When Mike Wasserman came to Metro’s offices for an interview back before the June primary, our editorial committee was unanimously impressed. Although we endorsed Teresa Alvarado in that race, we liked what we heard from Wasserman and feel strongly that he will make a good supervisor.

On the morning of July 8, County Assessor Larry Stone met District 1 Supervisor candidate Mike Wasserman at Bill’s Café on the Alameda. By the end of breakfast, Stone, a lifelong Democrat, offered Republican Wasserman his endorsement in the upcoming November election.

“I knew going into the meeting that if in fact our values were comparable that I was prepared to endorse him,” Stone says. “I called Forrest [Williams]. I guess I wanted him to hear my decision, not find out from the press. It was a very short but cordial conversation.”

Although a worker at the Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office said this afternoon that there are still a few ballots straggling in, Teresa Alvarado has thrown in the towel in her bid for the District 1 Supervisor’s seat. “I finished just 62 votes short of a second-place finish. Clearly, every vote counts,” she wrote in a statement. Although the gap between Alvarado and former City Council member Forrest Williams was just a few dozen votes, former Los Gatos mayor Mike Wasserman trounced both candidates in the primary by over 14,000 votes.

After a week of anticipation, the Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office still does not have a definitive answer for candidate for District 1 Supervisor Teresa Alvarado. Alvarado, who’s been trailing her opponent Forrest Williams since the June 8 election by fluctuating margins, spent much of the week attending county budget hearings at 70 West Hedding. Fly was seated nearby at Wednesday afternoon’s meeting when she received an email on her Blackberry saying the gap between her and Williams had shrunk to 32 votes. “Is that the last of it?” she whispered. “What the hell?” Updated

We sped to Los Gatos, where they keep the Christmas tree lights up year round, declining Democratic Central Committee candidate Oliverio’s offer to race us in his Saturn.

We knew this was one race Pierluigi would lose, even as our trusted assistant checked election results from a mobile laptop passenger side.

Rosemary Kamei emailed supporters and posted to her campaign website earlier today to announce that she is dropping out of the race for Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage’s seat. In a telephone intervew this afternoon,  she said she’d made the decision partly because of the crowded field.

“I thought long and hard about this after looking at the race and considering all the candidates,” she said. Pressed to elaborate, Kamei laughed. “There’s a lot of candidates! You know—they are good candidates, and for me personally, it was a decision I’ve made for myself. I chose to step down.”

Sitting at a café table outside Original Joe’s in downtown San Jose, Forrest Williams unzips his binder and starts flipping through the pages within, searching for a document. He finds what he is looking for: a slightly wrinkled, stapled packet of paper with a large amount of handwriting in the margins. This packet contains a long list of city council members, county supervisors, assembly members, senators and water board members—everyone the former San Jose City Councilman has ever worked with in his two decades as an elected official.