LANCASTER, Calif.—Nine candidates, including incumbents R. Rex Parris, Sandra Johnson and Ken Mann, have thrown their hats into the ring for open seats in the city government, and this will be the first election under the new Lancaster city charter.

The election is April 10. Two City Council seats and the mayor’s slot are open. In order to win office, a candidate must garner the majority of votes cast. The winners will be sworn-in on April 24.

With all 94 precincts reporting, first-time political candidate Joe Buscaino has sent Warren Furutani back to the state Assembly by snagging 60.69 percent of votes cast in the special Council District 15 election Tuesday.

A little in excess of 16,000 of the more than 100,000 registered voters went to the polls in an election where the choice was clear-cut—City Hall outsider versus a veteran with long ties to the state’s political machinery.

Perhaps more than at any time in recent history, this year’s recognition and celebration of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is paying homage to his legacy of social justice for all.

One element of this locally was the 20th anniversary celebration of the Empowerment Congress, marked on Saturday at USC. The event featured the Rev. Al Sharpton as the keynote speaker, and he challenged the audience of thousands to maintain and protect the hard-won civil rights that Dr. King and his generation fought to achieve.

When voters in the 15th District of the Los Angeles City Council go to the polls Tuesday to select someone to fill the term left after Janice Hahn was elected to Congress, they will choose between two very distinctive candidates.

On the one hand, there is the top finisher in the primary, Joe Buscaino, who describes himself as a hometown boy who ran an Obamaesque, grassroots campaign that stunned the political veterans in the crowded field of 15 candidates.

He prides himself on his outsider status and pushes the mantra that “we can do better.”