County’s Final Ballot Tally Produces No Surprises : Election: Slim leads widen for two council candidates in close races. Wilson has 216,000-vote margin over Feinstein.

SANTA ANA — Orange County Registrar of Voters Donald Tanney released final vote totals Monday from the Nov. 6 election that had been held up by a court challenge, but the results yielded no surprises or reversals of predicted outcomes in county races.

Workers for the registrar of voters spent the weekend tabulating about 55,000 absentee ballots. Most races in the county had long been decided, but candidates were neck-and-neck in in two city council battles, and the remaining ballots could have made a difference.

In the statewide races, Gov.-elect Pete Wilson’s final margin over Democrat Dianne Feinstein in Orange County was about 216,000 votes.

That made him the only GOP statewide candidate to win Orange county by more than 200,000 votes, although Atty. Gen.-elect Dan Lungren nearly reached that figure, beating Democrat Arlo Smith by 198,443 votes.

Political analysts generally agree that a statewide candidate who carries Orange County by at least 200,000 votes is almost assured of winning.

In Costa Mesa, City Council candidate Jay Humphrey widened his lead over Karen McGlinn from 59 votes to 147 and secured the final seat, while Anaheim City Councilman Irv Pickler picked up a net gain of 6 votes to finish 152 votes ahead of council colleague Miriam Kaywood.

McGlinn had suggested earlier that she might request a recount, but on Monday she said she would not.

“No, it’s not a realistic margin,” McGlinn said. “Mr. Humphrey won and I’m sure he’ll do a great job.”

In the 72nd Assembly District, where freshman Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) had held out slim hopes of closing the gap on Democratic challenger Tom Umberg, it was Umberg who got the majority of the remaining votes, winning the race by 1,836 votes.

It was a lawsuit filed by Smith’s campaign that led to the week’s delay in obtaining final results in Orange County. The vote count was halted by a court order on Nov. 10 after attorneys for Smith’s campaign complained that the tabulation procedures used by Tanney violated state laws designed to prevent fraudulent applications for absentee ballots. Smith dropped the complaint last Friday but still has a second lawsuit pending challenging absentee ballot procedures statewide.

Tanney said his staff went back to work counting ballots as soon as the court order was lifted Friday. After a break Friday night, they were back again processing absentee ballots Saturday and Sunday--starting about 6 a.m. both days--and they finished about 2 p.m. Sunday, Tanney said.

The results were reviewed for possible computer errors, and final results were printed out at 8:07 Monday morning.

Mary Anne Perez contributed to this story.