Harris trailed in early returns Tuesday but steadily narrowed the gap as the night progressed. By early Wednesday, she had overtaken her Republican challenger, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley - but just barely.
With all of the state's precincts reporting semi-official results Wednesday afternoon, the San Francisco prosecutor led by only 14,800 votes - about 0.2 percent - in a race where more than 7 million ballots were cast.
The secretary of state's office does not know exactly how many votes still need to be tallied, but spokeswoman Shannan Velayas estimated that there are tens of thousands of uncounted damaged, provisional and absentee ballots at county registrars' offices.
Velayas said counties have 28 days to complete their counts before the results are handed over to the secretary of state, who has until Dec. 10 to certify final results.
Harris confident
Harris campaign officials said they are confident that the two-term top prosecutor will ultimately prevail because the uncounted ballots will bolster her lead.
"We are very optimistic," said Harris campaign spokesman Brian Brokaw. "We always believed that any results on election night that showed us within an incredibly close margin would lead us to victory, because of all of the outstanding ballots that have yet to be counted. We believe they will be very reflective of the election day vote."
Cooley's campaign - which had declared victory Tuesday night - on Wednesday wasn't willing to bet on the outcome, however.
"The bottom line is that it will be very close," said spokesman Kevin Spillane "There are still over 1 million provisional and absentee ballots to be counted. We will likely know the result in a couple weeks, but it could go" until December.
Surprisingly close
The closeness of the race came as somewhat of a surprise, despite recent polls showing a virtual dead heat between two prosecutors who were largely unknown to voters outside their respective regions before the campaign began.
Cooley, a moderate Republican who has been elected three times in the Democratic stronghold of Los Angeles County, was considered the favorite. He ran on a traditional law-and-order platform, while Harris focused on less typical issues including shrinking the state's recidivism rate and tackling school truancy.
But polls had shown his lead shrinking in the final weeks of the campaign as Harris increased her attacks on Cooley's record and Democrats pulled ahead in all of the other statewide races.
Top Republican
Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP consultant, noted that even if Cooley ends up losing, he will still be the top Republican vote-getter in all of the statewide races. Cooley, Hoffenblum said, "could still pull it out."
"The top of the ticket lost by 13 points," he said, referring to GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. "It's very different running as a Republican - he ran for D.A. as a nonpartisan - he didn't have to put Republican under his name. The brand hurt him."
Harris, on the other hand, was dogged on the campaign trail by her liberal background, particularly her opposition to the death penalty. Cooley and his supporters hit her hard in recent weeks with attack ads in Democratic Los Angeles County, including a last-minute, $1 million-plus ad buy by a national Republican group. Harris, however, began running ads early, both to introduce herself to voters and critique Cooley's record; she also spent much of her time in recent months campaigning and raising money in Los Angeles, a strategy that paid off.
Harris ultimately gained a foothold there, and overwhelmingly won the voter-rich county by more than 14 percentage points.
E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.
For more election-related news and information, visit our California Elections 2010 page.
This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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