All the votes have been counted, and the results are in: Jean Quan is the new mayor of Oakland -- the city's first female and first Asian American mayor. Quan defeated Don Perata by a little more than 2,000 votes, in Oakland's first-ever ranked choice election: Jean Quan is Oakland's mayor.
It's a stunning win for Quan, who definitely took advantage of the new system. Ranked-choice voting allows voters to cast their first, second and third choices. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, last-place candidates are eliminated and their votes distributed until one candidate reaches the threshold of 50 percent plus one.
Quan trailed former state Sen. Don Perata by more than 9 percentage points after preliminary results of first-place votes were posted Nov. 5. But those first-place votes didn't tell the whole story of how Quan ran her campaign, and how she lobbied voters to choose her as their second or third pick if they had someone else in mind for No. 1.
The result: Quan picked up enough second- and third-place votes to vault over Perata in the final round, 53,778 to 51,720. The margin was slim -- 50.98 percent versus 49.02 -- but just enough for a victory.
Quan campaigned for months for people to vote for "anybody but Don." She had told supporters to list fellow candidate Rebecca Kaplan as their second choice. The strategy paid off for Quan when Kaplan, who finished third, was eliminated and her votes redistributed. Quan won 75 percent of them -- pushing her from a 10,372-vote deficit to a 2,058-vote victory.
It's a huge milestone. But I don't envy Jean Quan, who now faces the daunting task of actually being mayor of Oakland -- a city with its major share of problems. For now, congratulations, Mayor-elect Quan. More here: Jean Quan wins Oakland mayor's race.