Election 2016: Rep. Janice Hahn takes early lead for seat on county Board of Supervisors

U.S. Rep. Janice Hahn, who is abandoning her House seat in a bid to retu to local politics, held a healthy lead over her chief opponent for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors in early election retus Tuesday.

With vote-by-mail ballots and 24 percent of the precincts counted, Hahn was teetering just below the crucial 50 percent mark — at 47.3 percent — in her race against Steve Napolitano to replace term-out Supervisor Don Knabe representing the board’s 4th District.

Napolitano, a chief deputy to Knabe, was collecting just 38.8 percent of the vote. The only other candidate in the race, Whittier school board member Ralph Pacheco, was at 13.9u2009percent.

If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the two top finishers will advance to the November general election.

Hahn, who has long had her eye on the county board where her father served for decades, is leaving her congressional seat in an all-out push to replace Knabe, who is being termed out after 12 years. She raised nearly $1.4u2009million compared with Napolitano’s $1.1 million.

Napolitano was the youngest person elected, at age 26, to the Manhattan Beach City Council in 1992. After he was termed out in 2005, he went to work as the senior deputy for Knabe, who has endorsed him.

Hahn has a huge name recognition advantage — she represented the San Pedro-to-Watts 15th District on the Los Angeles City Council for three terms before ruing for Congress. But Napolitano has made a strong push in recent months, and Knabe called him “the best choice” to succeed him.

Napolitano has focused on job growth, neighborhood safety, fiscal responsibility and infrastructure investment.

His campaign mailers urge people to “stop voting for Washington, D.C., politicians and join the movement to put local, nonpartisan problem-solvers into office.”

The race is nonpartisan but the district most recently has been represented by moderate Republicans, including Knabe. Hahn is a Democrat and Napolitano a Republican.

The 4th District stretches from the coastal South Bay through Long Beach and as far northeast as Hacienda Heights. It includes South Bay beach cities, Marina del Rey, Artesia, Torrance, San Pedro and Norwalk.

In February, Hahn called Washington “broken,” saying she believed she could do more on the powerful county board, which primarily deals with issues of law enforcement, health-care delivery and social services.

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Speculation was widespread that Hahn ultimately wanted to exchange her Capitol Hill digs for an office in the County Hall of Administration building that is named for her late father, legendary Supervisor Keeth Hahn.

“With so much brinkmanship in Washington, I am confident that I can get more done for our region back here at home, serving in local govement,” she said in a February 2015 interview with the Southe Califoia News Group. “It’s in my blood and my DNA.”

Her brother, James Hahn, served as mayor of Los Angeles and now is a Superior Court judge.

Hahn, in the same 2015 interview, acknowledged that a position on the five-member county board was a longtime goal.

“Honestly, I’ve probably been thinking about this my whole life,” she said. “... I always looked to a time when there would be an opening.”