DA Jackie Lacey, George Gascón Headed For November Runoff; Newsom Extends Canvassing Deadline

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey is headed for a November runoff against former San Francisco D.A. George Gascón, according to Friday's primary election voting-count release.

Lacey now has 48.71% of the vote to 28.2% for Gascón. Former public defender Rachel Rossi came in third with 23.09%.

Lacey needed to finish with more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff. She was above that level when unofficial results were announced after the March 3 election, but her margin has been steadily decreasing as the county continued to tally vote-by-mail, provisional and same-day-registration ballots.

Friday's update from the county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office shows that 2,101,601 votes have been counted, which is 38.128% of eligible Los Angeles County voters.

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Lacey now has 862,303 votes to Gascón's 499,182. There are an estimated 20,100 ballots to be counted.

"Thank you, LA. I hope to earn your vote this November," Gascón tweeted Friday.

Rossi also released a statement Friday saying that she was "humbled that over 400,000 Los Angeles County voters made me their choice" for DA.

"While we didn't qualify for the runoff, we are still victorious," she said.

The next vote-counting update is scheduled to be released Tuesday, though in a Friday night order, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended the canvassing deadline by 21 days in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

It was not immediately clear how that would impact the count in L.A. County.

(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)