{"id":344042,"date":"2026-06-03T04:21:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T04:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/344042\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T04:21:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T04:21:06","slug":"long-beach-voting-results-mayor-richardson-claims-large-lead-in-reelection-bid-may-avoid-runoff-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/344042\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach voting results: Mayor Richardson claims large lead in reelection bid, may avoid runoff \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson stormed ahead in early returns Tuesday night, overshadowing six little-known rivals and potentially securing him four more years in office in a race that strengthens his standing for a potential run for higher office.<\/p>\n

With early vote-by-mail ballots and some in-person ballots counted, Richardson was holding just under 60% of the vote. In-person ballots, mail-in ballots that have yet to arrive and provisional ballots remain to be counted.<\/p>\n

Joshua Rodriguez, a former law enforcement officer, was in second with 19.8%, followed by local business owner Chris Sweeney at 9.9%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Early results in other races also favor incumbents<\/p>\n

Results are as of 9 p.m. See the latest numbers at results.lavote.gov<\/a><\/p>\n

Five City Council offices and the city auditor\u2019s seat were also at stake in Tuesday\u2019s primary, with incumbents across the city \u2014 except in the 7th District, where longtime Councilmember Roberto Uranga was termed out \u2014 holding strong early leads over their challengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

City Auditor<\/p>\n

Incumbent Laura Doud is leading Ginny Gonzalez with 72.3% of the vote compared to 27.7%. They are the only two candidates in the race.<\/p>\n

1st District\u00a0<\/p>\n

Incumbent Mary Zendejas leads with 52% of the vote. Deb Kahookele is in second place with 15.1% of the vote. There are six candidates in the race.<\/p>\n

3rd District<\/p>\n

Incumbent Kristina Duggan is ahead with 69% of the vote. Rebecca Hinderer is in second place with 24.4% of the vote among four candidates.<\/p>\n

5th District\u00a0<\/p>\n

Incumbent Megan Kerr has 52.3% of the vote versus 47.7% for her challenger Tara Riggi. They are the only two candidates in the race.<\/p>\n

7th District\u00a0<\/p>\n

LBCC Trustee Vivian Malauulu has 76% of the vote. Dameon Gordon is in second place with 16.7%. Jameis Shuford, the only other candidate in the race, has 7.4% of the vote.<\/p>\n

9th District<\/p>\n

Incumbent Joni Ricks-Oddie leads with 69.7% of the vote. Sequoia Neff is her only challenger and has 30.3% of the vote.<\/p>\n

Will there be runoffs?<\/p>\n

Any candidate who earns more than 50% of the vote in the June 2 primary wins outright. If no candidate reaches that mark, the top two vote-getters will advance to a Nov. 3 runoff. In tight races, final results may not be clear for weeks.<\/p>\n

Voter turnout appeared strong Tuesday, with Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder\/County Clerk Dean Logan reporting<\/a> earlier in the day that at around 2 p.m., more than 100,000 voters had cast a ballot in person and nearly 1 million mail-in ballots had been received \u2014 about three percentage points higher than the June 2022 gubernatorial primary election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richardson first won his seat in a 2022 general election with 56.6% of the vote, or 63,184 ballots. He received 33,791 votes (44.1%) in the corresponding primary race, earning the lead but not an outright victory over competitor then-Councilmember Susan Price.<\/p>\n

None of his challengers this year had as much political experience as Price, and Richardson substantially outraised them all.<\/p>\n

Richardson spent more than $358,000, pulling from the $472,000 raised through donations from powerful unions, established Democratic colleagues and many of the defense companies he has helped bring to the city. By comparison, nonprofit executive Terri Rivers spent $17,000, and business owner Chris Sweeney spent nearly $10,000.<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s race in Long Beach is a tough one for political newcomers. The city has not elected a mayor who hasn\u2019t first sat on the City Council since Beverly O\u2019Neil\u2019s inaugural win in 1994.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson stormed ahead in early returns Tuesday night, overshadowing six little-known rivals and potentially…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-344042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}