Alarcon Victory Confirmed in 7th District

Former mayoral aide Richard Alarcon was confirmed Wednesday as the winner of last week’s Los Angeles City Council race in the northeast San Fernando Valley, as election officials said a final vote count slightly widened his slender initial victory margin over ex-city Fire Capt. Lyle Hall.

After tabulating more than 900 ballots not counted on Election Day, city election chief Kristin Heffron telephoned Alarcon at his Mission Hills home to say he had beaten Hall by 234 votes out of nearly 19,000 cast.

In the preliminary count last week, Alarcon led by just 164 votes.

The new count reaffirmed Alarcon, 39, as the first Latino elected to the council from the Valley. He succeeds Councilman Ernani Bernardi, 81, who is retiring from his 7th District seat after 32 years on the council.

Formerly Mayor Tom Bradley’s top Valley aide, Alarcon mounted a hard-edged campaign in which he tried to portray Hall, 53, as a captive of unions, lobbyists and other special interests at City Hall. A longtime 7th District resident, Alarcon touted himself as a home-grown, grass-roots champion better attuned to constituents’ concerns.

Alarcon and Hall endured an anxious week as election officials verified and counted 621 absentee ballots that arrived in the mail too late to be counted Election Day as well as about 300 “provisional” ballots, including those cast in person by voters who had lost absentee forms or whose names were not on voter lists at polling places.

Hall, who also lost a 1989 race to Bernardi, refused to concede to Alarcon until the uncounted votes were added up. But Wednesday, his campaign manager, Bob Stiens, said: “The fat lady has sung . . . and she’s left the stage.”

Alarcon celebrated Wednesday’s news with a victory lunch with his wife, Corina, and campaign staffers at a North Hollywood restaurant. He later returned to his Sun Valley campaign headquarters, where he fielded questions and continued preparations to take office.

“There’s a certain sense of relief,” he said. “We felt confident that the later the (absentee) votes came in, the more they leaned toward us. And that’s how it panned out.”

Despite the uncounted ballots, Alarcon has been wasting little time in getting ready to assume office.

On Monday, he attended a City Hall orientation session, being briefed by department heads and picking up the council rules book, a City Hall phone directory and an information packet on city ethics laws.

He also made courtesy calls on other council members, introducing himself and asking about what issues will confront him when he officially takes office July 1. He has hired no permanent staffers as yet, he said, and is still accepting resumes.

Like other council members, Alarcon has an office budget of $640,000 per year, which includes his own salary of $90,000. Alarcon said he hopes to hire 12 to 18 full-time aides and use remaining funds to hire consultants to help with various projects on an as-needed basis.

Although four City Council offices will be vacant due to electoral defeats and retirement, Alarcon has not requested any particular office.

“I’ve been in all the offices and I don’t think there really is any bad office. That’s frankly not a priority to me,” he said.

Alarcon, who campaigned on securing the district’s “fair share” of city services, has said that one of his first projects will be to establish a citizens’ advisory group targeting crime and joblessness in the largely Latino enclave.

Hall said he was not surprised at the results of the final tally.

“In one way it’s good to have closure, to have things decided even though they weren’t decided in the manner that I would have liked,” he said.

Hall spent part of the day shutting down his Sun Valley campaign office and said he is undecided about what he will do now or whether he’ll run for office again.

“I still want to make things better,” he said. “Certainly, the political process is one of the ways to do that.”

Both Alarcon and Hall said they plan to take short trips with their wives to decompress from the campaign.