L.A. County Sheriff Villanueva still trails Luna as a new round of election results released Thursday show Lopez winning the county’s top job by about 2 1/2 percentage points. The results show Lopez was almost 4 percentage points ahead of her Republican opponent, Brian Corrales.
Villanueva was not expected to face a runoff, and has said he hopes to end the campaign quickly. He said he will not take office until Nov. 29.
‘This is a critical election,’ he said, explaining his decision.
Scroll through the final results in L.A. County. The final candidates to be on the November ballot were listed for Thursday’s primary election. The candidate with the most votes wins in the nonpartisan primary, with the top two finishers advancing to November’s general election.
Lopez’s support is well-funded, with $600,000 in dark money helping her defeat Corrales.
Two-thirds of the $1.3 million dollars in total campaign spending on behalf of Lopez since June began with money from the National Rifle Association, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission.
The NRA is the second biggest spender on U.S. candidates overall, after individuals and PACs. Of the $1.24 billion in spending by outside groups on behalf of candidates this year, $1.05 billion came from the NRA, which gave her $500,000, according to the analysis.
Lopez has been the L.A. County sheriff since 2012. She was a supervisor, before becoming a deputy in 2007, until she won the top job in 2012.
The Los Angeles County races, however, are more closely watched than the statewide contests for governor and attorney general because this is a countywide race and the outcome could have implications for other races.
The county’s top election official is now L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell.
McDonnell also represents the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest school district in the nation. The school district had been expected to make the largest contribution to a sheriff race in 2016, before the city of Los Angeles removed