California Assembly Speaker Kevin Mullin and San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa appear headed for a runoff in November to replace U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, according to unofficial results from Tuesday's election.
Mullin, who Speier endorsed in December for the primary, has 23,413 votes, just over 40.1 percent of the tally. The totals are unofficial, with 291 of 291 district partially reporting as of early Wednesday morning, according to the California Secretary of State's primary election website.
Canepa is a distant second with 14,357 votes at 24.6 percent. Both Mullin and Canepa are Democrats.
Republican candidate Gus Mattammal and Democrat Emily Beach trailed with 17.9 and 13.5 percent, respectively.
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If the results hold, Mullin and Canepa will face each other in a runoff election on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Speier, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, has served Congressional District 15 since 2008. She announced in November that she would not seek re-election. In a video shared then on social media, Speier recalled being shot five times at the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978 while working as a staffer for U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, who was fatally shot on the trip to investigate Jim Jones and the People's Temple, a cult that had previously been based in his Peninsula congressional district.
Speier survived and said her career in public office, which has taken her from the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors to the state Legislature to in 2008 being elected to the seat in Congress in 2008, has been "a remarkable journey that has surpassed my wildest dreams."
