Howorth reelected, Montgomery likely rejoining Manhattan Beach council
By Mark McDermott
Amy Howorth will almost certainly win reelection and Richard Montgomery appeared likely to rejoin the Manhattan Beach City Council after the first batches of ballots were tallied Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Howorth, the lone incumbent in the four-candidate race for two seats, led with 7,265 votes, or 34.7 percent, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s update released Thursday afternoon. Montgomery, who served four terms on the council between 2005 and 2023, was second with 6,201 votes, or 29.6 percent. Former councilmember Mark Burton trailed Montgomery by 527 votes, with 5,674, or 27.1 percent. Planning Commissioner Joseph Ungoco had 1,825 votes, or 8.7 percent.
Source: Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. Results unofficial.
The count is far from finished. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive through Nov. 10. The Registrar-Recorder estimated Wednesday afternoon that about 842,000 ballots remained to be counted countywide, with further counts posted twice daily Thursday and Friday and once daily thereafter until the results are certified. In the 2022 midterm, nearly half of Manhattan Beach’s 18,056 ballots were counted after election night. If this year follows that pattern, several thousand local ballots remain to be tallied. The county is scheduled to certify results Nov. 27. The two winners will be sworn in at the Dec. 15 council meeting.
Howorth said Wednesday that the campaign confirmed something she has long believed about the office.
“You’re never a better council member than when you’re a candidate, because you are proactively reaching out all the time and listening to people, and talking to people, and connecting to people,” she said. “It’s like grad school on steroids.”
What she heard at meet and greets surprised her.
“People didn’t always ask about the big questions that I was really prepared for. What can we do about housing? How are the city’s finances? What can you do about e-bikes?” Howorth said. “They did sometimes ask about that, but I was surprised by the consistency of the questions about things like potholes and stop signs, Edison power outages, construction noise. People really care about the day-to-day issues that affect them. Most of the people I talked to felt that our city was incredibly safe.”
Howorth said she ran the campaign she wanted to run.
“I’m not going to promise you something that I know that you want,” she said. “I am going to remind you of what I’ve done, and remind you of how I think when I’m up on the dais. That I’m fair, that I do listen. I don’t have to try to create something I’m not. This is who I am. Can we do better? Yes, we can.”
She said she settled on her message at the first candidate forum and returned to it in her closing statement.
“I care too much about this community to campaign by spreading fear, offering false hope, or promising easy answers,” Howorth said. “Many of you told me you appreciated that, including some who don’t plan to vote for me.”
Burton issued a statement Wednesday morning that stopped just short of conceding.
“To all those residents who voted for me and supported me in my campaign for City Council, I am exceedingly grateful,” Burton said. “I sincerely believe we ran a great campaign with a message that resonated with our community. As I knew going into this campaign, it is very difficult to run against ‘forever incumbents’ with their political machine already in place.”
“We have a great community with an exceptional quality of life,” he said. “That will continue. To Amy Howorth and Richard Montgomery, I offer my congratulations. I wish you nothing but success on the City Council.”
Howorth said the “forever incumbents” argument, which Ungoco also made the center of his campaign, misreads what voters want.
“I have always believed that the voters are term limits,” she said. “Burton was an incumbent, and he lost when he ran again. I beat incumbents on the school board when I ran for the first time as a young unknown person. It should be about the person with the best ideas, the best experience, and especially in a time such as this, where you have a lot of complex challenges, you want somebody who understands the context, the history, the current law.”
“If that’s the only argument you’ve got, why don’t you rally to get a ballot measure put on the ballot that says hard term limits?” she said. “If that’s what you really care about, make it happen that way. But if you’re running to be a public servant, you better have something else that matters to you.”
As for the political machine, Howorth said she sought the Democratic Party’s endorsement for the first time this year, in what she said was her last campaign, after skipping it in every previous nonpartisan race.
“I got a check for $250,” she said. “That’s what I got.”
She said she spent the least per vote of any candidate. Campaign finance filings bear that out. Through Oct. 17, the last reporting deadline before the election, Howorth had spent $1.24 for every vote in the election night count, Montgomery $2.43, Burton $5.92 and Ungoco $11.41. [See story on the campaign finance of the council race]
Montgomery said Wednesday he was not declaring anything.
“I’m not claiming any victory,” he said. “I’m just watching it as it gets closer.”
Councilmember Steve Charelian, likely councilmember-elect Richard Montgomery, Shellback Tavern general manager Rico De Alba, and Mayor Joe Franklin. Montgomery’s election night party was at Shellback. Photo by Kevin Cody
His campaign estimated about 60 percent of the vote had been counted. He said Friday’s update, when the county catches up on late mail and in-person ballots, would tell the most. “I’m comfortable at 500,” he said. “But I wanted to be 1,000.”
Montgomery said the “forever” label made him laugh.
“I looked at Joseph at the forum,” he said. “Joseph, you’ve run twice before. It’s your third attempt. Burton, it’s your fifth. You’re not new. You said forever. When you can bring something to the table, experience-wise, then people start taking it seriously. None of you talked about how you make the city better. What do you bring to the table?”
What he brings, Montgomery said, is a kind of experience nobody now on the council has.
“No one on this council has gone through crisis management,” he said. “Being the mayor during the Great Recession, and the mayor during COVID. We were meeting three times a week during COVID. All that learning about money and finance, it teaches you a lot that no one even thinks about. Those of us that were there, we know exactly what to do in a tough market.”
He said he ran because David Lesser’s departure, and Mayor Joe Franklin’s departure in two years, would leave Howorth as the only member with extensive experience on the dais. “You keep people that have institutional knowledge, that have been through tough times, know how to get through tough times, and reset the course,” he said.
His priorities, he said, are city finances, staffing and the Lot 3 parking structure downtown. “I do agree that the city is heavy on staff,” Montgomery said. “We don’t need to hire an assistant city manager. We don’t need to hire a deputy police chief.” On the garage: “I was on the council that took it down for safety reasons, but I want to rebuild that garage as fast as possible. It’s been two years, folks, and the downtown merchants suffer because of it. … Let’s get things done.”
In the first post-election tally, released early Wednesday morning, Burton trailed Montgomery by 484 votes, exactly the number Joe Franklin trailed by on election night in 2020. Franklin was fourth behind Grettel Fournell for the third and final seat that year. Over the next three weeks, as late mail ballots were counted, Fournell’s lead shrank. Franklin pulled ahead in mid-November and won by 88 votes when the county certified the count Nov. 30.
That comeback came in a presidential election, when turnout in Manhattan Beach reached 87.5 percent and the late count was enormous. The 2022 midterm offered the opposite lesson. Late ballots that year only widened the election night leads of Howorth and David Lesser. Turnout this year appears on pace with 2022, when 68 percent of the city’s registered voters cast ballots.
Howorth said she intends to spend part of the coming term cultivating the next generation of council candidates. She said the campaign reminded her where the work matters most.
“This is where we’re going to thrive, within our communities,” she said. “The smaller and more cohesive the community, that’ll be what saves us.” ER
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