Challenger Concedes D.A. Race to Garcetti

Challenger John Lynch conceded but did not congratulate incumbent Gil Garcetti.

For his part, Garcetti did not commend Lynch.

The bruising race for district attorney finally wobbled to a close Friday, 17 days after the polls closed. To the end, it was marked by hard feelings and ill will.

“It’s safe to say,” Lynch said Friday, managing a wry smile, “that I won’t be on the short list of those in the running for [Garcetti’s] chief deputy.”

By the narrowest of margins, Garcetti, 55, was reelected to a second term in a race that was widely viewed as a referendum on the failed prosecution of the O.J. Simpson murder case.

After an arduous count of absentee and provisional ballots, election officials had pronounced Garcetti the victor Thursday when his lead grew to 4,818 votes with about 2,000 ballots outstanding. About 2.2 million votes were cast in the race.

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In results released late Friday, as election officials tallied the remaining 2,454 ballots, Garcetti’s lead over Lynch, a deputy district attorney for 19 years who heads the Norwalk branch office, slipped slightly, to 4,766 votes.

The final unofficial count: Garcetti, 1,124,631, or 50.11%; Lynch, 1,119,865, or 49.89%.

Under state law, the official count is due Tuesday.

At a noon news conference outside the Norwalk courthouse Friday, Lynch said he owed it to supporters to find out if there were any “irregularities” that might justify an expensive recount.

“I have no evidence of that. But we’ll be taking a look at that,” he said, quickly adding: “At this point, it looks like the race is kaput.”

The long wait for a final count was difficult, both men said Friday.

“If I ever meet God, I will certainly ask, ‘Couldn’t you have done this election night?’ ” Lynch said.

He said that he had not congratulated Garcetti or talked to him since election day, Nov. 5. Asked if he intended to call Garcetti, Lynch said: “I do not.”

In a separate news conference two hours later inside his 18th-floor office at the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles, Garcetti was asked about that. After a long pause, Garcetti said: “That’s John.”

The lingering rancor between the two candidates--which has divided the office of 1,000 prosecutors, the nation’s largest public law office--is largely the product of a million-dollar television ad blitz that Garcetti launched in late October.

Political analysts said it won Garcetti the election, and Lynch noted Friday: “Elections are literally won or lost by whether or not you can put on a mindless 30-second spot on television, driven by a million dollars. I’m not whining. That’s reality.”

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Garcetti’s blitz consisted of a sole attack spot. It featured a psychedelic X-ray of Lynch that, as he put it Friday, “made me look like a space creature.” While the colors roiled on screen, an announcer commented on the challenger’s supervisory role in the McMartin preschool case and the prosecution of financier Charles H. Keating Jr.

“I have no regrets about our ad,” Garcetti said Friday.

Lynch, who has claimed repeatedly that the ad was misleading, said it “was not a good thing in a prosecutor’s race.”

He added of Garcetti: “There are an enormous number of people who are dissatisfied [with him] and expressed that. That’s a problem he needs to address. How he addresses it is up to him.”

Garcetti vowed that there would be “no vindication, no retaliation” for the deputy district attorneys who supported Lynch.

The “No. 1 priority,” he said, is securing a pay raise for the deputies--who haven’t had one in four years. Such a raise depends on the county Board of Supervisors.

Not on the agenda, Garcetti said, is a run in 1998 for state attorney general. But, he said Friday, “I certainly do plan on running for district attorney in four years.”