With most of the city's ballots counted, Palm Springs' two incumbent City Council members, Ginny Foat and Chris Mills, held leads over their 10 challengers following the Tuesday election.

Foat led all candidates with 3,180 votes, though Mills wasn't far behind with 2,945. Their closest competitor, Barbara Beaty, had 2,536 votes.

“An election is a job review, and I'm proud of the job review,” Foat told supporters.

“Our campaign — we did everything we wanted to do,” Mills added at the Hilton.

A bevy of candidates — 12 in all — joined this year's council race in an election cycle dominated by discussion on how to solve the city's significant number of empty downtown storefronts.

It's estimated between 35 and 38 percent of Palm Springs' 22,500 registered voters participated in the election, according to City Clerk Jay Thompson.

The city typically sees a turnout of nearly 50 percent, but Tuesday's Palm Springs numbers still surpassed the Riverside County-wide turnout of around 20 percent, Thompson added.

Votes for the race's qualified write-in candidate, Willie Holland Sr., will be counted during the hand-inspection of ballots to take place in the coming days, Thompson said.

Write-in ballots first must qualify to be counted.

“You'd be surprised how many votes Mickey Mouse gets,” Thompson said Wednesday.

More than 1,000 vote-by-mail ballots, postmarked before the deadline and received by the Registrar's office on the day of the election, still had not been counted as of Wednesday, Thompson said.

Barbara Beaty trailed the incumbents by 409 votes and David Carden by 629. Thompson said it was “mathematically possible but statistically improbable” the two challengers would make up the difference.

Foat said a top priority in her next term is to “help get back on track” Palm Springs' 30 or so commercial and residential projects approved before the recession — such as the mixed-use Port Lawrence at Alejo Road and Palm Canyon Drive, as well as the proposed Mondrian and Hard Rock Hotel projects.

“Once you build them everything else will follow in place,” Foat said Tuesday.

She said the business conditions downtown aren't as bad as some challengers made them out to be during an often tense campaign.

“If you walk downtown, you don't have that many vacant buildings,” Foat said. “Our restaurants are doing well. I think we're very lucky in these economic times.”

Mayor Pro Tem Chris Mills called keeping the city's budget balanced amid dwindling tax revenues his top priority in the coming term.

Palm Springs likely will “need to do some belt-tightening” — on top of the cuts to address a $12 million deficit affecting the city budget in the last two fiscal years, Mills said.

“That's going to be hard to do” because it affects the livelihoods of many city employees as well as public services and programs, he said.

Both incumbents also identified the Museum Market Plaza specific plan, expected to come before the council later this month, as a top priority. The plan includes the Desert Fashion Plaza, which local leaders and businesses say is vital to revitalize downtown.

During the campaign, Foat accused Wessman of “holding the city hostage for many years.”

That didn't stop Wessman and Wessman Development Co. vice president Michael Braun from making an appearance at Foat's party Tuesday.

“Hey, listen, I think she's doing a good job,” Wessman said. He called her comments “political.”

“It's campaigning,” he said. “We all have to work together. Hopefully that'll happen. … We'll see.”

The most recent campaign filings also showed incumbents far outpacing the challengers. Foat led all candidates with a campaign war chest for the year of more than $77,000. Mills raised a total of more than $57,000.

Among the challengers, David Carden's fundraising most closely rivaled the incumbents', with $40,000.

Carden also is one of eight challengers who said they will serve the community in some capacity, despite their defeat this week. Read about their plans at mydesert.com.