Assembly member Curren Price Jr. spoke to students about his new
youth voter initiative last week at Loyola Marymount University
in Los Angeles.

CORRECTION: The original headline stated that Price had won the State Senate seat, when in fact he won only the primary election. He still must win the May 19 runoff election to secure the seat, as noted in the article.

In a less than inspiring turnout at the polls Tuesday, California Assembly member Curren Price Jr. won the primary election with 36 percent of the vote, but he still needs to win a runoff in May before he can fill Mark Ridley-Thomas's old seat in the State Senate.

Price's closest competitor, fellow Assembly member Mike Davis, snagged
22 percent of the vote, according to the semi-official tally from the
county registrar's office. See the complete results here.

The election was open to all political parties, but in order to win
outright, a candidate needed to receive more than 50 percent of the
vote. Now the top vote-getter from each party goes on to a runoff
folded into a special statewide election on May 19. Because six of the
eight candidates were Democrats, including Price, the remaining two
candidates will automatically advance.

Rabbi
Nachum Shifren, a former school teacher, will represent the Republican party, while communications technician and union member Cindy Varela Henderson will represent the Peace and Freedom Party, if they choose to continue campaigning.

The victory was less than a mandate from the people, with only six percent of nearly 400,000 registered voters turning out on election day. The county registrar said before Tuesday that a low turnout could be
expected because no other items were on the ballot to draw people to
the polls.

In contrast, a third of registered voters in the district turned out to elect Mark Ridley-Thomas in June 2006, but that was also a gubernatorial primary that included the races for secretary of state and controller, along with two state measures.

The special primary election was called for after former Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas won a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and left an opening late last year in the highly diverse 26th District, which includes Culver City, West Hollywood, and parts of South Los Angeles and Koreatown, among other neighborhoods.

Read our full coverage here.