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San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley was aiming to send Sequoia Healthcare District board member Jack Hickey packing when he decided to run for a seat on the board.
Instead, he is likely to have nudged incumbent John Oblak off the board when he, Mr. Hickey and incumbent Art Faro won the three open seats on Tuesday.
With provisional ballots and absentee ballots dropped off on election day yet to be counted, the county reports that Mr. Horsley was the top vote-getter, with 23,640 votes (25.79 percent). Mr. Hickey got 22,792 votes (24.87 percent); Mr. Faro, 22,713 votes (24.78 percent).
Mr. Oblak trailed Mr. Faro by 196 votes, making it unlikely that the uncounted absentee votes will push him into the winning column. Election night results gave Mr. Oblak 22,517 votes (24.57 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 continues to count provisional and absentee ballots; county officials hope to complete the count in a week to a week and a half, according to Carol Marks of the Elections Office.
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