They’re down for the count

A grinding, nip-and-tuck finish to an Orange County state Senate race has garnered all the attention, but there are other political battles throughout the county hanging in the balance as absentee and provisional votes continue to be counted.

In Garden Grove, a 79-year-old incumbent who was in the lead two days after the election has fallen 1,201 votes behind newcomer Dina Nguyen. In Mission Viejo, an incumbent who seemed to be down for the count has rallied in the last few days to take a tenuous lead. And Democrat Lou Correa continued gaining ground on Republican Lynn Daucher in the 34th state Senate district race Tuesday, as the ongoing vote tally narrowed the gap to 302 votes.

But with thousands of ballots still to count, the final decision in many races is up in the air, leaving some candidates anxious and others inexplicably calm.

“I really haven’t followed it, except for what I see in the newspaper,” said Garden Grove Councilman Harry Krebs, whose 73-vote lead on election day has dissolved into a nearly insurmountable deficit.

Krebs said he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t checking the county registrar’s daily updates.

“When I walked into City Hall, people congratulated me for winning,” he said. “But I had to tell them, ‘Right now, I’m behind, and they are still counting the votes.’ ”

Krebs, who was appointed in 2004 to fill the seat vacated when William Dalton was elected mayor, did not raise any money or run a campaign, so he has no plans to concede to Nguyen.

“It’s not that kind of contest,” he said. “If I lose, so be it. I’m more into volunteer work and philanthropic work than I’m into politics.”

In Mission Viejo, Lance MacLean is a little less blase about his back-and-forth race with Diane Greenwood for one of the three City Council seats up for grabs. MacLean trailed by 11 votes on election night, but he took a small lead last week that has now widened to 118 votes.

“It’s been somewhat gut-wrenching,” he said. “You’re at the computer waiting for that update to see if you’re up or down. There’s a certain amount of butterflies each time you click that refresh button.”

In Anaheim, incumbent council member Richard Chavez has been watching the results just as intently. In a race where the top two vote getters are elected, Chavez trails incumbent Bob Hernandez by 408 votes and Lucille Kring, a former council member, by 492.

Chavez, former head of Anaheim’s firefighters union, sits down with his son each night and nervously logs onto the registrar’s website. The 5 p.m. updates are preceded by good-luck phone calls from family members, firefighters, union members and his girlfriend.

“I’ve dealt with it much better than I expected,” he said. “I’ve tried to be patient with the process. I’m eager to get to the point where it’s resolved and hopeful I’m able to pull it out.”

In the Westminster School District, where voters were smarting over a decision to dump the district’s first Vietnamese-American superintendent before she had even started the job, an embattled incumbent has tumbled to fifth place, two spots out of the winner’s circle.

In a district where three seats were open, fourth-place finisher Lupe Fisher is trailing third-place finisher Andrew Nguyen by 231 votes.

Every day since the election, the places of the candidates have changed, Fisher said.

Now, she is doubtful she can win: “There’s always a possibility, but I don’t know what to expect,” said Fisher. “It’s really a head-scratcher.”

Fisher said nine candidates, plus a write-in candidate, made this election the most closely contested she can remember. The candidates were drawn into the race after an uproar this summer when the board offered the superintendent post to a Vietnamese-American educator and then rescinded the offer a week later.

Incumbent candidates Blossie Marquez and Judy Ahrens supported the offer, but Ahrens changed her vote at the next meeting, creating a majority vote to cancel the offer. Ahrens stood in fifth place late Tuesday, Marquez in sixth.

In the Brea Olinda Unified School District, where four seats were open, Sue Anthony Nowers was leading Kevin Hobby by 36 votes in the running for the final spot on the board.

In the Anaheim Union High School District, where three seats were open, fourth-place finisher Jordan Brandman was trailing Denise Jane Mansfield by 280 votes. Brandman said he hadn’t been watching the results since Monday because “when you are a candidate and you have put so much forth ... you don’t want to put yourself through torment.”

The election outcome depends “on where the remaining votes came from. I’ve been in the business long enough to know that you can’t count on anything,” said Brandman, who worked as a legislative aide to Tom Umberg when Umberg was an assemblyman.

With some 34,000 votes left to count, more than a few candidates will be staying by their computers for a few more days. Krebs won’t be one of them.

“I had planned on staying on the council for only two years anyway,” he said. “I’m perfectly OK with this, no matter how it turns out.”

*

david.mckibben@latimes.com

Staff writer Jennifer Delson contributed to this report.