Smith leads Riggins by 37 votes in tight Malibu council race Play

Very preliminary returns show an upset at Malibu City Hall may be in the making. As of Wednesday morning, challenger Danny Smith is on the way to unseat incumbent Marianne Riggins, but his margin of victory dropped overnight. The gap closed to around 30 votes between Riggins and Smith. As of right now, Smith is 37 votes ahead of Riggins.

Malibu voters were allowed to pick two out of the four candidates on the ballot, and there was a campaign by some Malibu political activists to convince voters to cast only one vote — a "single shot" for challenger Danny Smith, denying their second vote to either of the two incumbents, Marianne Riggins or Doug Stewart.

Looking at the partial vote totals as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, incumbent Doug Stewart is in first place with 1,618 votes. Ninety-two votes behind him is Danny Smith at 1,526, and Riggins is 31 votes behind Smith at 1,489. The difference between second and third place is less than a half percent, and Riggins did narrow that margin Tuesday night.

The fourth City Council candidate, A. Sam Dibaei, got only 275 votes altogether, around 5% of the vote. That's typical for a candidate viewed by many voters as a fringe candidate with a somewhat incoherent message.