman in California's 10th Congressional District. Congressman Denham polled 27,495 votes (57.3 percent). Eggman collected 12,807 votes (26.7 percent) to brush past Manteca Democrat Michael Barkley, who garnered 7,658 votes, or 16 percent.

State Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, dominated the 12th District race with 64.4 percent, over Shawn K. Bagley, a Monterey County Democrat. Both head off to the November election. The district reaches across all or parts of Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, San Benito and Monterey counties.

In a decisive victory, Cannella collected 35,621 votes to Bagley's 19,703 votes.

Ceres' assemblyman in Sacramento, Adam Gray, was unopposed for re-election in the 21st district. Gray received 20,080 votes.

State Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen, R-Riverbank, outpaced Harinder Grewal, a Keyes resident, county agricultural inspector and Turlock Unified School District board member. Olsen collected 24,239 votes (65.7 percent) to Grewal's 12,631 (34.3 percent.)

Former Ceres resident Tom Berryhill commanded the primary race for the 8th Senate District over challenger Democrat Paulina Miranda. Berryhill, now a Twain Harte Republican, polled 71,947 votes (64.4 percent) over Miranda's 39,784 votes (35.6 percent).

Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Neel Kashkari will be headed to the November election for the governor's race but the numbers point to a Brown victory. The incumbent governor collected 1.73 million votes (54.4 percent) over his next highest challenger who collected 606,662 votes (19.1 percent). Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and U.S. Treasury official, edged out Tea Party favorite Tim Donnelly, who took 14.8 percent. Political experts are in agreement that Kashkari has no chance of winning the race in a state where the Republican party has been in decline for more than two decades.

The lieutenant governor's race runoff goes to Gavin Newsome, the Democratic incumbent, and Republican Ron Nehring. Newsome claimed 1.529 million votes (49.8 percent) to Nehring's 713,646 (23.2 percent).

State voters chose to send Democrat Alex Padilla and Republican Pete Peterson to the Nov. 4 general election for Secretary of State race. Padilla took 30.1 percent of the vote in a race that included three other Democrats, and Peterson took 29.7 percent.

The State Controller primary sends Fresno mayor Ashley Swearengin and John A. Perez to the general election.

California voters overwhelmingly passed two statewide propositions. Prop. 41, the Veterans Housing & Homeless Bond Act of 2014, passed by a margin of 65.4 to 34.6 percent. Despite passing off higher costs to local government, California voters also supported Prop. 42, which will remove the mandate that the state reimburse local entities for the costs of following California's open meeting law and Public Records Act, by a margin of 61.5 to 38.5 percent.

The state Legislative Analyst's Office, said passage of Proposition 42 will result in reduced state payments to local governments in the tens of millions of dollars annually and potential increased local government costs of tens of millions of dollars annually from possible additional state requirements on local governments to make information available to the public.