Close race for health care district board;
Horsley holds his lead

San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley maintains a small lead in the race for three seats on the Sequoia Healthcare District board, with slightly more than half the precincts counted.

At 12:30 a.m., with many absentee and voting center ballots tallied and 105 of 199 precincts counted, Mr. Horsley had 26 percent of the vote, with incumbent Art Faro taking second place at 25 percent. Incumbent Jack Hickey had 24.8 percent, and John Oblak, also an incumbent, had 24.2 percent.

Mr. Horsley, who chose not to seek re-election to the sheriff’s post he’s held since 1993, said his goal in entering the race was to unseat Mr. Hickey, who is often the lone dissenter in many of the five-member board’s decisions.

Mr. Hickey, a Libertarian, had for many years run for a range of local and state public offices before winning his first race in 2002 with the health care district victory. He ran on a platform that included dissolving the district, which co-owns and oversees Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City.

As a board member, Mr. Hickey has fought hard against the publicly supported district’s practice of giving money, through a grants program, to nonprofit organizations that focus on health care, including the Sequoia Hospital Foundation and groups that serve low-income residents.

Incumbents Oblak and Faro, along with board members Kathleen Kane and Malcolm MacNaughton, strongly defend the grants program, saying the money goes to agencies and organizations that provide health care or promote public health in the district.

The health care district serves Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Carlos, Belmont and surrounding unincorporated cities.

The county is updating results hourly, with the next update at 1:30. By 2 a.m., county officials hope to have all votes counted except for provisional ballots and absentee ballots dropped off at polling places today.

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