Long Beach races continue to tighten as Los Angeles County election officials finish counting ballots from the June 7 primary, with three City Council seats now within a 1% margin of going to a November runoff.
The closest race remains in the 1st District that represents Downtown Long Beach. Incumbent Councilmember Mary Zendejas (50.5%) still has a commanding lead over Mariela Salgado (29%), but is avoiding a runoff by about 50 votes.
The county said it has about 74,000 ballots left to process and expects to release its next update Tuesday afternoon.
The race in the 5th and 9th council districts also have candidates inching toward the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff with their closest challengers.
LBUSD board member Megan Kerr (49%) is leading Ian Patton (31%) in the new 5th District that includes parts of East Long Beach and Virginia Country Club, California Heights and Bixby Knolls.
Joni Ricks-Oddie (49%), an educator and city commissioner, is leading Ginny Gonzalez (23%) in the 9th District. Ricks-Oddie likely could have a larger lead but another candidate, Gus Orozco, who endorsed Ricks-Oddie, dropped out of the race after he was already on the ballot.
The mayoral race and the race for the 3rd District City Council seat still appear to be headed to a November runoff.
Councilmember Rex Richardson (44%) extended his lead over Councilmember Suzie Price (37%) by about three percentage points since the last update from the count released on Tuesday.
The 3rd District race had the most candidates of any council race and Kristina Duggan, a former aid to Price, remains the top vote-getter (22%) but the second-place candidate flipped with Friday’s update. Kailee Caruso (20%) is now in second and would go to the runoff. Nima Novin (20%), who had been in second, is now 22 votes behind Caruso.
All races that don’t have a candidate get over 50% of the vote will go to a runoff on Nov. 8.
Races for city auditor, city prosecutor, city attorney and the 7th District City Council all have already been decided.
Editors note: The original version of this story said the county had over 300,000 ballots left to process, that was actually the number of ballots included in Friday’s update. The county has about 74,000 left to process.