Pringle, Other Candidates Hold Leads in Final Tally

At the end of a weeklong tally of absentee ballots cast in the Nov. 8 election, Republican Curt Pringle was awarded an 867-vote margin of victory Wednesday over Democrat Christian F. (Rick) Thierbach in the 72nd Assembly District.

The long count had been watched closely by candidates in tight races. But when the final totals were released by the county registrar of voters, the outcomes reported the day after the election did not change.

When all the absentee ballots were figured in, Pringle finished with 33,849 votes to Thierbach’s 32,982. Total spending in the race to succeed the late Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana) topped $2.1 million.

But Pringle’s victory remains clouded by controversy over the county Republican Party’s decision to station uniformed security guards at 20 Santa Ana precincts with heavily Latino populations--a decision sharply criticized even by state GOP Chairman Bob Naylor.

Democrats and Latino leaders, charging that the guards intimidated Latino voters, announced Monday that they plan to sue to overturn the election results. The suit is expected to be filed this week in federal court. County GOP Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes has said the guards were hired as poll watchers to ensure against voter fraud.

At one point during the long absentee count, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), who helped Thierbach with his campaign, said: “We just want this election to go away. We’re now referring to this as the election that won’t die.”

The county’s absentee ballots themselves became the subject of controversy when it was found that about 38,000 of them had been left in an unsecured warehouse over the weekend at the registrar’s office in Santa Ana. The incident is being reviewed by the secretary of state’s office. The chief of elections in the secretary of state’s office said this week that the security measures taken to protect the ballots were deficient.

In all, a record 80,198 absentee ballots were cast in the county, about half of which were received in time to be verified and counted on election night.

Most of the past week was taken up with verification of signatures on the remaining ballots, which were to be counted by a computer Tuesday. But the count took longer than expected and finally was finished about 1 p.m. Wednesday, Registrar of Voters Donald F. Tanney said.

“We got more (absentee ballots) in on Election Day than we ever have,” Tanney said. “I went particularly carefully with these.”

Tanney said the count was complicated by the length of the ballot. County residents punched from four to six computer cards each to vote.

Among the candidates who could have been affected by the absentee count was staunch development proponent Don MacAllister. He placed third in the voting for the Huntington Beach City Council, where three seats were open. Geri Ortega, an avid slow-growth proponent who co-wrote a slow-growth measure known as Measure J on the city’s ballot, finished only 213 votes behind MacAllister.

The apparent top vote-getter, according to the final returns, was Jim Silva, a Huntington Beach planning commissioner and real estate investor. Incumbent Peter Green, a Golden West College zoology and ecology professor who is also an environmentalist, was reelected.

In other close races:

- The slow-growth issue in Costa Mesa, on the ballot as Measure G, won by 173 votes, 34 more than before the absentee votes were counted. The total vote was: Yes, 15,730, and No, 15,557.

- In Tustin, City Council candidate Ronald B. Hoesterey increased his margin of victory by 13 votes over the candidate with the next highest number, Charles E. Puckett. They were the third- and fourth-place finishers, with three seats open.

- Keith A. Nelson maintained his edge in the La Palma City Council race over fourth-place finisher Tom Wright. Only 33 votes separated the two men before the last batch of absentee ballots was counted. In the final tally, Nelson had a 39-vote margin. Three seats were open.

- In the Santa Ana Mountains County Water District, Gunther (Manny) Bauer gained 10 votes in the post-election absentee count over third-place vote-getter Bob Bess. When all the absentee votes were tallied, only 37 votes divided the two candidates. Two seats were open.