Long Night of Ups, Downs for Valley Rivals

When the numbers came in at 11:49 p.m., Richard Katz finally stopped pacing, leaned comfortably against a table, and told the story about the picture of the race car.

The votes were still trickling in, but the latest update showed the hard-charging former assemblyman 10 percentage points ahead of his challenger, City Councilman Richard Alarcon, in what was supposed to be the tightest race in the Valley this year.

The portrait-sized picture on the wall of his North Hollywood campaign headquarters showed Katz hunkered down in an Indy-style race car. It was taken, he said, during a camp for wannabe race car drivers at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey.

Another type of race. Same type of thrill.

“You know, it’s a dream, like any other,” Katz joked.

Then, suddenly, at 12:49 a.m., a dead quiet settled over the room. The latest numbers were in. Alarcon had narrowed the lead in the race for the 20th state Senate seat to a single percentage point--826 votes. The air seemed to rush out of the room.

Katz was in the race of his life.

“Close,” he muttered under his breath as he swept out of the nerve center of the headquarters, where consultants huddled over results from the county’s registrar/recorder’s office.

“It’s gonna be a long night,” a supporter groaned.

*

At Alarcon’s Van Nuys headquarters, campaign workers also welcomed the early losing trend. His strategy was working.

Alarcon’s campaign relied on a single key strategy: getting people out to vote in the 39th Assembly District, which makes up half the 20th state Senate District. The other half is made up of the 40th Assembly District.

Voters in the 39th district, a 40% Latino area, seldom turn out in droves for primaries. Alarcon’s idea was simple: win the votes in that district and he could win the election. To do that, he decided to mount a massive effort to get the working class voters in the district out to the polls late in the day.

Nearly a thousand volunteers worked ceaselessly through the day Tuesday. They motored through neighborhoods with bullhorns. They rang doorbells. They drove voters to the polls.

When the polls closed, Alarcon headed home for a shave before joining a jammed gathering at La Sirenita restaurant in Van Nuys, a Mexican seafood restaurant.

There, barely enough standing room accommodated the Alarcon crowd. Hundreds of campaign workers in Alarcon T-shirts, many of them teenagers, lined up for dinner as the restaurant’s owner rushed to keep the serving trays full.

Alarcon was greeted with cheers when he arrived at about 10 p.m. with his wife, Corina.

The polls showed a 53% to 36% disadvantage. Alarcon was unfazed. Arms folded, he watched the unfavorable returns trickle in.

“We expect this. We anticipated it,” he said repeatedly in his characteristically soft voice.

Then, at 1 a.m., everything changed.

Someone on a cellular phone to the secretary of state’s office yelled out that only 800 votes separated Alarcon from his opponent, and cheers erupted.

It was coming out exactly as they had planned, with last-minute votes at the polls turning the race.

By 1:17 a.m., Katz was only ahead by 267 votes.

Then it all changed again.

*

As the night dragged on, the temperature grew colder and colder at Katz headquarters, a narrow, rundown storefront off Victory Boulevard, squeezed between a manicure shop--”full set: $17.99”--and a discount clothes store--”Levis - 24.99!” More and more supporters, filled with turkey sandwiches or plastic cups of Inglenook, crept off to bed.

One who stayed was Joel Rubin, an attorney from Santa Rosa who has been friends with Katz since their days as student politicians at San Diego State University.

For each of Katz’s elections since 1980, Rubin has made the seven-hour drive from Northern California to Los Angeles to be with his old friend on election night. Eventually, the ritual became superstition. This year was no different.

“The only year he lost was when I didn’t drive down,” said Rubin, referring to Katz’s fourth-place finish in the 1993 Los Angeles mayoral race. “He asked me to come down this year.”

At 2:13 a.m., it looked as if Rubin’s charm had worked again. The latest results from the registrar’s office showed a sudden jump for Katz. With 94% of the precincts reporting, Katz shot ahead by 1,185 votes and 1 1/2 percentage points--his biggest lead since midnight, a time that seemed to supporters a lifetime ago.

But veteran campaign consultant Harvey Englander had spent the night camped in front of a Packard Bell computer tuned to the registrar’s Web site. Every time new results were announced, he scribbled furiously on a clipboard, straining to find answers in the numbers like an astronomer reading some inscrutable table of planetary calculations.

This pattern, he didn’t like. The jump came because most of the votes came from the precincts in the 40th Assembly District, the other half of the senate district whose higher-income and lower Latino demographics favored Katz.

