Final Vote Count in City Council Election: Mirisch, Brien Reelected—Krasne Wins by 7 Votes

The City of Beverly Hills on Friday completed counting all ballots related to its municipal elections held earlier this week, confirming the foregone conclusion that Mayor Willie Brien and Vice-Mayor John Mirisch were reelected and that former Mayor Nancy Krasne beat Planning Commissioner Brian Rosenstein by a margin of just seven votes to win the only open seat on the City Council.

On Friday afternoon, the office of City Clerk Byran Pope counted 461 provisional and vote-by-mail ballots that had been handed over by voters to the 10 precincts in Beverly Hills.

According to the final count, Mirisch won 2,837 votes and Brien got 2,621. Krasne won 2,540 votes, while Rosenstein got 2,533.

The number of ballots counted Friday was less than the 493 potential ballots anticipated, according to City Clerk Specialist Melissa Crowder.

Friday's count brings to 4,863 the total number of ballots counted since election night Tuesday, according to Beverly Hills Public Information Manager Therese Kosterman.

A sample recount of 1 percent of all the votes from one of the 10 precincts in the city is scheduled to be conducted manually at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, according to the City Clerk's office. The precinct will be randomly chosen, and the idea is to determine if there is any statistically significant difference between the manual count and the electronic count done on election night. If there is a significant difference, a manual recount of all the votes from all the precincts might become necessary.

Voter turnout stood at 21.6 percent of the 22,548 registered voters in the city, Kosterman said. The City Clerk has 28 days to certify the election results.

A new City Council will be installed March 27, when the Council will select one of its members as mayor and one as vice-mayor to serve for the following year, Kosterman said.

It took the City Clerk’s office about an hour to count the provisional and vote-by-mail votes in the City Hall chambers, starting at 2:30 p.m, Pope told Beverly Hills Patch.

Mayor Brien, an orthopedic surgeon and a grandson of late Chief Justice and Gov. Earl Warren, was in the City Hall chambers during the count, looking cheerful but typically down-to-earth.

“It was a withering campaign,” he told Beverly Hills Patch. “A lot of people helped me get there.”

Asked which issues would be on the top of his political agenda in the new council, he said: “I’d like to see Roxbury Park [along Olympic Boulevard] completed and Beverly Gardens [facing City Hall, along Santa Monica Boulevard] restored.”

Here is the final vote count: