So I attempted to workaround the issue by disabling table view focus just before doing the swipe delete action...then enabling it again after a bit of a delay in -tableView:didEndEditingRowAtIndexPath:
And that avoids the auto selecting, assuming I do it after a long enough delay since the focus system must be queuing all this up on timers. But if you click outside the window, then reactivate the window, the focus system just selects the first row automatically in the table view after focus is reenabled.
I could suppress it by returning NO from -tableView:shouldHighlightRowAtIndexPath: or canFocusOnItemAtIndexPath: but there is no good way to determine when I should suppress the selection to workaround this issue. Anyone know a way to tame the focus system? Can I clear its queue? A method like -cancelQueuedFocusSystemUpdateRequestsTakeItEasyPlease ?