Kennedy Maintains Solid Lead in District 3

As the clock struck midnight on election night, District 3 Councilmember John Kennedy held a sizable lead against his challenger Brandon Lamar, who still managed to claim a respectable 38.05% of the vote at one point, with 15% of LA County votes counted.

As morning neared, Kennedy votes rose slightly to 823 (62.49%) to Lamar’s 494 (37.51%).

Late Tuesday night, Kennedy, reached at home, hesitated in declaring victory, and said, “Lamar ran a very respectable race. He is definitely a change agent.” 

‘But,” he added. “In the end, I think the voters demonstrated that they preferred my programs and policies. My goal has always been to create one Pasadena for all.”

Kennedy was elected as the District 3 Councilmember in 2013 and has served on the Finance Committee and the Public Safety Committee, and as one of three City representatives to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority.

Kennedy also helped initiate the creation of the City’s Police Oversight Commission.

 Kennedy called for the building of 3,000 new affordable units in the City, with 15% of those units designated for “extremely low income” residents. 

Lamar has touted himself as a change agent and proclaimed that he would be the only renter on the City Council if he captured the District 3 seat. 

The city is currently mired in an affordable housing crisis and rent control advocates successfully collected enough signatures to get an initiative on the November ballot. 

The County Registrar’s office is not expected to release further vote counts until Friday.

After Election Night in a statewide election, there are still thousands of ballots that need to be counted, including Vote by Mail ballots received on Election Day, provisional ballots, write-in ballots and damaged ballots. These ballots are counted during the 30-day period known as the Official Election Canvass. Ballots also require additional review to verify voters are eligible to vote and write-in ballots were cast for qualified candidates.

California state law requires the County Registrar to complete and certify results within 30 days. This provision of the law recognizes the complexity of completing the ballot count and conducting a thorough audit of the election results to ensure accuracy.

The Registrar’s office said in a statement that it realizes it is difficult for candidates/campaigns involved in close contests to wait for results of the election. The legally mandated processes described above are utilized to guarantee that every vote is counted and included in the official final election returns.