By Mary Porterfield
Contributing Writer
LOS ANGELES — Lawndale Mayor Robert Pullen-Miles will face Tina Simone McKinnor in a runoff election June 7 to replace Assemblywoman Autumn Burke in the 62nd Assembly District seat in Sacramento. The winner in June will serve the last six months of Burke’s term, ending in December.
Pullen-Miles received 37.21% of the vote in special election balloting that ended April 5, according to unofficial results released by the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Office. McKinnor, a nonprofit director and businesswoman, finished second in a four-candidate field with 35.38% of the vote.
Angie Reyes English, a Hawthorne city councilwoman and senior field deputy to Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price, finished third with 14.07% of the vote, followed by Nico Ruderman, a grassroots activist and Venice Neighborhood Council member, who was fourth with 13.35%.
The County Registrar is expected to release final vote tallies April 14.
Both Pullen-Miles and McKinnor have backgrounds in local politics. Pullen-Miles served three terms on the Lawndale City Council before being elected mayor in 2014. He also served as a district director under Burke.
“As your next Assembly member, I will do for our district what I have already done as mayor and council member — create good paying jobs, help small businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, combat our homelessness crisis and keep our communities safe and thriving,” Pullen-Miles said in announcing his candidacy in February.
McKinnor is the civic engagement director of L.A. Voice PICO, a multi-racial, multi-faith community-based organization; and is a former operational director for the California Democratic Party. She also has served as chief of staff to two Assembly members.
She is an advocate of improving the health care system, single-payer health care; has pledged to support the extension of COVID-19 sick days; supports small business; and has pledged to take an “all hands on deck” approach to deal with homelessness; and high levels of incarceration in the district.
The majority Democratic district stretches from Venice in the north, Lawndale on the south, the unincorporated Westmont, the West Athens areas on the east, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes El Segundo, Hawthorne, Inglewood; and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Westchester, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista and Del Rey, and the unincorporated communities of Del Aire, Lennox and Marina del Rey.
Burke submitted her resignation Jan. 31, citing family priorities. First elected to the Assembly in 2014, she is the daughter of trailblazing Black politician Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who served in the state Legislature, Congress and on the county Board of Supervisors during a 41-year career as an elected official.
Pullen-Miles and McKinnor will be on the June 7 primary ballot twice. Besides competing for the current 62nd Assembly District seat, they are also competing in the newly drawn 61st Assembly District seat, which covers most of the old 62nd District.
English and Ruderman are also seeking the 61st Assembly District seat in June, along with James Spencer, a Republican environmental consultant from Inglewood.
The top two vote getters in the 61st Assembly District race, will face each other in the Nov. 8 general election, with the winner taking office in December.
