I hope you all are drying out after that blue tsunami went through; as wavy elections go, it was a doozy.

Numerically, at least.

But while we all speculate what the Democrats’ very clear victory will mean for the nation in the next two years, our very local picture remains murky. Yes, Angely Andrade Vallarta (District 4) and Kelly Brown (District 5) cruised to victory, as their respective voter registration edges would predict. And Mike Buley (Mayor) won a surprisingly comfortable over Loren Gameros.

Yet, as of this moment, the District 3 race between Daniel Morgan and Cara Stewart remains too close to call, with Stewart clinging to a one-vote lead as of 5pm yesterday. So, in effect, that race is still a coin-flip, a full week after election day.

Alas, at this point we have a Council majority that is something like Schrödinger’s cat: both majority-right and majority-left at the same time, and we don’t know which until we are allowed to open the ballot box and look inside. So let’s pass the time by gaming out what a Morgan or Stewart victory would mean for the Council’s next term. To be clear, neither Morgan or Stewart have ever held elected office, so who knows what they would actually do. But polite forbearance is boring. And reckless speculation is fun!

If Morgan wins: a rightward shift and support for Buley’s priorities, on the Council at least

Morgan prevailing in the District 3 race would have the immediate effect of providing Mike Buley a strong block of votes to first fill his own slot on the City Council, which will be vacant following his move to the mayor’s seat, and second to enact his agenda. Jeff Pettis (District 6) has rarely split from Buley in high profile votes, and Morgan has shown fairly strong alignment with Buley on the campaign trail.

So, with three votes solidly on his side, the focus would shift to how Buley faces his first test of leadership: filling his vacated District 1 seat. While there is an animalistic logic to trying to place as rock-ribbed a conservative in that seat as the swing vote, Loren Gameros most likely, would allow, I wonder if Buley will instead aim for consensus. He himself holds some contrarian views, including that the Federal government’s policy of spectacular ICE raids were among the “most important” questions facing the city and that the city should continue its active transportation program — both opinions he expressed at the Save Our Youth candidate forum towards the end of the race. If he were to select a candidate that was similarly independent-minded, I do think that such a comity pick could net a 6-0 selection.

Settling for a divisive candidate or gunning for a unanimous pick (or at least, a non-acrimonious pick, who can really achieve unanimity on anything these days?) will be a strong sign as to how Buley plans to lead the Council for the next couple of years.

So, assuming Buley has at least four votes following the appointment that are directionally aligned with his agenda, the next questions would be: what is that agenda, and to what extent can Buley enact it? The first question deserves its own post once the dust settles, though I’ll tease you by noting that, in my observation, Buley has focused on three key themes both in office and on the campaign trail: skepticism of Sacramento’s disruption of local control, particularly in housing matters; concern about fiscal sustainability; and a desire to modernize City Hall.

As to the extent he could enact it, Morgan’s victory would shift Buley’s burden from persuading his colleagues to instead persuading City Manager Cecilia Gallardo-Daly to support his agenda. Do I think Buley and Gallardo-Daly may be fairly aligned? Yeah, actually, I do. But that’s all just guesswork until we see how their relationship develops in practice.

If Stewart wins: a ideologically diverse Council with no clear direction

If Stewart wins out in District 3, then the picture for filling Buley’s vacant District 1 seat becomes much muddier. Buley would need to persuade two card-carrying Democrats, likely Gameros and one of Stewart, Brown and Andrade Vallarta, to support his pick and avoid a special election. While the Democrats’ incentives to hold out for a liberal candidate aren’t particularly strong given that District 1 is an uphill climb for a liberal candidate in a typical election (Republicans hold a strong registration advantage there), a Stewart victory would certainly narrow Buley’s universe of plausible picks.

Once that new member is on board, it isn’t clear that the resulting Council would carry with it much of a mandate. Yes, Andrade Vallarta notched a resounding victory in District 4. And she is, by all outward appearances, a strong liberal who may be to the left of outgoing District 4 City Council Member, Manuel Chavez (for example: Chavez did not support a rental registry on practical grounds, while Andrade Vallarta has vocally supported a rental registry). So I could see her feeling a fair amount of urgency to push for liberal policies.

But equally, Buley cruised to a resounding victory in the mayor’s race, in a year when every other Republican candidate (particularly Californian Republicans) were crushed by the blue wave. So he, too, may feel some vindication for his more conservative perspective. And he will almost certainly be able to count on Pettis’s continued support.

However, between these poles lie a set of wild cards.

Off the top, we have no idea who will ultimately be picked to replace Buley in District 1.

Gameros, who will still be on the Council serving out the remainder of his District 2 term, has proven himself to be somewhat unpredictable. At times he has supported strongly liberal policies, such as self-checkout machine regulation pushed by labor unions,. However, at others, he has absolutely infuriated his fellow liberals, most notably when he backed the majority, including Buley and Pettis, to oust former city manager Lori Ann Farrell Harrison.

Stewart has the strongest party affiliation of all of the candidates — she was, after all, the former chair of the Costa Mesa Democratic Club — but her campaign avoided partisan bomb-throwing and stuck to local issues. I expect her to govern as a reliable liberal who won’t seek out opportunities to grandstand. If she turns out to govern similarly to outgoing District 3 Council Member Andrea Marr, I wouldn’t be all that surprised.

As for Brown, I think she will be one of the more intriguing new members to watch. On the one hand, she was unfortunately introduced to some through a regrettably viral clip of her vowing fight the “kind of fascism” exhibited by the Trump Administration at the local level (the full clip was posted to Andrade Vallarta’s Instagram page; the clip that circulated widely removed some of the context). These remarks elicited reactions from eye-rolls to spitting anger from the right-side of the Costa Mesa political world.

On the other, Brown has a long history of public service in Costa Mesa, and she’s never struck me as an ideologue during her five years on the Parks and Community Services Commission. In fact, I’ve always regarded her as one of its more moderate and pragmatic members. In the last few years she has been laser-focused on returning the PACS Commission to its core function of overseeing park development and providing a meaningful opportunity for public input in the political process.

And, more importantly, at least from my perspective, she has shown a willingness to be an active member of the PACS Commission rather than just a passenger. When the Parks Department attempted to route the Fairview Park Master Plan Update around the PACS Commission entirely, she personally lobbied the City Council to step in and address that flawed process. And then, when staff attempted to present a ridiculously reductive report of the PACS Commission’s deliberations on that update to the City Council, she once again took it on her own initiative to set the record straight and ensure the City Council had the full account of the PACS Commission’s comments (including its internal disagreements about the Harbor Soaring Society flying field).

So, if Stewart ends up carrying District 3, I see two possibilities. One is that the Council is sufficiently divided that it is unable to craft a coherent direction, which will leave City Hall functionally on autopilot for the next two years. Another is that, depending on how open-minded some its members end up being, we could see some unorthodox alliances be formed across party lines, or perhaps opportunistically on an issue-by-issue basis.

The latter would be infinitely more enjoyable than the former. But, alas, both are just daydreams until all the votes are finally counted. If I stare at the Registrar’s website hard enough, will it make the counting go faster? It’s worth a shot…