‘It’s over:’ Pat Hume ekes out election win and will be Sacramento County’s newest supervisor

Elk Grove City Council Member Pat Hume will be the next supervisor representing Sacramento County’s Fifth District, eking out a victory against Jaclyn Moreno on Friday.

“It’s over!” Hume enthused in a Facebook post to supporters Friday afternoon. “Jaclyn just called to congratulate me. I want to thank her for her graciousness after such a grueling campaign and a nail-biter of the vote counting process.”

Hume defeated Cosumnes Community Services District president Moreno of Elk Grove 46,378 votes to 46,050 — a margin of 328 — in a contest that took weeks to decide.

With the number of ballots remaining shrinking to just 2,000, Moreno called Hume on Friday afternoon to concede a hard-fought, sharp-elbowed and expensive race for the south Sacramento County seat.

“The final vote count is in, and it’s looking like we came up just short of 50%. I called Pat Hume today to congratulate him on his victory and wish him well as he transitions into the District 5 Supervisor seat,” Moreno said in a statement to supporters Friday afternoon.

“With a united vision of a better Sacramento County, we fought for our shared values of climate, social, economic, and reproductive justice,” Moreno continued. “It has been one of my greatest honors representing these values during this campaign. Thank you for trusting me to do so.”

The board seat representing the sprawling District 5, which stretches from south Sacramento through Galt and into the communities of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, opened for the first time in decades with the announced retirement of longtime supervisor Don Nottoli of Galt. Nottoli first won the seat in 1994.

“Don leaves big shoes to fill,” Hume said in an interview earlier this year. “Don Nottoli, (former county supervisor) Toby Johnson — they rolled up their sleeves and did the work to represent the interests of the south county.”

Hume, one of the longest-serving city council members in the Sacramento region, enjoyed broad support from the region’s elected officials, business groups and law enforcement. A regionalist who campaigned on the slogan “Common sense. Uncommon leadership,” Hume built a reputation as a consensus-builder and a tough cross-examiner on the Elk Grove dais.

Moreno campaigned to the left of Hume and earned support from local labor, educators and health care workers. The mental health professional made tackling homelessness and mental health key planks of her campaign, saying her experience would bring a new voice to the Board of Supervisors and fresh ideas on how to address the twin crises facing Sacramento County.

Hume, who co-leads an Elk Grove homelessness task force and was an architect of the city’s tough anti-camping ordinance enacted earlier this summer also focused on bringing “tough love” solutions to homelessness if elected.

Hume will also bring deep policy chops to the county panel, sitting on boards overseeing two of the region’s key transportation projects: the Capital SouthEast Connector, the expressway linking Highway 50 to Interstate 5; and the Valley Rail extension project, which is bringing passenger rail service to Elk Grove and Sacramento with its Valley Rail extension project.