Smith extends lead over Riggins in Malibu council race
Danny Smith is now 50 votes ahead of incumbent Marianne Riggins, with Doug Stewart leading the field as counting continues.
By Hans Laetz
THIS STORY IS CURRENT TO 9AM FRIDAY. IT WILL BE UPDATED LATER IN THE DAY.
The latest Malibu election returns show Danny Smith with a growing margin over Marianne Riggins, all but sealing his election and her defeat for Malibu City Council. Smith is now 50 votes ahead of Riggins, apparently denying her a second term.
The results as of Friday morning are only slightly different from what had been released Thursday, and there are still a huge number of votes — about 25 percent — to be counted across L.A. County.
The official returns show Doug Stewart and Danny Smith as the winners. Stewart has 1,757 votes, or 32.8 percent of the votes cast.
Smith has 1,670 votes, 87 behind Stewart, with 31.2 percent of the vote — just over one percent ahead of Riggins.
Riggins has a total of 1,620 votes. The fourth candidate, Sam Dibaei, was not a factor, with just over 500 votes, below 6 percent.
The defeat of Marianne Riggins is a political victory for City Council member Bruce Silverstein. As voting was already underway, Silverstein urged voters from the city council dais to vote out his colleagues Riggins and Stewart.
He urged voters to cast their ballots for one candidate and one candidate only — Smith — denying them to his frequent political adversaries. Silverstein has frequently been on the losing end of 3-to-2 votes.
Silverstein has high hopes now for Danny Smith. But remember, Silverstein also had high hopes for Haylynn Conrad two years ago, and she has frequently voted against Silverstein's positions.
And Smith has told us he is not on a ticket with Silverstein by any form of the imagination.
In a statement on Facebook Thursday, Silverstein offered this analysis:
"In 2022, Marianne Riggins was elected with the lowest amount of votes of any candidate since the City Council elections began to be held at the same time as the national elections.
"She got 1,725 votes. That might provide some indication of where Marianne's vote ceiling lies."
Silverstein signed off in all caps: "GO DANNY."
A reminder: more than 20 percent of the L.A. ballots are still to be counted, some of them from Malibu.
Comments (1)
Only 55 votes between Danny & Doug now and pulling away from Marianne with 88 votes and growing. If half of eastern Malibu wasn’t displaced it would have been a landslide for Danny. 8 years of no improvement in protecting our borders from wildfire, even having water or firefighters or rebuilding our community quickly and discouraging families from living here by catering to developers, airbnbs and not honoring our local residents and businesses- enough is enough!