West Hollywood 2011 City Council Election: John D'Amico Ousts Lindsey Horvath, Abbe Land and John Heilman Likely Win - By Few Hundred Votes

Jennie Warren

WeHo City Council candidate John D'Amico

Even with some 930 provisional ballots that still need to be counted, West Hollywood City Council challenging candidate John D'Amico has ousted appointed council member Lindsey Horvath, according to political consultants who talked with L.A. Weekly.

Longtime incumbents Abbe Land and John Heilman have likely won re-election.

"Anything is possible," says Republican political strategist Reed Galen, but adds that it will be extremely difficult for fourth place candidate Steve Martin to make up more than 300 votes to take over Heilman. Horvath is currently in fifth place and out of the running.

As of now, longtime incumbent Abbe Land leads with 2,548 votes. Challenger John D'Amico, who's been considered the front-runner among the non-incumbent candidates, stands in second place with 2,471 votes. 26-year incumbent John Heilman is in third with 2,359 votes.

Behind Heilman, former City Councilman and challenger Steve Martin has 2,026 votes. In fifth place, Horvath has 1,902 votes -- more than 500 votes behind D'Amico.

Republican political consultant Matt Klink says that with more than three hundred votes between Heilman and Martin, making up that difference with 930 ballots will be very difficult. "That's quite a bit," he says.

The same is especially true for Horvath's 500-vote deficit.

Galen and Klink say that it's very likely that voting patterns with the provisional ballots will remain the same, and Land, D'Amico, and Heilman will stay in the top three positions.

Three seats were up for grabs in last night's hotly contested West Hollywood City Council election.

According to the West Hollywood City Clerk's Office, 930 provisional ballots need to be verified and counted. A final tally probably won't take place until Thursday at the earliest.

For more coverage on WeHo's City Council race -- possibly the closest in the city's history -- read this post.

Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.

Tags:

Abbe Land, election results, John D'Amico, John Heilman, Lindsey Horvath, Patrick Range McDonald, Steve Martin, West Hollywood City Council

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Elyse Eisenberg

The CWeHo City website is now saying only 800 provisional and vote-by-mail ballots are outstanding. Isn't that odd? They are saying the election night announcement of 930 was an estimate. Wouldn't an estimate be 800-900, or over 900, and not 930? That's a pretty specific number and was easily calculable as all the precincts had to provide the number of these ballots. What happened to the other 130 ballots? In PR McDonald's elction night article, Asst City Clerk Corey Schaffer states that they received a higher than usual number of these ballots.

Paul Decroix

Mito & the other VERY under qualified candidates prevented Martin from defeating Heilman. They were the Ralph Nader for Gore in the 2000 election. We were stuck with Bush as president of the United States for the next 8 years because of Nader. Next time I hope these excited inexperienced young men think twice about running for city council in West Hollywood other wise we will be stuck with Heilman as council member until he dies. Heilman has the Jewish/ Russian voters in his pocket. They love him even though the gay community despises him.

WeHo

Heilman could not have been elected without strong support from the gay community, as well as other parts of the city. WeHo is not as divided as some caricatures insist: Land, D'Amico and Heilman were in the top 4 (of 10 candidates) in all of the city's precincts.

Regarding Steve Martin, you're assuming those who voted for the more inexperienced candidates didn't also vote for Martin, but would have if their own candidates had not been running. I'm not so sure. Martin has now lost three times in a row, and it's unlikely this is because voters who like him always pick three other candidates instead.

Patrick Range McDonald

Hi WeHo,

As far as I know, there is no hard data that shows Heilman received "strong support" (meaning, votes ) from the gay community. Also, if you look at the unofficial totals from the City Clerk's Office, Heilman did not receive strong support from much of the west side of WeHo, which tends to be home to some of the more engaged residents in the city.

In precincts 71, 6, 7, and 2, Heilman was average or weak. But he made up for it, as usual, with heavy support in the very east side of WeHo. Heilman was downright weak in two precincts: 4 and 24. His victory is by no means a landslide of support, and it shouldn't be spun as such.

I talked with Martin on election night, and he told me that he actually did better with the newer, younger candidates in the race. He did not believe they dragged him down in the polls, but beefed up his support.

Going up against Team Heilman, a politically connected slate that raised more than $260,000, Aviles more than held his own with nearly 1,000 votes -- and he raised far, far less money than Heilman, Land, Horvath and D'Amico.

Take care,Patrick Range McDonald,LA Weekly

WeHo

Isn't it odd that despite the LA Weekly's extensive promotion of WeHo council candidate Mito Aviles (including a cover story on Feb. 17), this report doesn't even mention him? Here's how he did on Tuesday: fewer than one in five voters supported him. He received 919 votes from the 5,346 ballots tabulated so far -- that's 17% -- placing him seventh out of 10 candidates.