It wasn’t expected to be close.

Santa Barbara County First District Supervisor Das Williams was predicted to defeat challenger Roy Lee easily and coast to a third term on the Board of Supervisors.

Everyone knew it — or thought they did.

Instead, Lee, a 40-year-old Carpinteria city councilman, went to bed Tuesday night with a 4-point lead and 637 votes more than incumbent Williams.

Lee, who has little name recognition and was outspent 3 to 1, topped the veteran Williams, bewildering political spectators and at least temporarily throwing the political landscape into disarray.

It also had an effect on Williams.

“I am humbled by this,” he told Noozhawk on Wednesday. “Whether the yet-to-be-counted votes turn around the result or not, it points to the need for me to do better and be more inclusive in my work.

“The largest factor in the results thus far is low turnout — less than half of normal presidential primary turnout.”

However, Williams and his longtime friend and his chief of staff on the board of supervisors, Darcel Elliott, weren’t conceding.

“We have thousands more ID’d supporters; we just do not yet know if they voted,” Williams said. “The second factor was a negative campaign, some of which I brought on myself, but most of which was vicious and false.”

Michael Daly, Santa Barbara County’s deputy election clerk, said there are still 41,000 ballots across the county to be counted. The next voter update with those results is expected Friday.

He said about half of those ballots are from people who dropped them off in person on Tuesday. The rest were mailed.

Elliott said her guess is that there are 10,000 ballots still out in the First District.

“I feel hopeful based on the number of ballots left to count,” she said.

Daly said it’s possible, but not likely, that the results in the First District will change.

Williams trailed Lee in both poll voting and mail voting on election day. Lee earned 7,495 votes to Williams’ 6,858 votes. Lee’s lead grew as the night went on.

In an interview with Noozhawk on Wednesday, Elliott said she doesn’t know how to explain the election night results.

“The reports from the field did not indicate this,” Elliott said. “The support that Das was getting in the field data was 60% from likely voters. I don’t know what happened.”

Elliott said it was the first time since 2010 that she did not run Williams’ campaign.

“No one thought that Das’ race would be this close,” she said. “I wasn’t directly involved. I delegated all the campaign stuff to Spencer (Brandt).”

Elliott is also the chair of the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party.

“I felt that my No. 1 job as party chair was to keep the Third District,” Elliott said, and she did.

Incumbent Joan Hartmann trounced Frank Troise and Jenelle Osborne, winning 60% of the vote. Elliott said holding on to the Third District was the priority, and that keeping the First District was assumed.

Even though her paycheck is dependent on Williams keeping his job, she said her focus was on Hartmann staying in office.

“I try really, really hard to be unbiased,” Elliott said. “I feel like I made the right decision.”

Williams, too, assumed he would win. Historically, he has paid people to knock on doors on his behalf. This election, however, the number of people he paid was half what he hired when he faced Laura Capps for the seat in 2020.

The paid walkers, Elliott said, reported back things such as, “We are gonna vote for Das. We always vote for Das,” adding that they were talking to likely voters.

Low voter turnout, about 23% thus far, definitely had an effect on the contest. Democrats are usually highly skilled at turning out the vote. Elliott said she wasn’t surprised that Williams was behind at the polls.

“We knew that Das would lose the poll vote because they are mostly Republicans and Trump people who think vote-by-mail is a fraud,” Elliott said.

Williams also has historically been strong at recruiting young voters, including UCSB students, to canvas on his behalf. According to voter turnout, however, 65% of the people who voted were older than age 65 and 20% were between ages 50 and 64.

Williams also lost much support in the months and days before the election. He lost the endorsements of the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County, the Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee and the Santa Barbara Independent.

Then, three retired public safety officials came out against him.

Barney Melekian, a former Santa Barbara County undersheriff and Santa Barbara interim police chief; retired Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Pat McElroy; and retired Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley publicly endorsed Lee and sent out a mailer.

Former Second District Supervisor Janet Wolf also publicly endorsed Lee, accompanied by a flier.

Former News-Press editor and influential media blogger Jerry Roberts publicly endorsed Lee the weekend before the election, and wrote a 2,500-word takedown of Williams. The Montecito Journal was also the first newspaper to endorse Lee, and it re-circulated Roberts’ story in its newsletter.

It’s possible that a combination of an unknown candidate that Williams might have underestimated combined with a public, high-profile wave of opposition from local power brokers, a Democratic Party focus on the Third District and the lingering disapproval of the county’s cannabis ordinance may have created a perfect storm for an upset.

Elliott said she wants to make it clear that Williams didn’t sleepwalk through the campaign.

“I do not think Das took it for granted,” Elliott said. “He was canvassing like crazy.”

As for Lee, he’s not saying much until the final results are known. A Democrat, his supporters said they were struck by his sincerity, honesty and genuine approach to the issues.

Williams’ opponents for years have criticized him for a lack of authenticity and a perception that he is an operator.

Whether it was an anti-Williams wave, a genuine approval of Lee or a combination of both, it is undeniable that Lee has emerged in the public eye in ways few could have imagined. He even earned about 800 more votes than Hartmann.

“There’s still a bunch of votes out there being counted right now,” Lee said. “Hopefully we’ll know more soon.”