Live election updates: Connie Chan concedes to Scott Wiener in CA District 11 race

Bay Area voters overwhelmingly supported the Regional Transit Measure, a ballot measure expected to provide significant new funding for public transportation systems across the region.

Bay Area voters overwhelmingly supported the Regional Transit Measure, a ballot measure expected to provide significant new funding for public transportation systems across the region.

The measure will raise the sales tax by a half-cent in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and by 1 cent in San Francisco beginning in April 2027. Transit agencies and riders say the measure represents a major investment in public transportation throughout the Bay Area, supporting systems including BART, VTA, Muni and Caltrain. The Regional Transit Measure is expected to generate nearly $1 billion annually over the next 14 years.

"The significance of this tax measure is breathing life into transit. And when I say breathing life, I mean, we are going to be able to keep the levels of transit service and get even better for our customers and for the communities in which we operate," said Michelle Bouchard, executive director of Caltrain.

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee is projected to have won in her reelection bid against three challengers.

Lee had 85.5% of the vote in the first round of the ranked-choice contest, while former bank executive Julius Robinson had about 6%, community activist Brenda Grisham had 4.3% and frequent candidate Mindy Pechenuk had about 4.2%.

The initial vote numbers came in at a little after 9 p.m., with more totals expected throughout the night.

Lee won the job in an April 2025 special election to replace Sheng Thao, who lost a recall election and is now embroiled in a federal corruption trial.

A Texas native, Lee served Oakland and northern Alameda County in Congress from 1998 to 2025. She also served in the state Assembly for six years and the state Senate for two. She earned an undergraduate degree from Mills College in Oakland and a master's degree in social work from UC Berkeley.

She volunteered with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and worked on the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to seek a major political party's presidential nomination.

Grisham is a public safety and victims' rights advocate who helped lead a successful campaign to recall former Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price.

Her campaign website describes her as a business owner who has fought to improve neighborhood safety and government accountability, among other things.

Pechenuk, raised in Brooklyn, New York, is a Republican who was active in the recalls of Thao and Price. She describes herself as an educator and has run for state Assembly twice and Oakland's at-large City Council seat once but has not yet won an election.

She also ran in the 10-candidate special election to replace Thao as mayor and was eliminated in the sixth of nine rounds of ranked choice voting.

Robinson says he spent 47 years in banking, investment and community development.

Unofficial vote results in San Francisco on election night showed strong support for a parcel tax measure backed by Mayor Daniel Lurie and a bevy of labor unions that is designed to generate funding for public transit.

Proposition H was headed toward likely victory with about 72% of votes cast in favor. It would raise about $160 million a year for public transit and comes in addition to a regional sales tax measure that would be divided among several agencies.

Prop H would dedicate its funding entirely to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which is facing a bleak financial outlook in coming years, due in part to a steep reduction in Muni ridership during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The measure needs a simple majority to pass, thanks in part to a signature gathering campaign Lurie launched in March to qualify it for the ballot through a citizen-led initiative. Had Lurie sought approval from the county Board of Supervisors to qualify the measure, it would have needed two-thirds' approval to pass.

Early returns indicated that would not have been a problem for voters, who appear eager to pass the measure to shore up Muni's desperate financial outlook.

If the results hold, the measure will impose a value-based property tax, known as an ad-valorum tax, of various amounts, depending on property type and value.

Most homeowners would see an increase of about $129 a year. Those would be single-family residential properties under 3,000 square feet, which would cover about 95% of residential properties in the city, according to the campaign's backers.

About $65 per year could be passed on to renters.

Top funders for the campaign, dubbed "Stronger Muni for All," included OpenAI, Anthropic and Ripple Labs, which donated $500,000 each, according to its website.

It was also supported by several labor unions, including local Teamsters and Service Employees International Union chapters, along with eight members of the county Board of Supervisors.

Mixed-use parcels up to 5,000 square feet would pay $799 more a year under the increase. The largest commercial property owners would pay up to $400,000 more a year, according to the campaign.

Muni is facing projected deficits of over $300 million in coming budget years.

State Sen. Scott Wiener was leading San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan in the early returns from Tuesday's election to replace House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Congress.

Wiener had 55% of the vote in the race to represent the District 11 seat in Congress compared to 45% for Chan. Both are Democrats who were the top-two finishers in the June primary race.

Pelosi announced in November 2025 that she would retire after serving in Congress for nearly 40 years and being the first woman elected by her peers to be speaker of the House of Representatives, a role she served twice from 2007-2011 and from 2019-2023.

Wiener served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors before being elected to the state Senate in 2016.

Pelosi earlier this year endorsed Chan, who represents the Richmond District and other neighborhoods on the western side of the city.

Wiener did not post on social media about the results in the race, while Chan said in a statement that the results remained too close to call.

"There are still votes to count, and we will let that process unfold. We are proud, and we have every reason to keep our heads high," she said.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Department of Elections will publish the number of ballots that still need to be counted. It will also post updated results at 4 p.m. each day through Nov. 13.