Costa Mesa’s Righeimer, Humphrey are 48 votes apart in Thursday’s tally

Costa Mesa Mayor Jim Righeimer maintained a slight lead over challenger Jay Humphrey in ballot counting Thursday evening to fill two City Council seats.

Righeimer held a 48-vote lead at 5 p.m. with 7,517 votes to Humphrey’s 7,469. Humphrey is a former councilman.

Over the weekend, the gap was 23. On Monday it was 35, on Tuesday it was 21 and on Wednesday it was 37.

Orange County Registrar Neal Kelley has said his goal is to tabulate all outstanding ballots by Nov. 17.

School board trustee Katrina Foley remained solidly in the lead of eight candidates with 9,338 votes, or 26.5% of the turnout, as of Thursday.

The election results could be recounted, should Righeimer or Humphrey request it, at the initiator’s expense.

An estimated 21,749 ballots were left to count countywide as of Wednesday, and it was not clear how many, if any, of those would count toward the Costa Mesa tallies.

—Bradley Zint

Twitter: @bradleyzint