By Lookout Staff

December 3, 210 -- City Council candidate Ted Winterer announced today that “given the improbability of a change in the outcome” of the results, he and his campaign team decided they will not seek a recount in the City Council election. Winterer fell 56 votes shy of earning the third and final full-term council seat. Incumbent Bob Holbrook won the seat with 12,775 votes to Winterer’s 12,719.

Winterer wrote in an e-mail to the local media that his team considered a recount due to what he called a “razor thin margin” in the results between he and Holbrook.

“We looked long and hard at the County’s report of uncounted vote by mail and provisional ballots to see if a challenge of these ballots might yield a different election result and could not find enough potential new votes to affect the outcome,” Winterer wrote. “And we analyzed the error rate of a hand count of the machine-generated tally in five Santa Monica precincts: while I gained a few votes in the recount the trend appeared insufficient to overcome Councilmember Holbrook’s lead.”

Winterer had five days to request a recount following the County Board of Supervisors’ certification of the election on Tuesday. It would have cost him $4,000 for each day the recount took. He would get a refund had it led to reversal in the outcome of the election.

“We ran a campaign of which we’re proud: we obtained just about every endorsement we sought, reached our fundraising goals, mailed campaign literature throughout the city and spoke personally with thousands of voters,” Winterer wrote. “I hope the City Council will pay heed to the issues I’ve raised and the concerns of my supporters.”

This was Winterer’s second consecutive council election defeat. He finished fifth in the 2008 contest for four seats. But that was a different situation because he finished with more than 5,000 votes fewer than fourth-place Herb Katz.

In the e-mail, Winterer wrote he would continue to serve on the Planning Commission. He thanked his supporters, and had kind words for Holbrook, who was elected to his sixth term.

“I congratulate Councilmember Holbrook on his victory and thank him for his graciousness and good cheer during what has been a difficult month for both of us,” Winterer wrote.

When initial voting concluded in the early morning hours following Election Day, Holbrook had a 146-vote lead. Counting resumed the next day, and the first update showed Winterer had gained 25 votes. Updates were issued twice per week for the remainder of the month. At one point, Holbrook’s lead had slimmed to 42 votes. But it did not get closer than that.

Holbrook and the four other incumbents who won renewed terms – Kevin McKeown, Pam O’Connor, Terry O’Day and Gleam Davis– will be installed on Tuesday at the council meeting. The installation will also take place at that time for those elected to the Rent Control Board and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Board of Education.