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An anxiously awaited final count of 15,000 absentee ballots Tuesday upheld Rita Walters' victory over Bob Gay by a razor-thin margin of only 76 votes in the race for the 9th District City Council seat.
"It's one of the closest races we've had in Los Angeles in years," said Frank Martinez, chief management analyst for the city clerk's election division.
Semiofficial results last week gave Walters, a Los Angeles school board member, an edge of 208 votes over Gay, longtime aide to Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, whose death in December forced the election to fill the seat he had held for 27 years.
In the final tally, Walters carried enough of the remaining 550 absentee ballots to squeeze past Gay.
"It's tight, but it's still a win," said Walters, 60, who moved to the 9th District two weeks after Lindsay died so she could qualify for the ballot. "But it's also over now and I plan to get busy cleaning up my district and making it a better place to live."
Gay, who for years angled to succeed Lindsay, had hoped the absentee ballots would turn the tide in his favor. In a door-to-door campaign, he had handed out hundreds of applications for absentee ballots to prospective voters.
"There's not a lot to be said, the final count speaks for itself," said Gay, who worked for 16 years under Lindsay. "I'm just glad I had the opportunity...