Make It Make Sense: The city attorney's race comes to a close, plus other election results

This is the Nov. 6 issue of Make It Make Sense, LAist's elections newsletter breaking down the results of the 2026 general election. You can sign up here to receive issues in your inbox through the end of November.

Good morning! We’re beginning to feel the drag of Election Month. Cue the 🎶 Jeopardy music 🎶. We’re still waiting for an outcome on a lot of our statewide propositions, but we’ve got some juicy tax updates (if you can call them that) and another key race call.

First, now that Nithya Raman will be L.A.’s next mayor, what happens to her current council seat that stretches from the San Fernando Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains?

LAist asked L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s office: “We look forward to working with Mayor-elect Raman and will discuss with her an appointment who best serves the residents of the Fourth District,” Martin Schlageter, a senior adviser to Harris-Dawson, said in a statement.

That indicates the district could avoid a special election, but who could be appointed is still very much up in the air.

Meanwhile, Raman will have to work closely with a City Council that didn’t back her bid for mayor. LAist asked the 12 members who will be working alongside her about how they plan to work with her — read what they said here.

🌴 L.A. city attorney: Marissa Roy takes the win with a commanding lead

• What happened: Marissa Roy will be the next L.A. city attorney. Her opponent, John McKinney, conceded the race, saying in a statement, “While the results are not what we hoped for, I accept the outcome and congratulate Marissa Roy on her victory. I wish her well as she prepares to serve as Los Angeles City Attorney. Her success in protecting our residents and serving the public interest will be important to the future of our city.”
• How we got here: Roy held onto a strong lead over McKinney ever since polls closed, and currently has more than twice as many votes. Roy will be a fresh face in the role after incumbent city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto was ousted in the June primary in a rare defeat of an elected city official.
• What the candidates had to say:
  
  • Roy said on social media Wednesday that election night was “a really good night for the people who believe that we should take care of one another, that we can stand up for our rights — even in what feels like an increasingly lawless world — and that we will achieve justice when we fight for it.”
  • McKinney added that he is deeply grateful for everyone who supported his campaign, including voters, volunteers and supporters.
• What’s at stake: The city attorney runs an office of more than 550 lawyers representing L.A. in all legal matters, including filing lawsuits and defending against them. Roy, backed by powerful progressives like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has vowed to take on the Trump administration in court.

💸 L.A. and O.C. voters are saying yes to dozens of tax measures

• What happened: By LAist’s count, more than 30 cities or districts in L.A. and Orange counties asked voters to approve tax measures this election. They include sales taxes — like Measure FD in the city of Los Angeles — hotel taxes, business taxes and utility taxes. So far, all but six seem likely to pass.
• 🌴Measure FD is passing: L.A. city voters are steadily approving (53.68%) another half-cent sales tax, this time to bolster L.A. Fire Department resources. The sales tax will go up to 10.75%, although residents likely won’t start paying the higher rate until spring. And it still won’t be the highest in the county — Palmdale and Lancaster pay 11.75%, and San Gabriel's newly passed Measure PS brings its combined rate to 12%.
• 🌴 South Gate utility users tax is failing: The L.A. County city is asking residents to approve an 8% tax that would be added to bills for utilities such as electricity, water, cable and phone services. Voters are resoundingly rejecting Measure SG, with nearly 70% saying “no.”
• 🌴🍊 Transient occupancy taxes: Nearly a dozen of these proposals, which tax overnight hotel guests or short-term rentals, are passing in cities from Burbank in L.A. County to Los Alamitos in O.C. You can see more details in our roundup here.
  

Check out the vote count charts for these too-close-to-call races

🌴 L.A. City Council District 3

• What’s happening: This San Fernando Valley race to replace Bob Blumenfield is getting spicy as more results roll in. Tim Gaspar, an entrepreneur who has said the city needs someone coming from the outside, is losing his early lead. He’s fallen 875 votes behind Barri Worth Girvan, a Valley community advocate with experience in various government offices.
  
  • Worth Girvan said in a social media post Thursday that she is encouraged by the trend so far. “While many ballots remain to be counted and results will continue to shift, we expect this trend to continue as more mail-in ballots are tallied, and we remain cautiously optimistic that when all the votes are counted, we will prevail.”

🌴 L.A. City Council District 9

• What’s happening: The race to succeed Curren Price has been narrowing each day. Jose Ugarte had more than a 14-point lead over Estuardo Mazariegos when polls closed, but it has since shrunk to about four. Ugarte, a community outreach director, is endorsed by Price and a few other members of the City Council. Mazariegos leans more to the left and is supported by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
  
  • Ugarte said on social media Thursday that while ballots are still being counted, “we remain optimistic.”

🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 4
In the race for the Fourth District, Democrat and Buena Park mayor Connor Traut is leading with 50.80% of the vote over Republican Tim Shaw, a member of the O.C. Board of Education.

🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 5
Democratic incumbent Katrina Foley is still on track to keep her Fifth District seat against Republican Assemblymember Diane Dixon, with a gap that’s widened to 7,600 votes. If either Republican wins, it will change the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors.

What else got called

• 🥑 State superintendent: Republican Sonja Shaw is conceding the race to Democrat Richard Barrera, who is more than a million votes ahead. In a social media post Wednesday, Shaw wrote, “Last night, voters made their choice. I would be lying if I said my heart wasn’t heavy.” Barrera is a labor leader and union organizer in San Diego, and has served on the board of San Diego Unified for nearly two decades.
• 🌴 L.A. County Superior Court judge: Office No. 87 is settled. Attorney David DeJute has conceded the race to Anthony "A.J." Bayne, a deputy public defender with over 30 years of courtroom experience. Bayne ran without a long roster of Democratic endorsements, which were a common fixture this cycle for judicial candidates. He was rated “well qualified” by the L.A. County Bar Association.

👀 We’re still watching 👀

• 🥑 Insurance commissioner: We’re still holding our breath on the race to lead the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance market. Two Democrats are trying to take on the role: State Sen. Ben Allen and attorney Jane Kim. Allen (47.3%) has been steadily trailing Kim (52.7%), who slightly bumped up her lead in the last few days.
• 🥑 The remaining props:
  
  • Prop 4: This proposal would lift the ban that keeps California and many local governments from using tax dollars to fund political campaigns. It could reshape how elections are funded, but so far, it’s failing by a few percentage points.
  • Prop 5: Should California change how it replaces elected state officials being recalled? The Legislature put it on the ballot, and it’s succeeding by 2 percentage points. If it holds on to the lead, voters would no longer vote on a recall and a replacement in the same election, instead punting a successor to a separate ballot.
  • Prop 38: This proposition is passing by a decently wide margin (55.1%). It would pave the way for the state to borrow $8.4 billion in bonds for immunology research. Supporters argued that the research could lead to treatments that help people living with cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's, but opponents say half the funds would go to just one research group.
  • Props 40, 41, 42: This is the billionaire’s tax and the two countermeasures designed to kill it. So far, it’s looking like Prop 40, the wealth tax, is failing (54.5% “no”), as well as Prop 41 (53.4% “no”), which would prohibit new tax revenue from being excluded from the state spending limit. The other, Prop 42, may pass (53.3% “yes”), which would ban new wealth taxes on personal property.
  • Prop 43: Speaking of taxes … this would make it harder to pass and raise some local taxes by bumping up the threshold of votes to a two-thirds majority. It would specifically apply to special tax measures put up by voters. It’s currently failing by about a million votes.
  • Prop 45: This is designed to limit environmental reviews for certain projects, such as housing and infrastructure, by cutting the time it takes to go through the state’s evaluation process. It’s opposed by groups like the National Wildlife Federation, and it's failing by about a 10-point margin.
• 🌴 L.A. County’s judicial seats: The races for offices 64 and 65 are still up in the air, but there are clear leaders. Maria Ghobadi, a deputy district attorney running for seat 64, has nearly 53% of the vote, while Justin Allen Clayton, a deputy public defender running in 65, has 56%. Neither of their competitors has conceded yet. Meanwhile, the fight for Office No. 131 between two public defenders is narrowing. David Ross trails Donna Tryfman, but he picked up more votes in this morning’s drop.

😰 Is it over yet? 😰

These results are based on about 8.9 million votes counted so far statewide — more than 2.5 million in L.A. County and nearly 892,000 in Orange County.

We still have a ways to go! The California secretary of state estimates there are 4.8 million ballots left to count overall, which includes 642,000 in L.A. County and 298,270 in O.C.

This election is turning out to be a banner year for voter turnout — we’re on track to far exceed the 2022 midterms. But we won’t know the full picture until after Nov. 10, the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive. You can check on the status of your ballot via the state’s BallotTrax system.

The next local ballot counts drop this afternoon starting around 4 p.m., but hey, we’re going into the weekend! From here on out, we’ll only be back in your inboxes when there’s major news to share — like a call on the billionaire’s tax — and we’ll focus on understanding what these results mean for your life in Southern California.

📰 Catch up quick

If this is your first day reading Make It Make Sense, you can get caught up on our past issues here:

• Nov. 5: Nithya Raman wins the L.A. mayor’s race
• Nov. 5: All 8 L.A. city measures could pass
• Nov. 4: We’ve got a new governor, plus voter ID fails

Otherwise, you can keep up with the results here:

• L.A. County
• Orange County