By Brooklynn Wong and David N. Young
The votes are largely tallied, and Event-News Enterprise readership area voters made their voices heard. Though candidates are waiting for final certification, here are the results thus far.
In Los Alamitos, newcomer Mark Chirco, who was appointed to fulfill an unexpired term, seems to have convincingly won the seat in his own rite, finishing first among all contenders with 1504 votes, or 20.6% of the vote.
Incumbents Shelley Hasselbrink and Warren Kusumoto were both re-elected to the Council with 1498 (20.5%) and 1298 votes (17.8%) respectively. Former Councilmember Dean Grose will apparently fill the final vacant seat with 1,263 votes or 17.3%.
Tanya Doby polled 991 votes and Gisele “Gigi” Finch got 741 votes.
Six candidates in Cypress were running for three vacant seats, and all incumbents were reelected. Mayor Jon Peat (with 22.4% of the vote), Mayor Pro Tem Stacy Berry (20.7%) and Councilman and former Mayor Paulo Morales will all return to Council for the time being. The next closest contender was Frances Marquez, who had 14.7% of the vote, behind Morales’ 18.8%.
Cypress’ Measure M, which would have rezoned Cypress School District land and brought some improvements to the District Office, was very much up in the air, with no strong indication of whether residents were in favor or not. But it was defeated somewhat handily, with a 58.8% no vote.
In La Palma, there were two City Council seats available. Incumbent Michele Steggell won one of them, garnering the greatest percentage of votes at 38.9%. And Nitesh Patel, who has a background that includes nonprofit work, tech company work and real estate, won the second seat with 35.1% of the vote. On his Facebook page, Patel said, “This victory belongs to everyone that supported me and helped me to get elected. I am humbled and honored and I look forward to serving the citizens of La Palma.”
In other races of note, Democratic Congressman Alan Lowenthal won re-election, escaping a challenge from Republican John Briscoe, 28,433 (51.9%) to 27,232 (48.9%).
In the race to fill two vacant seats on the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board, Marlys Davidson apparently broke up the Barke-team, as she was the top vote getter with 7,231, or 26.2% and Diana D. Hill will apparently return to the board with 6,881 votes, or 24.9% of the vote.
Although she ran as a team with Board President Jeffrey I. Barke, Barke unofficially finished in third place with 6,855 votes, or 24.8% of the vote. Olaina Anderson finished a strong fourth with 4,788 votes, or 17.3% and Connor Swan Smith received 1,870 votes or 6.8%.
Republican State Sen. Janet Nguyen won re-election, besting Democratic challenger Tom Umberg 84,508 (53.5%) to 73,499 (46.5%) while Democratic State Assemby member Sharon Quirk-Silva beat back a challenge from her Republican opponent, Alexandria “Alex” Coronado, 48,214 (54.1%) to 40,856 (45.9%).
