Mary Zendejas Is Elected To LB City Council; How She Won And The Others Lost
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(Nov. 6, 2019, 4:50 a.m.) -- Mary Zendejas became 1st district Councilwoman-elect last night (Nov. 5), with less than a third of the votes cast in an eight-candidate no-runoff special election to fill a vacancy created when Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez was elected to the state State Senate. The figures below are with 100% of precincts reporting including vote by mail ballots received prior to Nov. 5 but subject to provisional ballots and late arriving vote by mail ballots not yet counted.
MARY ZENDEJAS (N) 608 31.28% MARIELA SALGADO (N) 491 25.26%
MISI TAGALOA (N) 367 18.88%
RAY MORQUECHO (N) 151 7.77%
JOE GANEM (N) 123 6.33%
ELLIOT GONZALES (N) 101 5.20%
SHELBYRAE BLACK (N) 56 2.88%
SHIRLEY HULING (N) 47 2.42%
The tally above indicates a ballot-return voter turnout of very roughly 10% (numbers subject to change: 1,944 ballots cast/counted thus far out of the district's roughly 20,000 registered voters.)
When sworn into office in mid-December, Councilwoman Zendejas' term of office will take her through Dec. 20, 2022. Under the Garcia-Doud (Nov. 2018 LB voter approved) Charter Amendment BBB, Councilwoman Zendejas can pursue up to three more four-year terms without facing a write-in requirement.
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Roughly 75% of Ms. Zendejas' votes came from vote-by-mail ballots. Other down-ballot finishers had vote by mail ballot returns as follows: Salgado (67%), Tagaloa (70%), Morquecho (60%) and Ganem (80%)
The Zendejas campaign also benefited from at least $17,000 in "independent" expenditures to support her election using $30,000 in three contributions ($10,000 each) given to the LB Firefighters Ass'n PAC by Mayor Garcia's "2026 Lt. Gov. Committee," State Senator Gonzalez's 2019 Election Committee plus LB Police Officers PAC) reported in detail here. The Firefighters Ass'n PAC reported spending the $17,000 over a period of weeks for items including canvassing and other field work.
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In terms of dollars-spent per votes-received in the Nov. 2019 special elections (numbers that will change as additional ballots are counted and thus presented here for general comparison purposes), the Zendejas campaign spent roughly $161 per vote received (closer to $189 if one includes the $17,000 spent by the LB Firefighters' independent campaign.) The Salgado campaign finished second by spending roughly $54 per vote received.
The Tagaloa campaign finished third after spending roughly $210 per vote received (much of it from Mr. Tagaloa's own money). The Morquecho campaign raised nearly $39,000, spent about $29,455 and finished fourth after pending about $195 per vote received. Fifth place finisher Joe Ganem's campaign spent about $75 per votes received.
And democratic socialist Elliot Gonzales finished 6 out of 8 ballot candidates after spending $3,978 and received 101 votes thus far for about $39 per vote.
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Although Ms. Zendejas carried the endorsements of immediate past Councilmember Gonzalez and Mayor Garcia -- and could then be tied to controversial or unpopular votes cast by Councilwoman Gonzalez that Mayor Garcia supported -- the other challengers chose not to criticize the former incumbent for her record [This runs contrary to the general political rule it's always fair for a candidate challenging an incumbent to criticize the incumbent's record.]
Although the 1st Council district has had the highest number of shootings and homicides among LB's Council districts, for the most part and with a few scattered exceptions, the other candidates didn't make public safety a major theme of their campaigns and didn't criticize Gonzalez or Garcia for failing to restore police officers that the City previously had and no longer has. Since FY17 (and despite the Measure A sales tax increase), the City Council has restored only 22 citywide deployable police officers out of 208 officers erased since FY09 entering FY10. (LB currently has 186 fewer citywide eployable officers than the city previously provided, which includes LBPD's former field anti-gang unit.)
Councilwoman Gonzalez also took the lead (as Mayor Garcia's chosen chair of the Council's "Elections Oversight Committee") to spearhead the 2015 Council action that changed LB law to triple the amounts that the Mayor and Councilmembers can annually amass from contributors to their "officeholder accounts." Two years later, Gonzalez joined in voting to allow the Mayor and Council incumbents to weaponize their "officeholder accounts" to support candidates seeking other elective offices.
Amnesia File
Ms. Zendejas isn't the first LB Councilmember elected with less than a majority of votes cast. A little over ten years ago, Robert Garcia (until mid-2006 a Council office aide to LB Councilman Frank Colonna) moved from the 3rd district into the 1st district when it was clear that its then-incumbent Concilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal would seek Sacramento office and create a Council vacancy. When she did so in 2008, Garcia (backed by much of LB's political and business establishment) announced his candidacy, received roughly $100,000 in contributions and in April 2009 was elected to the 1st district Council seat in a multi-candidate no-runoff race with roughly 40% of the vote.
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