Ex-Mayor Regains Post by Margin of 10 Votes
Five years after losing her seat as mayor of Baldwin Park to the youthful Fidel Vargas, City Councilwoman Bette Lowes has regained the top job by a margin of 10 votes over Mary Lopez Ferrer, the chosen successor of the outgoing Generation X mayor.
Lowes garnered 1,545 votes against 1,535 votes for Ferrer with all the provisional ballots counted from last Tuesday’s election, city officials said.
In third place in the mayor’s race was Marina Montenegro with 1,024 votes and bringing up the back of the field was Steve Cervantes with 299 votes, the city clerk said.
“It was 10 votes and that’s stressful when they are counting,” Lowes said Monday.
The City Council will make the result official and any candidate wishing to challenge the result will be able to ask for a recount at their expense, City Clerk Linda Gair said.
“Ten voters in a computer count is a wide margin in 14 consolidated precincts,” Gair said.
Vargas, who beat Lowes in 1992 at the age of 23, announced last year that he would return to his alma mater, Harvard University, for graduate school rather than seek another term.
In last week’s election, a slate of mostly political newcomers he endorsed for various elected offices went down in defeat.
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