Harman, Horn Widen Leads in Vote Update

Tabulations of the first wave of uncounted ballots in two area races for the U.S. House of Representatives slightly widened the victors’ margins Friday, election officials said.

In the South Bay’s 36th District, Democrat Jane Harman picked up 2,129 votes, while Rep. Steven T. Kuykendall (R-Rancho Palos Verdes) got 2,042. Friday’s update put the total vote to date at 109,104, or 48.4%, for Harman and 105,184, or 46.7%, for Kuykendall.

In the neighboring 38th District, Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) added 1,576, bringing his total so far to 83,022, or 48.5%. Nurse practitioner and attorney Gerrie Schipske, his Democratic challenger, got 1,317 more votes, giving her a total of 81,147, or 47.4%.

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office said it will issue its next update Tuesday, and hopes to have final tallies within a week to 10 days.

Several political experts said privately Friday it is unlikely that the continuing ballot count will change the outcome in either race, particularly in the 36th District, where first-termer Kuykendall would need to get more than 60% of the remaining ballots to overtake Harman. She held the Venice-to-San Pedro seat for three terms before giving it up to run for governor in 1998.

But neither Kuykendall nor Schipske is ready to concede.

Schipske, in fact, said she hopes the remaining ballots will carry her to victory. She expects them to be mainly from supporters who got absentee ballots but delivered them to polling places on election day instead of mailing them.

The Schipske campaign, with a big assist from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, conducted a substantial get-out-vote drive in the district, which also includes the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Downey, Lakewood and Bellflower.

Countywide, about 110,000 absentee ballots and an estimated 115,000 provisional ballots were not counted on election night, elections officials said.

Observers estimated Friday that there were probably as many as 15,000 uncounted ballots in the two congressional districts.