The Berkeley senior leads her sole opponent, James Chang, the 33-year-old chief of staff for Berkeley City Councilmember Ben Bartlett. He studied political economy at UC Berkeley before graduating from the Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA Program this spring.
District 7 sits on the five blocks south of the UC Berkeley campus, and the majority of the district's voters are students. Qualified voters needed to register by April 1 to vote in Tuesday's special election.
A total of 372 ballots have been received both in the mail and in person, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Of the ballots counted so far, 117 votes have gone to Lunaparra compared to 77 for Chang.
A spokesperson for the county registrar told Bay City News: "We have 30 days to certify the election, but it seems highly unlikely that it'll take that long.”
Lunaparra is a queer Mexican American UC Berkeley senior majoring in urban studies and history. She is endorsed by the UAW-UC union, the Service Employees International Union and Gen-Z for Change, among other organizations. Her campaign said they anticipate another batch of ballots from the registrar of voters later Wednesday and they are confident the early trends will continue.
