Alarcon’s Lead Over Katz Down to 27 Votes

The tight race for a state Senate seat in the San Fernando Valley grew tighter Friday after election officials counted thousands of outstanding absentee ballots and announced that Councilman Richard Alarcon’s lead of nearly 800 votes over former Assemblyman Richard Katz had shrunk to 27 votes.

Alarcon had 37,695 votes, or 40.91%, compared to Katz with 37,668, or 40.88%, a difference of only .03%.

The new tally came after election officials counted about 80,000 absentee ballots submitted by voters throughout Los Angeles County on election day. Another 20,000 or so remain to be counted, officials say, but most of those are so-called provisional and write-in ballots.

Provisional ballots are those that are submitted by voters whose names do not appear on the rolls but are allowed to vote, pending a verification of their status by election officials. Those ballots are scheduled to be counted Tuesday.

Both camps expressed optimism Friday, each citing their own theories on why the remaining ballots are sure to bolster their side.

“The provisional ballots are extremely similar to the people who showed up to the polls,” said Alarcon from his City Hall office. “Having won on election day, I anticipate we will see the same dynamics and win.”

Katz said his campaign put a great emphasis on absentee voters and suggested it was that effort that helped him close the gap. He said he expects his efforts will also pay off with the remaining absentee and provisional voters.

“We made a very concentrated effort to recognize that the ballot was long and people may want to vote at home,” Katz said from his campaign consultants’ office in downtown Los Angeles. “It has proved critical already.”

Both men said they were extremely nervous waiting for the results of Friday’s tally. But the new results--which were released three hours after election officials had originally scheduled--did little to settle their nerves.

“I’m a lot nervous,” Katz said.

Alarcon chuckled lightly when asked about the narrowing gap, but was reluctant to make predictions. “I’m optimistic, but I don’t want to be arrogant,” he said.

Marcia Ventura, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder, said her office counted as many absentee ballots as it could Friday but was not finished by late afternoon.

Katz’s campaign staff, who looked over the shoulders of election workers during the counting process, estimated that about 600 absentee ballots from the 20th state Senate District remained, along with about another 700 provisional ballots.

Ventura said she could not confirm those numbers.

Katz said he would consider calling for a recount if the final tally has him down by 20 or 30 votes. If a losing candidate requests a recount, his campaign must pay the costs. If as a result, the candidate is declared the winner, the costs are reimbursed.

The winner faces Republican Ollie McCaulley and Libertarian Linda Starr in November. But the district is heavily Democratic, giving the Democratic candidate a huge advantage.

If Alarcon wins, he will have to vacate his council seat with two years left in his second four-year term. Council President John Ferraro would then have to call for a special election to pick a candidate to complete Alarcon’s term, or Ferraro can appoint a temporary caretaker for the district until the term is completed.

Both Katz and Alarcon had predicted that the election results would be close but neither had anticipated the victory would be decided by absentee ballots.

Alarcon’s campaign attributes his success to an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort that involved a 130-member phone bank and about 800 volunteers, some of whom knocked on doors on election day, urging voters to go to the polls.

Katz’s camp, meanwhile, tried to reach out to absentee voters by identifying them early in the campaign and mailing them a form to request an absentee ballot. The form included campaign literature about Katz. The campaign also called the absentee voters before election day to make sure that they had sent in the ballot.

Katz is a 16-year veteran of the state Assembly and former party majority leader who has campaigned primarily on his experience.

Alarcon is a second-term councilman who was born and raised in the northeast Valley. He has touted his community ties and has sought to appeal to Latino voters in the northeast Valley.

In fact, election returns from the district show that Alarcon’s base of support was in the heavily Latino northeast Valley.

The 20th state Senate District is made up of the 39th Assembly District, which is primarily in the northeast Valley, and the 40th Assembly District, which is in the heavily Jewish West Valley.

In the 39th Assembly District, Alarcon had a 64% to 36% lead over Katz among Democratic voters. In the 40th Assembly district, Katz had a 60% to 40% advantage among Democrats.

In the final days of the hard-fought race, Alarcon’s campaign was buoyed by a huge infusion of cash from state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who contributed $181,500 to Alarcon through a political action committee.

Polanco also dispatched hundreds of campaign mailers to voters, criticizing Katz and tying him to Gov. Pete Wilson and an Orange County incident in which guards were stationed outside polls to scare immigrants away. In fact, Katz was one of the loudest critics of Wilson’s anti-immigrant policies at the time of the incident.

Katz also received several large campaign contributions in the final days, most notably from police and school employee unions and from medical workers.

But in the end, the two camps had raised nearly the same amount, about $750,000 each, making it one of the state’s most expensive legislative races.

As voters were casting their ballots Tuesday, Alarcon was fending off criticism from Cardinal Roger Mahony, who protested a last-minute Alarcon campaign mailer that included a photo of Alarcon taking communion from Mahony in a church.

Mahony asked Alarcon to stop using the mailer, saying, “I cannot allow my photograph to be used for such blatant political purposes.”

Alarcon promised to apologize to Mahony, saying he should have asked the cardinal’s permission before sending the mailer out. A spokesman for Mahony said Alarcon attempted to reach the cardinal on Thursday, but Mahony was out of town.

The cardinal’s staff said it was the first time in memory that a politician had used Mahony’s photo without his permission for political purposes.