ELECTION TORRANCE : City Council Incumbents Win Easily

Three Torrance City Council members easily won reelection Tuesday night in a race nearly lost amid the furor over hydrofluoric acid.

Challenger Donald Pyles, a 35-year-old grocery checker, mustered 6,738 votes, or 14.2% of the ballots cast, to come in a distant fourth, losing to incumbents Bill Applegate, Dee Hardison and Mark Wirth.

The slate of four council candidates was the most sparse in years, particularly in a city where as many as a dozen candidates sometimes vie for public office.

Hardison, an education program coordinator who was running for her second term in office, duplicated her debut performance of four years ago by garnering the most votes citywide, 14,158, or 29.7%.

Final tallies for Applegate and Wirth were separated by only 45 votes, with Applegate receiving 13,345 votes, or 28.1%, while Wirth claimed 13,300 votes, or 28%.

Mayor Katy Geissert, City Clerk John Bramhall and City Treasurer Thomas Rupert, all unopposed, also were returned to office.

Geissert said her next four years in office will be her last because the the mayor is limited to two terms in office. She was first elected to the City Council in 1974.

Wirth, who garnered a solid second place four years ago, said he was perplexed as to why he trailed his council colleagues in this year’s voting. One reason, he said, could be that voters were mistaking him for Councilman Dan Walker, who sponsored the hydrofluoric acid measure but who was not up for reelection this year.

“A lot of people, as we walked precincts, their first reaction was, ‘Oh, you’re the council member whose name starts with a ‘W’ who has this thing on the ballot that I’m going to vote against,’ ” Wirth said. “I had to say, ‘No, that’s the other W.’ . . . There were a lot of people who just were personally upset with the way (the measure) was handled.’