L.A. MAYOR 2013: Garcetti Beats Greuel 54-46!

As I predicted yesterday, Eric Garcetti will be the next Mayor of Los Angeles. He beat Wendy Greuel by a surprising 8 points, 54% to 46%, in a hard-fought, expensive campaign whose outcome was not known until after 3am local time! In fact, despite polls showing Garcetti ahead, when all the vote-by-mail ballots were counted, Greuel led 50.9% to 48.1% but turnout went up from the primary to the general election, to around 20%. Garcetti, at age 42 will be the youngest mayor in nearly a century and the first Jewish one.

The other election results were encouraging as well: openly gay Mitch O'Farrell will replace Garcetti on the City Council and openly gay Ron Galperin looks to be winning against soon-to-be ex-City Councilman Dennis Zine in the race to replace Greuel as Los Angeles City Controller. The voters strongly rejected the idea of a second term as City Attorney for Carmen Trutanich, choosing Mike Feuer instead.

And of the three marijuana measures, only Measure D passed.

All in all a good progressive election. Back to my vacation!!