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With voter participation very low, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was reelected by a huge margin over a field of underenergized challengers with no detectable political oomph behind them at all. With more than 88 percent of precincts already reported, Garcetti was cruising with more than 80 percent of the vote. Remember when Antonio Villaraigosa felt stung by getting in the mid 50s at his reelection? No such sting here. Garcetti could end up with a modern record in vote share, though with a tiny number of total votes even by Los Angeles standards.
On the Los Angeles City Council, it's too close to tell yet whether incumbent Gil Cedillo will be forced into a May runoff by challenger Josef Bray-Ali. Cedillo has a hair over the 50 percent needed with all precincts in, but there must be some provisional ballots to be counted. For the open seat in the Valley, Monica Rodriguez is in the runoff against either Karo Torossian or Monica Ratliff. With all but two precincts in, Torossian led Ratliff by 280 votes.
All other city electeds on the ballot were reelected with at least 60 percent of the votes in their contests.
Measure S, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's bid to force a moratorium on some big development projects across the city, lost badly. As of right now, the No side has 68 percent of the vote. Measure M, to regulate cannabis sales, won huge. The county's Measure H, to bump up the sale tax another quarter percent for to help the homeless population, needs two-thirds of the vote to pas and was hovering right around there with 90 percent of precincts reporting. So check back on that one.
In the contentious school board races, it looks like incumbent Steve Zimmer and first-time candidate Nick Melvoin will do the runoff thing in district 4. Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez and Imelda Padilla will face each other in the district 6 runoff. Monica Garcia was winning outright in district 2.
All of the later results will be here: new web address
9 a.m. update: With all precincts counted, but an unknown number of provisional ballots yet to be tabulated, the county homeless tax looks to have passed. But barely: the result could change. Measure H as of now has 67.44 percent, just over the 66.66 needed to pass. Also:
- Garcetti stands at 80.87 percent, a rarely seen affirmative vote in Los Angeles. None of the City Council members facing a challenge got anywhere close to 80 percent. Garcetti had 10 opponents and only Mitchell Schwartz (8.22 percent) reached even four percent.
- Councilman Gil Cedillo narrowly escaped a runoff against Josef Bray-Ali, with 50.98 percent — pending the count of provisional ballots.
- Measure S was rejected by 68.85 percent of the voters. If that was the vehicle for a civic conversation about development, gentrification and the future of the city, the convo is over. For now.
- In CD 7 in the Valley, Monica Rodriguez (27.70 percent) and Karo Torossian (16.35 percent) will fight it out in the runoff to decide who takes the open seat on the City Council.
- The school board runoffs remain as they looked last night: Zimmer versus Melvoin and Fitzpatrick-Gonez versus Padilla.
