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Marina Torres Drops to Third Place in City Attorney Race
McGurk Is a Close Third in Race for Superior Court Open Seat
By a MetNews Staff Writer
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MARINA TORRES Civil practitioner |
Civil practitioner Marina Torres who, on election night, appeared to be the top-vote-getter in the race for Los Angeles city attorney, has dropped to third place in the latest update, as mailed ballots continue to be counted, and which candidates will be in a run-off for a judicial seat remains in doubt.
Faisal M. Gill, a civil right attorney, is now in first place, with 24.23 percent of the vote, according to a tally released late Tuesday, and private practitioner Hydee Feldstein Soto has assumed second place, with 19.92 percent of the ballots.
Torres, a former assistant U.S. attorney—who campaigned as a “Federal Corruption Prosecution”—is now in third place, with 19.85 percent of the vote. Behind her are Deputy City Attorney Richard Kim, 16.50 percent; former Board of Public Works President Kevin James, 9.08 percent; former Deputy City Attorney Sherri Onica Valle Cole, 5.36 percent; and bankruptcy lawyer Teddy M. Kapur, 5.06 percent.
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KEVIN McGURK deputy public defender |
McGurk in Contention
There is a close contest for one of the nine Los Angeles Superior Court seats that were on the June 7 ballot. Although Deputy Public Defender Kevin Thomas McGurk remains in third place in the race for Office No. 90, an open seat, he is not out of the running.
The tally is now Deputy District Attorney Melissa Lyons, 35.29 percent; Deputy District Attorney Leslie Gutierrez, 27.76 percent; McGurk, 27.58 percent; attorney Naser (Nas) Khoury, 9.37 percent.
Ballots postmarked by June 7 and received by June 14 are included in the count. Certification of the results is expected to occur on July 1.
Further Updates
Counted so far are 1,613,910 ballots, representing 28.36 percent of the registered voters Since election night, 43,533 ballots have been processed. A further update is slated for tomorrow, and another for Tuesday.
The races for Los Angeles city attorney and Superior Court Office No. 90 are close enough that Torres and McGurk could emerge as a candidate in the Nov. 8 general election.
With the upsurge in voting by mail, occasioned by the pandemic, and the consequent submission of ballots by voters at widely varying times, there is no clear time when slate mailers should arrive to be effective, and their efficacy has waned, and skillful use of social media has proved valuable.
Too, there is a resurgence of influence of Los Angeles Times endorsements.
Each judicial candidate endorsed by that newspaper has wound up in first place or second; Soto was endorsed by that newspaper, as was mayoral front-runner Karen Bass, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the front-runner for city controller, accountant Kenneth Mejia.
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