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(RICHMOND CITY, Calif.) — After his race for a Northern California city council seat ended in a tie, candidate Cesar Zepeda wore several good luck charms to the drawing that would determine the winner — including a pocket square pin and “love is love” socks.

Luck ended up being on his side: Zepeda won the Richmond City Council District 2 race after his name was drawn out of a red gift bag on Tuesday.

After completing its ballot counting and audit last week, the Contra Costa County Elections Office determined that Zepeda and his opponent, Andrew Butt, had both received exactly 1,921 votes in November’s election.

To break the tie, the Richmond City Clerk’s Office instructed them to write their names in Sharpie on a piece of paper, place it in an identical unmarked envelope, seal it and each take turns shaking the bag in a process that was livestreamed on the city’s website.

After the first attempt saw Richmond City Clerk Pamela Christian draw both envelopes, the bag was vigorously shaken again before she drew out one lime green envelope — Zepeda’s.

“I am the first openly gay man to serve on our council,” Zepeda told reporters in emotional remarks following the draw.

“I want to be able to lead the community with that mindset that we could be different, but if our goals are to make our community better, we can, whether you’re a gay man, whether you’re a straight person, we can do it together,” Zepeda, a health and benefits consultant, said.

Meanwhile, his opponent was wishing for a different outcome.

“Yeah, the one where I won,” Butt said.

“In a perfect world, there would be an opportunity to have another vote, you know, a runoff or something like that,” Butt, a local architect, told reporters. “But you know the reality is that takes time and money and you know we’re short on both. … I don’t know what else to, do honestly.”

California election law stipulates that tied elections be determined by lot — or chance. In Richmond, the city council previously established that process, with a June 2022 resolution stating that the “City Clerk shall place the name of each candidate in a sealed unmarked envelope.”

Prior to the draw, the candidates joked they should resolve the tie by literally racing, or in a dance-off.

“In some ways, it’s interesting and exciting to be a part of it, right, because there’s sort of history being made here. But obviously it’s incredibly nerve-wracking,” Butt told ABC San Francisco station KGO, calling the process “surreal” and “insane.”

Richmond could hold a runoff in a future election, if the city changes its rules before then, according to Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia.

Contra Costa County has had to resolve ties through chance in the past. In 2018, a race for the director of the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District was decided by rolls of a 20-sided die.

California isn’t the only state to decide elections by lot. Twenty-eight states determine winners by drawing of lots “or similar random methods,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Just last month, a tied mayoral race in Butler, Kentucky was decided by a coin toss. Last year, the winner of a tied city council race in Portland, Maine, was determined by drawing a name out of a wooden bowl.

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(WASHINGTON) — An attorney for former President Donald Trump told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that Trump’s fiery speech on the Ellipse prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was within his official responsibilities and, as a result, he is immune from lawsuits filed by 11 Democratic members of Congress and two Capitol police officers seeking to hold him responsible for the attack.

Washington, D.C., district judge Amit Mehta in February rejected Trump’s bid to have the suits dismissed, prompting Trump’s attorneys to appeal the decision to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The three lawsuits allege violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act that safeguards federal officials and employees against conspiratorial acts directed at preventing them from performing their duties.

The three-judge appeals panel seemed skeptical that Trump’s rhetoric at the rally fell within his official responsibilities, asking his attorney, Jesse Binnall, what power Trump was acting under when he told rally-goers, “We fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

“I don’t know what work the speech-making is doing,” Judge Sri Srinivasan said. “What I’m worried about is whether it actually falls within official presidential responsibility when what’s going on is campaigning for office.”

Judge Greg Katsas asked, more pointedly, “When the president gets involved in electoral counting, what enumerated power of Article II is he acting on?”

Plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Sellers argued that “President Trump is not entitled to the immunity he seeks because his conduct interrupted the peaceful transfer of power.”

But Binnall cautioned that allowing the lawsuits to go forward would “open the floodgates” to civil litigation against U.S. presidents.

“I think it is difficult on any speech the president gives to decide that it’s outside the bully pulpit of the presidency,” Binnall said.

