Griffin takes early lead in Tiburon council special election

Noah Griffin has taken a commanding early lead in the Nov. 2 special election for an interim seat on the Tiburon Town Council, with some 47% of the vote to Kathleen Defever's 29%, a separation of 348 votes.

Candidates Nora Noguez and Brian McCullough follow at 13% and 11%, respectively.

The preliminary results, posted shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m., reflect only mail-in ballots counted so far, representing about 29% of Tiburon's registered voters.

The four candidates are running the seat vacated by David Kulik, who resigned last spring after moving out of town with his family. The ultimate winner be sworn in at the council's Dec. 8 meeting will serve the remaining three years of Kulik’s term, through November 2024.

Griffin, 75, currently serves on the Diversity Inclusion Task Force and is a public-affairs consultant who has worked in and out of journalism and Democratic politics for more than 30 years; he is the first Black candidate to appear on a Tiburon council ballot. Defever, 43, has a solo law practice in property- and disability-insurance litigation and has served on the Tiburon Planning Commission since April 2018, where she is currently the board chair.

McCullough, 65, is a semi-retired private investor who has also worked as a contractor and, in decades past, as a stockbroker, protein-bar company owner, volunteer firefighter and in security. Noguez, 64, currently chairs the town’s Heritage and Arts Commission, where she has served since 2017; she worked for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office from 1991 to 1995, then served as deputy city attorney in the litigation section until 2013.