First-time Culver City City Council candidate Meghan Sahli-Wells was trailing Jeff Cooper by a scant 42 votes for the second city council seat in one of the closest races in recent memory, according to the city clerk’s unofficial tally released Wednesday, April 14 as the News went to press.

Sahli-Wells, a community organizer who co-founded the Neighborhood Action Network to lobby for smaller-scale development, has 2,237 votes to Cooper’s 2,279 with a number of provisional ballots still to be counted.

Robert Zirgulis, the mercurial candidate who made red-light traffic cameras and, near the end of the election cycle, locating convicted sex offenders the staples of his campaign, totaled 770 votes.

The race for the second council seat in the Tuesday, April 13 election turned into one of the most exciting general elections in -several years due to the narrow margin between Cooper and Sahli-Wells.

At her post-election party in Carlson Park on Tuesday night, the mood was upbeat among the candidate’s supporters. Sahli-Wells appeared to be equally cheerful, and although she spoke in terms of finality, the first-time candidate for public office seemed to be holding onto a glimmer of hope.

“I think the number of votes that I received was quite respectable,” Sahli-Wells said. “I’m not really seeing this as a loss, but more as a community victory. I had amazing grassroots support.”

Sahli-Wells said she did not look at herself as an “establishment candidate” and credited her supporters for her position in the race.

“I’ve had the extreme fortune of having really dedicated people along with me the whole way,” she said. “My campaign managers, my consultants, and my neighborhood.

“I think that we really started a fantastic movement that’s based on the idea that we really can achieve a sustainable economy and a sustainable community, and that really is the wave of the future.”

The council candidate said development was one of the topics that she thinks resonated with the electorate.

“A lot of us in Culver City are cognizant of the fights that have gone on in the past and the sterility of these fights,” she said. “What I’ve been proposing is that we be more inclusive and more respectful in the way that we talk about development in Culver City.

“This is something that I’ve been working on with the Neighborhood Action Network, and we’ve been able to change some of the policies on how City Halls looks at development.”

Karlo Silbigier, one of Sahil-Wells’ campaign advisors, who has run several local election campaigns, spoke about the election in the past tense.

“I think that it’s very obvious that voters were very impressed with Meghan, with the way that she campaigned and the issues that she brought forward, and I’m hopeful that the city council is going to take that very seriously as they move forward,” said Silbiger, a member of the Culver City Unified School District Board of Education. “It was a very, very close election and she did a very good job.”

Sibigier’s father, Gary, who is finishing his second term on the city council, was also involved in a political horserace that ended in a photo finish. The elder Silbiger defeated Paul A. “Chip” Netzel in 2002 in an equally close race as the current campaign for the second council seat, by a margin of only 58 votes, 2,110 to 2,052. Albert Vera won his third term that year with 3,184 votes.

Contacted the morning after the election, Zirgulis said he called incumbent councilman Scott Malsin to congratulate him on election night. Malsin retained his council seat by winning 2,266 votes.

“Considering that I was greatly outspent by the opposition, I think that I did fairly well,” said Zirgulis, who ran for and lost a CCUSD board seat in November. “I got my messages out to the public about sexual offenders living in Culver City and the red-light cameras, so I think that I did pretty good.”

The vote is still unofficial, and Sahli-Wells was not yet ready to concede.

“Let’s wait for the final count,” she suggested. “Everybody wants to do things by the book, and nobody wants a false victory.

“I’m not crying foul or trying to be contentious, but getting the final count is the least that we can do for Culver City.”

When asked if she would consider another run for office if she is still trailing after the provisional ballots are counted, Sahli-Wells responded, “Absolutely. I certainly would.”