If you were sitting by a computer and constantly refreshing the Secretary of State or LA County Registrar website last night (and yes there are some people like me who do that), you were watching a nail-biter. Well, sort of. With the advent of the top two open primary, the attention is more focused on who comes in second than who comes in first.
Throughout the night Janice Hahn maintained the lead for first place, but in a surprising dynamic CLCV-endorsed candidate Debra Bowen and self-funding Republican candidate Craig Huey were jockeying for second place to make it to the run-off. In a disappointing end, Huey had received 206 votes more than Bowen. Here are the final precinct reported vote totals:
1. J. Hahn – 24.7 (13, 137)
2. C. Huey – 21.9 (11,648)
3. D Bowen – 21.5 (11,442)
4. M. Winograd – 9.5 (5,066)
A few interesting things to note:
- With over a dozen candidates, the vote was so diluted that nobody even claimed 25% of the vote, let alone the 50%+1 votes needed to win an election outright.
- Neither Huey nor Bowen were very far behind Janice Hahn even though Hahn won first place.
- Critics of the top two primary were always concerned about how the dynamic would give a much bigger advantage to a self-funding candidate than the traditional primaries did. Huey self-funded his campaign for $500,000, and it may have paid off for him.
- In a race where there are over 345,000 eligible voters, the top vote-getter received a mere 13,137 votes.
But perhaps the most talked about dynamic of this election is that it’s NOT over. With nearly 10,000 provisional and late Vote-By-Mail ballots still being counted, the election results could just as easily flip. It’s important to realize that the number of provisional ballots still uncounted is relatively close to the total number of votes that any one of the top three candidates received. Though it’s unlikely that Hahn will not make it to the run-off one way or another considering the sheer number of absentee votes that two other candidates would need to have over her, it’s still anyone’s guess whether Bowen or Huey will be the other contender. 206 votes is a very narrow lead for Huey to have, especially in a safe Democratic district. Bowen ran a strong absentee ballot campaign, so if Huey did not do the same, that could just as easily be the difference.
Officials are expecting the count to last until the end of the week. In the mean time, we will be continuing to follow this race very closely.
