The most significant points about last week’s primary election in Pima County were that the incumbents won and county officials demonstrated again they count votes about as well as they grow grass inside Tucson Electric Park.

Poorly. More on baseball later.

Supervisors Ann Day, in District 1, and Ramón Valadez, in District 2, easily defeated two local businessmen. Day beat Tucson Republican Joe Higgins, and Valadez crushed Sahuarita Democrat Robert Robuck.

So because Day, Valadez, District 4 Republican Ray Carroll and District 5 Democrat Richard Elías have no opponents in the general election, they’ll get new four-year terms.

District 3 Democrat Sharon Bronson survived a challenge by Donna Branch-Gilby, but she now must face Republican businessman Barney Brenner Nov. 4.

Pima County had the dubious distinction of having very few vote totals posted in time for the TV stations’ 10 p.m. newscasts election night. It apparently was also the last county to finish counting ballots the next day.

Elections Director Brad Nelson told reporters the delay was due to Democratic "election integrity advocates" who sued the county and questioned its vote-counting procedures.

He said that forced his office to improve vote security by transporting ballots from polling places to the county computers instead of transmitting them electronically.

Neither he nor local TV and daily newspaper reporters mentioned the late tallies might be due to incompetency of Nelson and his staff. Until a few years ago, all ballots were driven downtown but still were counted much more rapidly than they were this year.

Back to baseball

Returning to baseball, businessman Jay Zucker apparently has arranged for Tucson to have a professional team next summer after the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies finish their spring training schedules in March.

Zucker, who sold the AAA Pacific Coast League Tucson Sidewinders to a group that will move them to Reno next year, has bought a franchise for a new team to join the independent Golden Baseball League next summer.

He has named the team the Tucson Toros, using rights he retained for the Toros’ name, mascot, caricatures and trademarks when he sold the Sidewinders.

The Golden League isn’t affiliated with Major League Baseball or its minor leagues. Its players either have played in the majors or minors or are prospects to join those leagues after showing their talents in the independent league.

Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco and other ex-big leaguers played in the league after leaving the majors, so I suppose it’s remotely possible that a Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza or Kenny Lofton could join the Toros or one of their rivals in 2009.

Ex-University of Arizona major leaguers like pitcher Eddie Vosberg or catcher Alan Zinter might be considered as well.

It’s more likely, however, that young players who haven’t signed a big-league contract yet will be on the team. Stephen Drew, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ shortstop, did just that while his post-college negotiations were stalled.

Zucker will move his Toros from Pima County’s Tucson Electric Park to the city’s Hi Corbett Field in Gene Reid Park, where the original team began in 1969.

Hi Corbett is centrally located and more fan-friendly than TEP. And City Parks Director Fred Gray is a pro who’s easy to work with. Best of all, city groundskeepers (unlike their county counterparts) know how to grow and maintain grass for baseball.

Let’s hope this deal doesn’t get hung up somewhere in the bowels of City Hall between now and May because two neighbors complained or some bureaucrat decides he or she has found a reason to stall or kill it.

Baseball fans are generally non-violent, but we have seen city officials’ feeble efforts to retain the Colorado Rockies here.

Losing our new independent team before it can play its first game would be the last straw.

Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to noon weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.