Republicans Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt on Tuesday won enough support in early election returns to appear on the November ballot in the California governor’s race and Los Angeles mayor’s race.
Their leads, however, could be wiped out by thousands of mail-in ballots that state officials say they won’t be finished counting for days or weeks.
Mr. Hilton, who ran an insurgent campaign to turn the state around by ending 16 years of liberal governance, was ahead of all 60 candidates in the governor’s race on Wednesday morning with 27.8% of the vote. In the Los Angeles mayor’s race, Mr. Pratt, a reality TV star who shot to the top of the polls by trashing incumbent Democrat Mayor Karen Bass’ disastrous response to last year’s horrific Palisades fire, was in the number-two spot on Wednesday morning with 30.4% of the vote. Ms. Bass led the pack with 34.8% of the vote.
But millions of votes haven’t been counted yet, and the late arrivals have traditionally leaned Democrat.
California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks …
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Only 63% of the ballots have been counted in the mayor’s race so far, according to the latest tally from California election officials. In the governor’s race, only 58% of the ballots have been tallied.
“This makes me nervous,” Mercedes Schlapp, former Trump advisor and host of the Conservative Political Action Conference, said. “Pratt with a slim lead and more votes to count.”
SEE ALSO: Dem Mayor Karen Bass tops L.A. primary, faces possible general election showdown with Spencer Pratt
To many Republican voters, it’s a scenario reminiscent of the 2020 presidential election, when, on election night, President Trump appeared to be winning before a later dump of mail-in ballots gave Mr. Biden the win.
The process of rounding up the ballots and counting them led Mr. Trump and many of his supporters to declare the election was “rigged.”
In California, late election results are the norm.
The state mails a ballot to every eligible voter, and the ballots can be returned as late as 8 p.m. on election night if the prepaid envelopes are postmarked by that time.
Spencer Pratt, a candidate in the …
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State officials accept mail-in ballots for up to seven days after the election if they have the qualifying postmark.
Statewide results won’t be certified until July 10, which gives the state another 37 more days to tally results in the governor’s race.
Election officials said the results “will change” as vote-by-mail ballots, provisional ballots and other ballots are tallied.
“I’m sure the massive, post-election vote dumps will boost leftist candidates. Taking days or weeks to count votes and announce the results is a joke,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
For Mr. Hilton, the incoming mail-in votes threaten his chance to be in the general election.
He is leading the race so far, but not by much. Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services Secretary who also served as California’s Attorney General, is a little more than three points behind him, with 25.4% of the vote.
Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who spent nearly $200 million on the race, is in a not-too-distant third place, with 19.6% of the vote.
Analysts say California’s mail-in votes have in the past leaned Democrat, which makes sense because Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state nearly two to one.
In other words, the mail-in votes are likely to help either Mr. Becerra or Mr. Steyer, who could gain an edge over Mr. Hilton, locking a Republican candidate out of the November ballot.
Tom Fitton, president of the conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, said the Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on the watchdog group’s lawsuit calling for an end to post-election ballot counting that is now permitted in California and 30 other states.
“Federal court sets an election day, not an election week, not an election month,” Mr. Fitton said.
It’s not clear how long election officials will take to tally ballots in the governor’s race and mayor’s race.
In the 2024 state primary, it took ten days before most of the ballots were counted.
The mayor’s race is likely to be tallied much sooner.
Ms. Bass has already been declared one of the two winners and has secured a spot on the November ballot.
Mr. Pratt, many analysts predict, will also win a spot on the ballot. He’s trailed by far-left candidate Nithya Raman, who had won 22.3% of the vote as of Wednesday morning.
Outcomes can change as the vote counts continue, however.
In the 2022 mayor’s race, Republican Rick Caruso was initially leading Ms. Bass on election night, only to fall behind and lose when additional ballots were counted the next day.
Currently, an estimated 290,000 votes are outstanding in the mayor’s race. In the governor’s race, nearly 3.7 million ballots have yet to be counted, election officials estimate.
