Garcetti Lead in D.A. Race Seen as Insurmountable

Veteran Los Angeles political observers agreed Wednesday that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti has almost surely emerged victorious in his hard-fought race for reelection against challenger John Lynch.

They said Lynch would have to win an extraordinarily high percentage of the ballots yet to be counted in order to defeat the incumbent.

Garcetti holds a 4,347-vote lead over his challenger with between 20,000 and 25,000 provisional ballots and fewer than 1,000 absentee ballots remaining to be counted today. “I think this race is over,” said campaign consultant Harvey Englander. “The numbers just aren’t there for [Lynch] to be able to pull it off. It’s not going to happen. I think Garcetti has been reelected.”

Although the Associated Press called Garcetti the winner Wednesday, Garcetti’s campaign manager would not declare victory and Lynch’s campaign consultant would not concede. Neither of the candidates had any comment.

“It looks like Gil is in pretty good shape,” Garcetti campaign manager Bill Carrick said. “We’ve waited 16 days, we can wait 17. We’re getting pretty close to the bottom of the barrel.”

Lynch campaign manager Rick Taylor said he is uncertain about the precise number of ballots to be counted. “That’s my hesitation in speculating on the math.”

But most political observers came to only one conclusion: In all likelihood Garcetti will win a second term when the next round of ballots are counted today and the election is certified Tuesday.

“If you look at the pattern of the vote count and you look at the provisional ballots and you look at the percentages, the odds are stacked very strongly against Lynch at this point,” said political commentator Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. “It’s very difficult to overtake someone when the margin is increasing.”

Indeed, Garcetti’s lead over Lynch has been growing as the remaining ballots have been counted in recent days. It increased by 901 votes Tuesday and now is at its highest point since the preliminary results the morning after the Nov. 5 election. Lynch closed the gap to 3,165 votes at one point before Garcetti started pulling away.

“Going up is better than going down,” Carrick said.

Veteran campaign consultant Joe Cerrell said that everyone he has talked to believes Garcetti has won four more years as the county’s top prosecutor. “I just think the numbers [of remaining ballots] have been whittled too low.”

But Cerrell, like Jeffe, recalled that old proverb of politics: “Never say never.”

“Should Gil pop the champagne? No,” Cerrell said, “because he doesn’t want it to look foolish.”