Flores Led Ticket but May Have Lost Own District

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores may have narrowly lost her own council district last week in her unsuccessful bid for statewide office, according to semiofficial election returns.

But the news is not all bad for Flores, who was the Republican candidate for secretary of state.

The three-term councilwoman outpolled all other statewide Republican candidates in the largely Democratic 15th District, which includes Flores’ home of San Pedro as well as Wilmington, Harbor City, Harbor Gateway and Watts. Thus, Flores was able to attract a sizable number of Democratic voters in her first partisan contest. Los Angeles City Council elections are nonpartisan.

And the semiofficial results do not include absentee ballots, which are still being counted and generally favor Republican candidates. County officials said they did not know how many absentee ballots were cast in the 15th District, leaving open the possibility that Flores could ultimately prevail there.

Although registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in the district by a margin of 2.5 to 1, Democrat March Fong Eu, who was first elected secretary of state in 1974, edged Flores by 178 votes among the 31,019 ballots cast, according to the returns. In percentage terms, Eu beat Flores 47.4% to 46.8%, with three third-party candidates picking up the remainder of the vote.

Citywide, Eu collected nearly 59% of the vote, compared to Flores’ 35%, according to the returns. Statewide, Eu’s margin of victory was 52% to 40%.

In a post-election discussion with reporters last week, Flores said that residents of her district were proud of her run for statewide office and that she expected to do well among those voters.

When she learned this week that she may have lost the district to Eu, Flores said she never meant to imply that she would carry the district. Victory, she said, meant doing better than the Democratic edge in registration.

“In a city where so many people vote straight party, I think this kind of showing is wonderful,” said Flores. “It makes me feel good that so many Democrats in my district voted for me. I didn’t expect to win.”

Even one of Flores’ most vocal critics in the district said the odds were against the councilwoman’s doing any better.

“The numbers were against her from the very beginning,” said Jo Ann Wysocki, who ran against Flores in 1989. “I am a registered Republican, but I am also a realist.”