SALT LAKE CITY — Luz Escamilla has conceded the Salt Lake City mayor’s race to Erin Mendenhall.
Escamilla said Wednesday afternoon that Mendenhall’s 17-point election night lead was insurmountable after the Salt Lake County Clerk’s office reported that there were only 9,744 ballots remaining to be counted. Her campaign had estimated there were as many as 20,000 ballots left to tally.
“I just congratulated Erin,” Escamilla said in a news release. “We had a good conversation and I wished her the best of luck as our city’s next mayor.”
Her campaign to become the city’s first Latina mayor focused on turning out the vote in the city’s west-side neighborhoods. Escamilla, who will remain a state senator, made her last campaign stop shortly before the polls closed in Glendale.
Mendenhall, now the mayor-elect, has scheduled a Thursday morning news conference on the steps of City Hall, where she is expected to announce when she will step down as Salt Lake City’s District 5 councilwoman. She takes office in January, succeeding Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who did not seek a second term.
“I’ve made new friends and learned this truth: east siders care about the west side and west siders care about the east side.” — Luz Escamilla
“I just received a very gracious call from Sen. Escamilla congratulating me on being elected Salt Lake City’s 36th mayor,” Mendenhall said in a statement. “Luz is a dedicated public servant and a true champion for Salt Lake City. Her candidacy made this a better campaign and her continued public service will help make Salt Lake City a better home for all of us. I look forward to working in partnership with her to move our city forward.”
Escamilla said that as she looks back over the race, “what I will always keep with me is how beautiful this city and its residents are. I’ve met so many incredible Salt Lakers during this campaign. I’ve made new friends and learned this truth: east siders care about the west side and west siders care about the east side.”
She said that in “times when we see so many divisions, it’s a reaffirmation of our great city to see that we all care about each other.”
In the final unofficial election night results posted around 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, Mendenhall had 58.6% of the vote while Escamilla had 41.4%. At the end of the night, 33,818 votes had been counted in the largely by-mail election. Additional results are scheduled to be released Thursday at 3 p.m.
But Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said all of the additional ballots likely won’t be verified and tabulated until Friday, when results will be updated again. She said the vote total released included all of the ballots cast at the county’s vote centers on Election Day.
While Swensen said there weren’t lines at the vote centers, many voters did wait until the last minute to get their ballots in the mail before the Monday postmark deadline, or even waiting until Election Day to drop them off at designated boxes around the county.
“The surge at the end was everybody waiting,” Swensen said. She said the turnout in Salt Lake City should end up close to 48%, lower than expected. Turnout reached 54% in the 2015 Salt Lake City mayor’s race, also conducted largely by mail.
“I thought for sure we would be in the 50%” range, Swensen said, after sending out nearly 92,000 ballots to city voters. “I don’t know if it’s because people liked them both and it was such a nice, friendly campaign. I can’t explain it.”
Neither Escamilla nor Mendenhall were available to talk about the election Wednesday.
At her election night party, Escamilla said she’d “been the underdog throughout this campaign” but was counting on her campaign’s push in the final days to get voters who usually don’t participate in elections to the polls, particularly those from the west side where she and her family live.
The state Senate minority whip told reporters that if the election didn’t swing her way, she’d still be very happy.
“I’m committed to public service,” Escamilla said, pledging to continue to fight for a better Salt Lake as a state lawmaker on issues such as air quality, which affects her daughter’s asthma. “We love Salt Lake City and we’re not going anywhere.”
The election marked the first time two women faced off in a Salt Lake City mayor’s race. Escamilla, 41, received national attention as an immigrant from Mexico poised to become the Utah capitol’s first Latina mayor, while Mendenhall, 39, is a two-term councilwoman from an east-side district known for her work on air-quality issues.
The race as been seen as civil, focused largely on the value of state versus city experience in dealing with issues like the controversial Inland Port Authority that has pitted the liberal stronghold against a state otherwise dominated by Republicans.
Both candidates denounced what they called religious bigotry after a former mayor, Rocky Anderson, said in a statement that Escamilla’s membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “threatened” city residents “with the prospect of a Mormon mayor, who seems willing to do the bidding of the church.”
Asked about the impact of Anderson’s statements on election night, Escamilla said she wasn’t sure.
“Some people feel that made a difference,” she said. “It’s hard to tell. There were a lot of issues, a lot pieces to this conversation. ... I don’t want to believe that’s the case.”