Details From Perata's Concession Speech

UPDATE 11:38 a.m. Here are details from Don Perata's press conference, as reported to us by Richard Gonzales of NPR, who attended:

• Perata was gracious in his concession to Quan. He will not challenge the results.
• He said he thought the election was fair but that he didn’t realize it could be “gamed.” When pressed on that he said he didn’t understand how the ranked-choice system worked. He thought the elderly in particular were confused, though acknowledged that his opinion was based only on anecdotal reports. He also said that if the election had been, quote, normal, "I'd be the landslide winner."
• He said he was proud to have received 11,000 first-place votes and proud to have won Latino and African-American precincts.
• He said that he hasn't spoken to Quan yet, but that he's known her for 30 years and any communication with her would be private.
• He said that he currently has no future political plans, though he'd be open to helping Jerry Brown, since Brown now has "the hardest job in America."

Here's KQED's radio report on the press conference:

And here is the archive of today's Michael Krasny interview with Jean Quan on Forum.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m. Don Perata is holding a press conference today and we'll have a report on that later. One thing: You can bet he's not going to sing the praises of ranked choice voting. From California Beat Thursday:

On election night Perata told a reporter with KTVU Television that he did not understand how ranked-choice voting worked. On Friday his campaign released a statement that also expressed his confusion with the process. “It appears that there might be a reversal of fortune,” the statement read. “We’re unclear about Alameda County’s processes and await a final and accurate count. The mystery of ranked-choice voting continues.”

From the Oakland Tribune:

It's official. Jean Quan is Oakland's new mayor.

Quan, 61, represents a lot of firsts for Oakland. She's the first female mayor, the first Asian-American mayor, and the first mayor elected through ranked-choice voting in Oakland.

She's making history in other ways, too. Quan trailed former state Sen. Don Perata by more than 9 percentage points after preliminary results of first-place votes were posted Nov. 5. But those first-place votes didn't tell the whole story of how Quan ran her campaign, and how she lobbied voters to choose her as their second or third pick if they had someone else in mind for No. 1.

The result: Quan picked up enough second- and third-place votes to vault over Perata
in the final round, 53,778 to 51,720. The margin was slim -- 50.98 percent versus 49.02 -- but just enough for a victory. Read the full article.

KGO TV report:

Related: The ranked-choice debate