Voters in Orange County’s northwest county supervisor first district are guaranteed a look at who could be their next county supervisor tonight in one of the most packed local primary races. 

As of the end of Tuesday night, state Senator Janet Nguyen was leading the pack with over 36,000 votes, or about 44% of the overall vote. 

In second place, Cypress City Councilwoman Frances Marquez is holding onto 24% of the vote, with over 20,000 votes. 

In third place, former state Assemblyman Van Tran has nearly 15,000 votes and just over 18% of the vote. 

Westminster Councilwoman Kimberly Ho and former Fountain Valley Mayor Michael Vo are both sitting at around 6% of the vote. 

Unless one of the candidates grabs a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff election in November for the first district supervisor’s seat, replacing Andrew Do, who terms out at the end of the year. 

It’s the first time the first district seat has been up for grabs following redistricting in 2022, placing the cities of Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, and Westminster together. 

The race for supervisor has been one of the most expensive in the county, with the candidates and sheriff deputies’ union spending over $1.6 million in the race. 

[Read: Who’s Funding the Campaigns in the Orange County Supervisors Races?]

Nguyen is seeking a return to the seat she used to hold, where she faced harsh criticism for her oversight of CalOptima in the past and has called for various audits of the county to figure out where money should be spent, focusing on reform at the county’s Animal Care department. 

Tran, who’s currently working as Do’s chief of staff, is a former state Assemblyman who’s focused most of his campaign on criticizing Nguyen for her opinions on the border. 

Marquez has said she’s focused on bringing back transparency to the county government and also discussed possibly introducing new plans for the county around climate change. 

[Read: Open Northwest Orange County Supervisor Seat Sees Packed Primary]

Ho and Vo were much lower profile in the race, running largely self-funded campaigns.

Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.