Early results after the polls closed Tuesday night showed a tight margin in the race for Tustin’s mayor, with Leticia Clark having a slight lead over incumbent Austin Lumbard. Incumbent Ray Schnell took an early lead ahead of his opponent in the race for the City Council.
Tustin voters are deciding whether to keep the city’s current leadership, with incumbents running for re-election in both the mayoral race and a council seat this year.
LIVE ELECTION RESULTS: See a chart of the latest vote counts
In the mayor’s race, incumbent Austin Lumbard, a businessman who has served as Tustin’s mayor since 2021, faces a challenge from Letitia Clark, a chief communications officer and former Tustin mayor and council member who helped guide the city through COVID-19.
Clark said she anticipates the gap between the mayoral candidates will widen. She said turnout from Democratic voters increased in the last couple of weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election night, and said she sees it as a good sign.
When it comes to what set the two apart, she said the main differences came down to style and approach.
“We did a lot of person-to-person connections,” Clark said of her campaign. “We knocked on thousands of doors and made a lot of calls.”
No matter what the final outcome may be, Clark said she’s proud of the campaign she ran. “I think we inspired and motivated the folks we connected to, and that’s a good thing. If we do a campaign right, it should inspire the community to feel hopeful about what’s to come.”
Lumbard said voters resonated with his campaign priorities, which “focused on local issues and tried to ignore the national narratives.”
He said Tustin residents “deserve a safe and clean city where their voices are heard at city hall,” and said his ability to deliver on those promises and continue to do so if elected is what sets him apart.
In the District 3 council race, incumbent Ray Schnell, the city’s mayor pro tem and a business executive in financial services, faces Thomas Reed, a restorative justice consultant and assistant professor at Cal State Long Beach who served on a neighborhood council and its land use and planning committee.
Lumbard is running on Tustin’s fiscal strength and public safety record, while Clark has campaigned on diversifying the city’s housing portfolio and transparency, pointing to her previous elected experience, which included leading efforts to develop the city’s Engage Tustin mobile app.
Schnell points to results from his four years on the council — including a 46% drop in total crime and four years of balanced budgets — while Reed, who says he is personally funding his campaign rather than accepting outside donations, has emphasized integrity and putting residents “at the top of our city’s power structure.”