Estuardo Mazariegos continued to slice away at Jose Ugarte’s lead on Tuesday, running to represent parts of South Los Angeles in the too-close-to-call race in the Los Angeles City Council’s District 9.
As of 5 p.m. Monday, Ugarte had received 19,200 votes, or 50.20%, compared with Mazariegos’ 19,044 votes, or 49.8%, according to the Los Angeles County registrar’s office.
The latest tally put Ugarte ahead by 156 votes, down from his 286-vote lead Monday afternoon, 1,271-vote lead Friday morning and 1,672-vote lead Thursday morning. His share of the vote has gradually declined from about 57% election night to 51.03% Friday night.
Additional ballots remain to be counted, and the results had not yet been certified.
Tuesday’s update included 22,866 additional ballots processed and counted, bringing the total to 3,155,478 ballots, representing 53.02% voter turnout, according to the registrar’s office. There are 37,500 ballots remaining to be processed and counted, including 17,000 vote-by-mail ballots, 15,500 conditional voter registration ballots and 5,000 provisional ballots.
The next update is scheduled Wednesday at 4 p.m.
In a campaign development, Mazariegos’ staff said it contacted the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder on Nov. 8 with what it described as evidence of illegal ballot harvesting, voter intimidation and fraud in the District 9 race.
Mike Sanchez, spokesperson for the registrar’s office confirmed in an email Tuesday that the office forwarded the campaign’s news release to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for review, but did not confirm the allegations.
Sanchez also noted that California law allows voters to authorize another person to return their completed mail ballots and that ballots cannot be disqualified solely because the person returning them did not provide their name or signature on the envelope.
As of Monday evening, the registrar estimated that 53,000 ballots remained to be processed and counted countywide, including 18,000 vote-by-mail ballots, 21,000 conditional voter registration ballots and 5,000 provisional ballots.
Election officials are continuing to count vote-by-mail, provisional and conditional voter registration ballots. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day can still be counted if they arrive by Nov. 10.
Meanwhile, since declaring victory on Friday, Barri Worth Girvan has solidified her lead in the tight race for the District 3 seat representing the western San Fernando Valley. She continued to increase her lead on Monday.
Worth Girvan, a longtime public-sector employee who previously served as community affairs director for county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, faced Gaspar, a businessman and former insurance company owner, in the race to succeed termed-out Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Worth Girvan had received 36,219 votes, or 51.74%, compared with Gaspar’s 33,781 votes, or 48.26%, according to the latest update from the Los Angeles County registrar’s office.
The latest tally put Worth Girvan ahead by 2,438 votes, up from 2,373 on Monday.
Worth Girvan said she planned to focus on affordable housing, public safety, homelessness and improving city services, while promising greater transparency and accountability in how public money is spent.
“I will bring competence, transparency, follow-through, and ethical leadership to City Hall, which Angelenos deserve and too often do not get,” she said.
The district includes Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Reseda, Winnetka and Tarzana, as well as Warner Center , a major hub for commercial and residential development.
Gaspar finished first in the June primary with 46.1% of the votes, followed by Worth Girvan with 42.5%.
Gaspar, 44, has emphasized his business experience and called for reducing permitting delays, improving city services and increasing police staffing. Worth Girvan , 43, has highlighted her nearly two decades of public service experience and called for restructuring dysfunctional city departments to improve services.
Both candidates supported repairing streets and sidewalks, concentrating new housing developments around Warner Center and commercial corridors, and maintaining a well-staffed Los Angeles Police Department while expanding civilian responses to mental health and other nonviolent calls.
Oh homelessness, Gaspar called for tying city spending to measurable results, while Worth Girvan advocated expanding interim housing and treatment beds and replacing the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority with a more accountable system.
The contest between Mazariegos and Ugarte will bring a historic transition to the 9th District, which has been represented by Black council members since 1963 but is now nearly 80% Latino.
Both candidates are Latino immigrants who came to the United States as children and have backgrounds in community organizing.
The district includes neighborhoods surrounding Exposition Park, South Park and Historic South Central, where residents have raised concerns about illegal dumping, homelessness deteriorating infrastructure, housing affordability and public safety.
The race also comes as outgoing Councilmember Curren Price faces corruption charges . Price has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
Ugarte finished first in the June primary with about 39% of the vote, followed by Mazariegos with about 26%. The two advanced from a field of six candidates.
Ugarte, 40, has called for hiring approximately 2,000 additional LAPD officers, expanding mental health response teams and cracking down on illegal dumping and copper-wire theft. Mazariegos, 41, has advocated expanding unarmed crisis response programs and shifting more resources toward neighborhood services, including streetlights, sanitation, parks and youth programs. He has also proposed requiring the LAPD to pay misconduct settlements from its own budget rather than the city’s general fund.
On housing, Ugarte supports streamlining housing approvals and encouraging development near transit, including around Exposition Park and the Rail-to-Rail corridor, while maintaining community input. Mazariegos advocated for publicly owned social housing, community land trusts on vacant city land and stronger protections against displacement, particularly near transit corridors.
Ugarte has received endorsements from the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, Councilmember Tim McOsker and several labor unions. Mazariegos has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, United Teachers Los Angeles and the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.