No matter who wins tonight, Huntington Beach will have a new city council majority.
Here are the results, according to the 10:30 p.m. results from the Orange County Registrar of Voters.
- Candidates Pat Burns, Tony Strickland, Gracey Van Der Mark, and Casey McKeon were leading the pack, with a combined 44% of the 130,000 opening votes for the council’s four open seats.
- Not too far behind them was Gina Clayton-Tarvin, just over 1100 votes behind McKeon. Kenneth Inouye is right behind her.
- Micahel Gates was leading Scott Field in the race for city attorney, setting up a potential third term for Orange County’s only elected city attorney.
Regardless of the final vote, Huntington Beach is guaranteed four new council members.
Council members Mike Posey, Barbara Delglaize and Erik Peterson were termed out of office, and Councilwoman Kim Carr is running for state senate, making her ineligible to run for her council seat.
There’s been a big push by Republicans this year to take back a majority on the city council, with many pointing out that while Republicans have an 8% lead in voter registration they lack a sitting majority.
In order to win a majority, Republicans would have to win all four seats on the ballot.
Democrats have also been pushing hard to get their chosen candidates elected in the county’s fourth largest city, netting five of the seven seats over the last term when they appointed Rhonda Bolton to replace Councilman Tito Ortiz after his resignation.
[Read: Rhonda Bolton Appointed to Huntington Beach City Council, Becoming First Black Woman on Dais]
The city is also hosting the lone race in Orange County for city attorney, where incumbent Michael Gates is beating challenger Scott Field by 16%, who used to work for him and sued Gates for age discrimination.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a Groundtruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.