While Santa Monica voters backed a slate of progressive, liberal candidates for City Council this week, voters took a slightly more conservative turn in some regional and state races.
The Unity Slate of Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell and Natalya Zernitskaya remained on the top spots Thursday for City Council. While it is still mathematically possible for current Mayor Phil Brock to pick up enough votes to retain his seat, it is highly unlikely he would do so.
Brock has been stuck in fifth place since Election Day. He needs to gain about 1,000 votes to climb into fourth and as of Thursday, the County had about 3,500 outstanding ballots to count from Santa Monica voters. While it is possible for more outstanding ballots to arrive through next week (ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted), Brock has to outpace his rivals by a 2-1 margin to pull ahead and it is highly unlikely that such a high concentration of voters for any one candidate would be clustered in those final ballots.
While Brock’s slatemates Oscar de la Torre, Vivian Roknian seem close in voter percentage (reporting 10.7% and 10.15% respectively vs. the 12.54% needed to claim a council seat), they are even further behind Brock in the actual vote count and each needs more than 2,000 votes.
At the county level, Santa Monicans were on par with the region in backing the more conservative Nathan Hochman over incumbent District Attorney George Gason. About 54% of Santa Monica voters backed Hochman in his effort to unseat the more liberal Gascon. Locals were also on par with the state in opposing the expansion of rent control as 54% of local voters voted "no" on Prop 33. It was a similar outcome for supporting harsher criminal penalties via Prop 36 with 54% of locals voting in favor.
Voters overwhelming supported repealing the state ban on same-sex marriage and backed new funding for schools by a 2-1 margin. Locals supported efforts to lower voting thresholds to approve new bonds for housing and supported a ban on forced labor for prisoners by similar margins (although both of those appear headed for defeat at the state level). Santa Monicans bucked the state trend and supported raising the minimum wage.
Locals backed Democrat Adam Schiff over his Republican rival Steve Garvey almost 4-1.
Countywide, the total election results count is now 2,696,482, which is 47% of registered voters. According to the Registrar of Voters, a large number of Vote by Mail ballots were returned on Election Day and their office continues to prioritize the timely processing of these ballots to establish a clear number of outstanding ballots in this election.
The preliminary estimate of outstanding ballots to be processed is 1,116,100 countywide.
Final vote results will be reported in the Official Election Canvas, a 30-day period in which the registrar processes and verifies all outstanding ballots to ensure that every eligible ballot cast by Election Day is counted.
matthew@smdp.com
