It appears that the Assembly will be down a member very soon, as Paul Krekorian from the 43rd District appears to have won election to the Los Angeles City Council.

The election results at this moment:

Krekorian: 9,212 (57.18%)

Essel: 6,898 (42.82%)

This figure is with 62% of precincts reporting.  The campaign appears to have been won via absentees, as 10,988 absentee ballots were cast in the race, with Krekorian garnering 58% of those votes.  Essel’s mail and field campaign was expected to do better with in-person voters, but there just aren’t enough to go around.  With 62% of precincts reporting, there have only been 5,176 poll votes counted, which means that there should only be about 3,120 left to be counted from the remaining 38% of the precincts.  Krekorian leads by 2,314 votes as of this counting, meaning that Essel would need to have won over 74% of the votes that have yet to be counted.  There’s no way.

It’s worth pointing out that many prognosticators expected Essel to win this runoff in a low-turnout election with an advantage in spending that totaled somewhere around 4 to 1.  Sometimes, though, it seems like volunteers and dedication can beat massive amounts of independent expenditure money, and this appears to be one of those cases..

Later this week I’ll take a look at the field for the upcoming special election in AD-43.  Congratulations, Councilmember-elect Paul Krekorian.