That meant the last few precincts might go to Alarcon, and that could swing the entire election.

“Based on the ethnic dynamics and our polls, we knew where the strong support would be,” said Howard Gantman, Katz’s campaign spokesman.

Gantman began whipping out his phone and calling the registrar’s office every three to four minutes to find out whether new numbers had come in. “Any more numbers for the 20th?” he asked over and over.

“It’s scary, the way it’s been going,” he said.

*

In contrast to the Katz headquarters, where the supporters were monitoring results as closely as stock brokers watch the Dow, the celebrants at La Sirenita seemed more intent on their giant shrimp cocktails and strawberry margaritas than with the results popping up on televisions no one could hear.

But after the initial rush of hope, Alarcon supporters got the news that he had slipped as the results came in from the 40th district. Although most of the remaining uncounted precincts were in the 39th district bastion of his strength, the race was still too close to call.

Alarcon’s nervousness finally started showing. Campaign workers were frantically calculating how many votes he would need from the still-uncounted polls to win.

When someone handed him a yellow legal pad scrawled with calculations showing him ahead, he was heard to ask dubiously: “Where are you getting this? Where are these numbers from?”

But by 3 a.m., the calculations proved correct.

Alarcon was 200 votes ahead. “Screaming and cheering” followed, Castro said. Alarcon exchanged high fives with supporters. The next count showed him 400 ahead.

Alarcon had been encouraged by reports of long lines at polling places just before 8 p.m. Now he knew his efforts were paying off.

“This was not an impromptu strategy,” he said later. “We knew it would boil down to the final hours of the campaign.”

*

Back at Katz headquarters, the mood grew increasingly tense. At about 2:30 a.m., workers at the registrar’s office told Katz supporters that they would no longer give results over the phone since many vote counters were heading home.

“If they go home and we win, the [county] better never expect a bailout [from Sacramento] again,” Katz growled.

One of Katz’s campaign workers called county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who had cruised to his own victory in the primary. Yaroslavsky called back at 3:05 a.m. with the last, worst news:

After a long night of barely staying ahead of Alarcon, the last result showed Katz behind by about 400 votes.

By 3:08 a.m., 311 of 311 precincts were reporting. Katz was down by 791 votes. The headquarters, filled with a dozen supporters with crossed arms and grim looks, took on the air of a morgue.

The only hope: There were still an unknown number of absentee ballots to be counted. Those could conceivably tip the balance. Then, Katz workers heard that the registrar had finished counting those ballots--a report that later proved wrong. Defeat seemed inevitable.

“There’s still a scenario where [absentee ballots could make up the difference], but it’s a long shot,” one supporter moaned.

“We can’t make it up,” another said.

Katz himself wasn’t talking. The dogged competitor was not about to concede defeat. He hugged his campaign manager, a few friends, then walked out the front door.

“Let’s go home,” he said at 3:20 a.m.

*

When Alarcon arrived at City Council chambers late Wednesday morning, he found his desk adorned with balloons.

Although still reluctant to declare an official victory, he happily waved in response to his colleagues’ applause.

“They declared the winner,” said Alarcon, referring to a prominent headline and news story in the Daily News of Los Angeles declaring Katz the victor. “But I never did. I was always confident of our plan. I am surprised that [everyone else] is so astonished.”

Outside the chamber, City Council photographer Ron Butcher thrust a newspaper into his hands.

Alarcon held it above his head for a photo--”You know,” Butcher urged, “like Truman--with Dewey.”

Looking bashful, Alarcon obliged.

But Katz and his supporters weren’t so quick to dismiss the headline.

By early Wednesday, they had done some more math. And the chances of achieving victory through absentee ballots now seemed possible, especially since they learned that many absentees remained uncounted. Those ballots will not be counted until today, according to the registrar’s office.

In the cold light of dawn, the 791-vote margin seemed much slimmer.

“The door isn’t closed on this thing,” Gantman said, “Right now it’s anybody’s guess.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Long Night

An elated Richard Katz took the early lead in the state Senate race, but as the hours wore on, Richard Alarcon slowly closed the gap and then finally surged ahead by less than 800 votes.

8 p.m.

Katz: 3,203

Alarcon: 5,679

11 p.m.

Katz: 4,216

Alarcon: 6,803

12 a.m.

Katz: 12,567

Alarcon: 15,931

1 a.m.

Katz: 30,728

Alarcon: 30,995

2 a.m.

Katz: 32,397

Alarcon: 33,582

3 a.m.

Katz: 35,080

Alarcon: 35,871