Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Page 3
Harris Nears Victory in Close Contest for Attorney General
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris (D) has an all-but-insurmountable lead over Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley (R) as more vote-by-mail and provisional ballots were counted yesterday in the close contest for California attorney general.
As of 3:41 p.m., Secretary of State Debra Bowen reported, Harris had 4,362,484 votes, or 46 percent, to Cooley’s 4,308,720, or 45.5 percent, giving Harris a lead of 53,764 votes.
The state’s chief elections officer further reported that as of 5 p.m., fewer than 155,000 votes remain to be counted statewide, meaning that Cooley would need to win the remaining ballots by more than 20 percentage points to gain election.
In addition, 35,500 of those ballots are in Sonoma County, where Harris took 57 percent of the vote. And no votes remained to be processed in Cooley’s stronghold of Orange County.
Election officials in each of the 58 counties must complete their tallies by Tuesday and report the results to Bowen’s office by Dec. 3.
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