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The official final tally of the votes cast in the March 5 Los Angeles city election, posted tonight with updated totals by the City Clerk, shows that former state lawmaker Gil Cedillo still barely missed escaping a runoff. He ended up with 49.32 percent of the votes cast in the 1st council district, and will have to continue campaigning against Jose Gardea, who got 43.45 percent. Even with provisional and late absentee ballots counted, only 17,010 voters cast ballots in the district despite the hot race between Cedillo and Gardea. More people voted in the Wilmington and San Pedro district where Councilman Joe Buscaino faced no active opposition. Oh well. The added votes counted in CD1 actually nudged Cedillo a bit further from the majority he needed to avoid a runoff.
In the Valley's 3rd and 7th districts, the results did not change either: Bob Blumenfield has been elected to the City Council with 51.92 percent, and Felipe Fuentes with 51.38 percent. Mike Bonin was elected in CD11 with 61.84 percent.
The added votes adjusted the final tallies a bit in other races. Eric Garcetti finished first among the mayoral candidates, with 33.14 percent to Wendy Greuel's 29.01 percent. Jan Perry's campaign consultant, Eric Hacopian, had predicted a few days after the primary that his candidate would rise into third place when all the votes were counted. But that did not happen, with Kevin James staying third at 16.34 percent, Perry at 15.89 percent and Emanuel Pleitez at 4.14 percent.
In the race for city attorney, challenger Mike Feuer got 44.10 percent to incumbent Carmen Trutanich's 29.70 percent. In the race for controller, Ron Galperin led the way with 37.77 percent to Dennis Zine's 36.48 percent. There also also races in CD 9 between Curren Price and Ana Cubas, and in CD 13 between Mitch O'Farrell and John Choi.
While no results changed, as expected the additional vote counting bumped the official voter turnout up to 20.79 percent (377,881) of the 1,817,107 registered voters on the rolls. You just know that some of the lazier media outlets, even those with paid staffs of writers and editors, will continue to use the never-accurate 16 percent figure that they have bandied about (and which will remain in Google forever.)
Here are the details.
