Primary Results to Be in Air for Weeks

It’s nail-biting time for candidates Guy C. Kimbrough and James Cavuoto: Election officials Thursday began counting the absentee ballots that will decide who will win the Democratic primary in the 42nd Congressional District.

But the results won’t be known for a couple of weeks.

“This is terrible,” Cavuoto said Thursday. “My hope is to get at least an indication of how these votes are going to swing by tomorrow.”

Kimbrough and Cavuoto emerged from Tuesday’s primary just 14 votes apart with more than 38,000 ballots tallied. Bryan W. Stevens, the third candidate, trailed the leader, Kimbrough, by 1,204 votes in the race for the right to challenge U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) in November.

That brings the contest down to an unknown number of uncounted absentee ballots received on Election Day.

Since the largely coastal 42nd Congressional District stretches from Torrance to Huntington Beach, some ballots in the district are counted in Los Angeles County and others are tallied in Orange County. The results of the 42nd District’s down-to-the-wire primary won’t be known until both counties complete their work.

The Orange County registrar of voters office plans to have an unofficial count of late-arriving absentee ballots by late this afternoon. But Los Angeles County’s tally will be part of a detailed canvass lasting more than two weeks, said Marcia Ventura of the county registrar-recorder’s office.

“They’re just getting under way today, and we’re hoping to get it done by the week of the 25th (of June),” Ventura said Thursday. Ventura added that beginning on Monday, the vote totals of primary candidates will be updated as the canvass progresses.

Election officials in Orange and Los Angeles counties said they do not know exactly how many late-arriving absentee ballots are at stake--much less how many of them were cast by 42nd Congressional District voters.

With little left to do but contemplate the hair-thin margin separating them, Cavuoto, a computer industry publisher from Torrance, and Kimbrough, a political science instructor from Huntington Beach, are busy debating who will wind up as the Democratic nominee.

Kimbrough, who cast himself in the campaign as more conservative than Cavuoto, said he is optimistic because studies show that absentee voters are more conservative than other voters. He also pointed out that his campaign sent mail to people who had requested absentee ballots, whereas Cavuoto’s did not.

The result, Kimbrough said, was evident in the roughly 2,800 absentee ballots counted before primary day: Kimbrough captured more than twice as many as Cavuoto.

“I believe the final tally will probably confirm my win,” Kimbrough said Thursday.

Cavuoto disagrees. Unlike absentees who sent off their ballots well before Election Day, he said, many late absentees may have received his campaign literature before voting.

Cavuoto said his mail would also have reached the unknown number of voters who turned in their absentee ballots at the polls.

“I’m convinced (they voted) differently from the early absentee voters,” Cavuoto said. If they did not, and the margin separating him from Kimbrough remains slim, Cavuoto indicated he will request a recount.

“If it’s just a handful of votes, I think I owe it to my campaign workers to find out if the totals were right,” Cavuoto said.