Binnell had argued that a 1982 Supreme Court decision shields presidents from civil lawsuits over their official acts, but Mehta’s decision earlier this year allowed the Jan. 6 suits to go forward.

“Absolute immunity does not shield President Trump from suit,” Mehta said in his ruling. “To deny a President immunity from civil damages is no small step. The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent, and the court believes that its decision is consistent with the purposes behind such immunity.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, feeling “exuberant” following Sen. Raphael Warnock’s win in Georgia’s runoff, on Wednesday laid out why he thinks Democrats won and what to expect from their incoming 51-seat edge.

“This election, both in November and now here on December the 6th, now shows that Americans believe in democracy,” Schumer told reporters in a news conference on Capitol Hill. “The American people rejected so many of this MAGA extremism — both in knocking down and not voting for extreme MAGA candidates … Many of the voters in the middle came over to us because they worried what the Republican Party under MAGA control would do to our democracy.”

The 2022 midterms marked the first time since 1943 that a party in power has defended every incumbent Senate seat, a fact Schumer touted to press: “Why did Democrats defy history in these midterms?”

While praising the quality of Democratic candidates, Schumer argued that they won due to the “one-two punch” of Americans retreating from the Republican Party and rewarding Democrats for passing legislation that he said actually matters to voters.

“The combination of those two things was the powerful one-two punch that made us defy all the odds and provided the right so our candidates, both incumbent and non-incumbent, could prevail,” Schumer said, describing when he thought things began to shift for Democrats after dire midterm predictions.

He called the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn national abortion rights “the crystallization” for the public on Republicans’ move to the right: “[That’s] when people said, ‘Wow, these MAGA Republicans are serious about turning the clock all the way back,'” he said.

Schumer said the conservative court’s majority decisions to expand concealed carry for firearms and to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to curb emissions only added to these fears.

The House Jan. 6 committee’s public hearings on the Capitol attack also “played an important effect,” he contended, in exposing extremism in the GOP.

Now that Democrats have total control of the Senate and are no longer governed by a 50-50 power-sharing agreement with Republicans, Schumer said they are breathing a “sigh of relief.”

Unlike in an evenly split chamber where committees hold an even split of partisan representation, the additional seat will allow Democrats to have clear majorities on committees, making it easier to move future legislation and judicial and executive nominations.

Schumer also highlighted the subpoena power Democrats will have to investigate private sector as well as government entities.

“It gives us just a lift. The fact that we got the 51 votes gives us just a great feeling, enthusiasm, unity, encouragement,” he said.

The Senate leader declined multiple questions to speculate on what specific actions Democrats might take in the new Congress. The House’s incoming GOP majority has already promised what they call aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, including focus on the southern border, the Afghanistan withdrawal and the president’s son Hunter.

Speaking with reporters, Schumer repeated a broad message that he hopes to work with non-MAGA Republican lawmakers — and promised to pursue that goal “with the same kind of energy that we pursued winning this election.”

“There are a good number of Republicans in the Senate and the House who are not MAGA Republicans who know that if the Republican Party follows the hard right and the extreme members in their caucuses, they’ll continue to lose ground. It is my intention to reach out to them and see how can we work in a bipartisan way,” he said.

Asked if he thinks Democrats would have the same wins with President Joe Biden on the ticket in 2024, Schumer said Democrats tend to do better in presidential election years — before reinforcing his support for Biden, when pressed.

“I think President Biden being on the ticket, if he runs — and if he runs, I’ll support him — would be very, very helpful,” Schumer said.

Of Warnock’s win, Schumer said he was moved to tears Tuesday night when the Georgia lawmaker mentioned his mother in his victory speech.

“He said she grew up in the ’50s picking someone else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco,” Schumer said. “And last night — this is so touching, every time I read it I get choked up — last night, she helped pick her son to be United States Senator. Only in America.”

He praised Warnock for having four electoral victories against Republicans in two years in a historically red state, and he took a moment of self-congratulation for his efforts to recruit the reverend to run.

“The people of Georgia are better off, the Democratic Senate caucus is better off and America is better off because he ran and won,” Schumer said. “He’s going to have a great, great future.”

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