Odds for Trutanich in D.A. Runoff Look Increasingly Slim

Carmen Trutanich all but conceded the district attorney race when he announced he would run for re-election as the Los Angeles City Attorney. But with a tight race for second and close to 200,000 ballots to count after the close of polls on June 5, the election technically wasn't over.

Now just shy of 48,000 ballots remain to be counted, according to numbers released Tuesday by L.A. County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. And it's looking even less like Trutanich will advance to a runoff in November.

As of Tuesday, Trutanich was 10,764 votes behind second-place contender Alan Jackson, a deputy district attorney. That's a slip from the 8,200-vote gap reported Friday. Jackie Lacey leads comfortably with a nearly 9-percent margin.

Under the state's new top-two primary rules, only the two candidates with the most votes will appear on the general election ballot.

L.A. County elections staff have counted more than 100,000 vote-by-mail ballots since polls closed, but don't expect the final count any time soon. That won't be legally due until the end of the month, and staff generally need the full allotment of time, according to Talyssa Gonzales, a spokesperson for L.A. County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.

Though more than half the remaining ballots have been counted in the week following the election, most if not all of those were vote-by-mail ballots, which are easier to process. It's the provisional ballots that will take a while, Gonzales said. Those are ballots cast at the wrong polling place or by voters who for one reason or another weren't on the roster.

Either way, it appears Trutanich is out of the running.