Oceanside City Councilmember and mayoral candidate Ryan Keim said Wednesday he was optimistic about his narrow lead over incumbent Mayor Esther Sanchez. He added about 100 votes with each of the two subsequent releases since the initial count that included only mailed ballots Tuesday night, he said, and he hopes that trend will continue. No additional results were expected until Thursday from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office, and new numbers could continue to trickle in through Nov. 15 or longer. “I knew it would be close,” Keim said. “I will feel a lot better in about a month. I wish they could count ballots faster around here.” Sanchez, an attorney and former public defender, has been on the council since 2000 and was first elected mayor in 2020. Keim, a former Oceanside police officer, was appointed to a vacancy on the council in January 2019 and then elected to a four-year term in 2020. Sanchez said Wednesday the race was still “too close to call” and that she, too, remained optimistic. The money spent on the campaign by national real estate and development companies for Keim and other candidates in the election was “outrageous,” she said. “They obviously don’t know Oceansiders,” Sanchez said. “We are fighters. We care about our residents, our neighborhoods.” Keim said he campaigned door-to-door almost every day from August until the election, sometimes for only an hour or so and sometimes all day. “People were happy to talk,” he said. “One of the first things people say is how much they like living in this city.” A big difference between him and his opponent is that he’s pushed for action on things the City Council has only talked about for decades, he said. Sand replenishment is an example of that, Keim said. The City Council for years has discussed concerns about Oceanside’s shrinking beaches. The annual dredging of the city’s harbor by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provides too little sand and only enough for about one-third of the city’s coastline. “I said if we don’t take a lead on this nothing will happen,” he said. “Our residents deserve to get something done.” He pushed hard for the city’s Re:Beach project, a proposal to pump nearly a million cubic yards of sand from offshore deposits onto the city’s narrowest beaches and hold it there with two artificial headlands. The project is on track to be shovel-ready in 2026, though so far there’s no money for construction costs expected to be between $30 million and $50 million. The run for Oceanside city treasurer is much closer than the mayor’s race. As of Wednesday, incumbent City Treasurer Victor Roy was just 126 votes, a fraction of a percentage point ahead of his nearest challenger, Phyllis Dominguez. A third candidate, Jack Fernandes, was close behind. Roy was first elected to a partial two-year term as city treasurer in 2018. He was elected to a four-year term in 2020. Roy and Fernandes both have trouble spots in their record. The results of an independent investigation done for the city in 2022 showed Roy had behaved poorly in the job on several occasions, violated numerous city policies, and was dishonest about his use of library computers for viewing inappropriate material. Fernandes was arrested Aug. 6 by the California Highway Patrol on suspicion of driving under the influence, which he later acknowledged in an interview with a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter. He also was involved in an apparently unrelated “road rage” incident in La Jolla, where San Diego police responding to the incident seized guns and ammunition, records show. Two Oceanside City Council races appear unlikely to change with additional results. Jimmy Figueroa, a local nonprofit leader, led by more than 4 percentage points Wednesday over the nearest other candidate, Laura Bassett, for the District 3 seat now held by Keim. Other candidates in that district are Tom DeMooy and Austin Sorensen. In District 4, incumbent Peter Weiss led by more than 20 percentage points over his two opponents, Omar Hashimi and Amber Kae Niuatoa. “I appreciate all the support I’ve gotten, and I will do my best to fulfill my duties to the citizens of Oceanside,” Weiss said Wednesday.