The lead for Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, in his 27th Congressional District reelection race grew by a few thousand votes, based on the returns counted as of press time Wednesday, leading Democrat challenger George Whitesides by nearly 4,800 votes, 115,772-111,005.   After the first early results on Election Night, Garcia held the slimmest of leads with just over 91,000 votes and 50.1% of the tally.  Both Garcia and Whitesides have declined to make themselves available Wednesday for interviews, but Whitesides issued a statement saying it was “too close to call,” after their gap grew from the vote-by-mail ballot counts released Tuesday night.  “We have always known that the path to taking back the majority of the U.S. House runs through CA-27 — and that couldn’t be more true today. With control of the House hanging in the balance, our race is more important than ever,” Whitesides said in a statement released via email by campaign spokeswoman Emma Harris. “There are still tens of thousands of uncounted ballots in our district.”  Garcia campaigned on a message that stressed the importance of security — economic, domestic and in people’s backyards — which also figured prominently into the strategy of both the Santa Clarita Valley’s Republican candidates for the state Legislature.  Senate  The open seat created by the terming out of state Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, after 12 years in the Legislature — four in the Assembly, eight in the Senate — looks to stay in GOP hands based on the early returns.  Republican candidate Suzette Martinez Valladares said that, after a tough loss in the Assembly in 2022, it’s been “a busy two years” on the campaign trail as she tried to work her way back to Sacramento.  “We ran as hard as possible,” she said, adding her field team with more than 300 interns knocked on more than 187,000 doors in the district.  “And I really feel like, you know, this is a mandate in California. We’re seeing it in my race, I think across California races,” she said.   She said public safety and affordability were constant concerns she heard, and when asked which one felt more urgent: “At the end of the day, what hurts your pocketbook, you feel daily, right?” adding that public safety was “very close.”   The Democratic candidate, Kipp Mueller, who took strong criticism late in the campaign trail over accusations he embellished his prosecutorial chops, has so far declined to address the media.  His campaign referred a request for an interview to a post Wednesday on X:  “Thank you to every single person who invested their time, energy, money and votes in our campaign,” he said. “There are way too many ballots outstanding to predict what will happen in our race, so stay tuned as we get daily updates.”  The state has yet to release how many ballots have yet to be counted, with an update expected Thursday.   The L.A. County Registrar Recorder’s Office announced Wednesday evening that nearly 2.7 million votes have been counted so far, which is 47% of the number of registered voters. There are 1,116,100 outstanding ballots, the office said. That breaks down as approximately 1 million vote-by-mail ballots, 104,000 conditional voter registration ballots and 12,100 provisional ballots.  The office stated Wednesday evening that 80,941 additional ballots have been counted since Election Night.   Assembly  The race between Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, and Republican challenger Patrick Gipson, a retired L.A. County sheriff’s deputy, also remained too close to call Wednesday, with subsequent returns pushing Gipson significantly closer.  Schiavo led 85,641 to 83,117 after a 4:30 p.m. Wednesday update from the L.A. County Registrar Recorder’s Office.   “We’re still optimistic. We know that when Election Day votes come in that last time we ended up 9,000 votes behind after that drop, and so the fact that we are ahead by 2,500 votes after Election Day votes have dropped, we feel, you know, very optimistic, but we want to make sure every vote is counted,” Schiavo said Wednesday afternoon.  “We spent two years delivering on the things that mattered most to people in our community, putting money back in people’s pockets,” she said, sharing some of the programs helped by the $95 million in state funding for the district.  Both Gipson and Valladares said they were optimistic about the way the votes were trending, both mentioning public safety as a top issue that they connected with voters on over the campaign trail.   Gipson mentioned District Attorney George Gascón’s day-after concession call, along with more than 70% of voters supporting Proposition 36 — which called for stiffer penalties for drug and theft crimes — as proof his public safety message had resonated with voters in the district.   “We’re in the waiting mode on the tarmac, you know, make sure everything comes in,” Gipson said Wednesday, adding that, with less than 1% between the two now, everything was still “up in the air.”  Gascón called challenger Nathan Hochman to concede Wednesday, with Hochman’s lead growing to more than a half-million votes following the latest count.  Santa Clarita City Council  An already-close race somehow got even tighter Wednesday, with now just 37 votes separating the top-two hopefuls for the city of Santa Clarita’s first-ever District 1.  Candidate Patsy Ayala had 3,219 votes, or 34.72%, while Tim Burkhart had 3,182 votes, or 34.33%. Bryce Jepsen remains in third as of Wednesday evening’s update.  Nearly 280 votes separated the two on Election Night, with Burkhart leading from the initial count.  The post Garcia’s lead grows after updated tally  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.