Vote sets tone

Costa Mesa’s immigration-enforcement proposal wasn’t on Tuesday’s ballot, but city residents cast their votes in favor of it by choosing Mayor Allan Mansoor and parks commissioner Wendy Leece for two council seats.

Final unofficial election results Wednesday showed Mansoor leading the six-way race with 25.7% of the votes cast. Leece finished with 24.1%, followed by planning commissioner Bruce Garlich with 21.2%, former Councilman Mike Scheafer with 18.8%, restaurant owner Mirna Burciaga with 7.1%, and hair stylist Chris Bunyan with 3.1%.

With more votes being counted, the totals could still change, but it’s unclear whether the winners will.

County-wide, Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said Wednesday he has 160,000 absentee ballots and 21,000 provisional ballots left to count. He doesn’t know how many are from Costa Mesa.

Leece’s seat was pivotal because it cements Mansoor’s majority, which includes Councilman Eric Bever. On Wednesday, Leece was ahead of Garlich by 887 votes.

Garlich said he called Mansoor and Leece Wednesday morning to congratulate them.

“I think I got my butt kicked,” Garlich said. “That’s a big gap to overcome.”

Mansoor and Leece said Wednesday their top priorities are what they discussed during the campaign: public safety, more sports fields, and having police trained for immigration enforcement.

The immigration plan has been controversial, particularly in the city’s Latino community. But Mansoor said he sees the election outcome as a sign that voters support it.

“I know people do because I spoke with them when I was out campaigning,” he said. “They simply want the law applied to those who are here illegally and breaking additional laws.”

As Mansoor and Leece prepare their agenda, they may have to confront existing divisions in the community that the campaign deepened.

“It will leave some very lasting scars,” Scheafer said. “I’ve never had a campaign that was negative in the sense that this was.”

He doesn’t begrudge Mansoor and Leece their victory, he said, but he’ll be watching closely in the next few months to see how they perform.

“We’ll see if Mansoor can come through with all of the promises he made,” Scheafer said. “The crime rate has gone up. Let’s see if he can bring it down.”

John Hawley, who owns the metalworking business Railmakers, said his and other Westside businesses were a political football in this election, and he hopes they aren’t used that way again. One Mansoor and Leece campaign mailer referred to “industrial polluters” who donated to opponents. Some have complained that industrial businesses should be replaced with residential or other development.

“Hopefully this election cycle is the last one that develops negative comments about the area that are counterproductive to future progress,” Hawley said. “You trash an area that you’re supposedly trying to improve, it’s kind of hypocritical.”

Councilwoman Katrina Foley, who backed Garlich and Scheafer, blamed low voter turnout for the results. For example, out of 54,000 registered voters, only 30,000 participated and out of that number only 7,765 voted for Mansoor, she said, “that’s not even close to a mandate.”