2 Close Races May Spur Recounts

Inglewood on Thursday tallied the final ballots from last week’s controversial elections, but candidates in two of the three close races said they would ask for a recount and possibly go to court to overturn the results.

According to the final, as yet uncertified, returns, Eloy Morales Jr., a field deputy to Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood), won the City Council District 3 seat over attorney and Lennox School Board President Trini Jimenez by 44 votes. Morales received 613 votes, or 51.8%.

In the three-way council District 4 race, community activist Mike Stevens and labor leader Ralph Franklin edged out Councilwoman Lorraine Johnson; barring a successful challenge to the results, Stevens and Franklin will meet in a runoff June 3. Stevens received 566 votes, or 34.2%; Franklin got 546, or 33%; and Johnson 540, or 32.6%.

And in the five-way race for Seat 4 on the Inglewood Unified School District Board of Education, community activist and perennial candidate Mildred McNair collected 1,001 votes, or 15.3%, to win a spot on the runoff ballot against Los Angeles school district administrator Willie F. Crittendon. With 2,911 votes, or 44.6%, he finished well ahead of the pack but did not get the majority needed to win election outright last week.

Thursday’s count was conducted in public under the watchful eyes of two representatives of Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. Also watching were a handful of candidates and others who had complained they could not get a fair election because City Clerk Yvonne Horton’s husband, Jerome Horton, was backing her as well as candidates in other races. The atmosphere was tense and argumentative. Toward the end of the three-hour process, four police officers were summoned to help keep order.

Horton said she elected to do the final tally with the city’s outside elections consultant and with state overseers, who also monitored last week’s elections, “to make the process as open as possible.”

Both Jimenez and Johnson said they would seek a recount and have hired attorneys for a possible court challenge to what they and others have described as irregularities in the balloting. School board candidate Mary Bueno, an attorney who trailed McNair by eight votes, said Thursday she had not yet decided whether to seek a recount, while paralegal Monique Gonzaque, who finished five votes behind McNair, could not be reached for comment.

Complaints about the election concerned polling places that did not open on time or were moved, large numbers of ballots reportedly left blank on the school board portion and accusations that supporters or some candidates had improperly contacted voters at the polls.

“Each thing on its own is maybe not such a big deal, but, when taken together, they can add up enough to tip the scale,” Bueno said. “That is what is so frustrating.”