CA-AG: Cooley Concedes! Kamala Harris Wins!

The next Attorney General of California (will be a Black/multiracial woman)

As MadProfessah has been saying for awhile, Kamala Harris will be the next Attorney General of California, after all. Her opponent Steve Cooley finally officially conceded the race today as it became more and more apparent that Harris' current lead in the excruciatingly close race was insurmountable.

The latest tally has Harris with 4,376,509 votes (or 46.0%) versus 4,324,924 votes (or 45.5%) for Cooley, a lead of 51,585 votes out of 9.5 million votes cast for Attorney General (there were 4 minor party candidates). Note, starting in November 2010 general election ballots in California will only ever have two candidates (with no write-in provision), thanks to the ill-conceived Proposition 14 which passed in June 2010. That, along with "non-partisan, "citizen-driven" re-districting should make 2012 a wild and crazy year for electoral politics, even in the deep blue state of California.

It should also be noted that Cooley received some 300,000 votes more than his party's ill-fated standard bearer, failed gubernatorial candidate ("such a lovely ring to it, dontcha think?" Meg Whitman and 150,000 votes more than that (rhymes with "witch") failed U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.


It also means that the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General all explicitly support marriage equality and oppose defending Proposition 8 in court. since they believe it is unconstitutional. In fact,  I would wager every single statewide elected official in California supports marriage equality at this point (since they are all Democrats!) 

CA-AG: Harris Has Insurmountable Lead of 43,050!

Kamala Harris now leads Steve Cooley by 43,050 votes (4,291,854 or 46.0% to 4,248,804 or 45.5%). According to the Secretary of State's office (pdf) there are are now 629,634 unprocessed ballots, with 361,588 provisional ballots and 228,854 vote-by-mail ballots. Los Angeles County has the most number of outstanding ballots, left to be counted 93,590 (73,928 of which are provisional). 82% of provisional ballots are usually counted. The thing to note is that Harris won on election day (when provisional ballots are turned in by approximate 3 percentage points and she lost vote-by-mail ballots by 8 percentage points. Of the ballots left to count, Cooley should be expected to have a net gain of 10K-20K votes at most.
(He wins VBM ballots netting approximately 20K votes but loses provisional ballots by 8K votes.)

Basically, we are where we were on election night when Harris had a slim lead but today there are far less votes to be counted, dramatically reducing Cooley's chances of retaking the lead. I'm still slightly worried that the percentage of votes left to be counted consists of less than 20% from Los Angeles County, but Harris won other relatively large counties by good margins as well. Also, there are some indications that the unprocessed ballot number is too high, making things even tougher for Cooley.

It is mathematically possible for Cooley to win but the probabilities are in the 1-2% range (he would have to win the outstanding ballots at net rates of 7-8% which the rest of the sample simply does not reflect). Los Angeles County Council President Eric Garcetti (and former Occidental College professor) called the race for Harris yesterday and urged media outlets to do the math to show how slim the possibility of Cooley winning actually is. Garcetti actually estimates that there are far LESS uncounted votes than in the unprocessed ballot status page since some of the counties have not updated their numbers in over two weeks and the total vote count is approaching 9.6 million. We'll probably hit 10 million votes cast statewide by the time everything is counted and certified next month.

CA-AG: Harris Regains Lead From Cooley

In the insanely close race for Attorney General of California, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has regained the lead from Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley after trailing for most of the last week a (wait for it!) 14,043 votes out of nearly 9 million votes cast (4,083,742 to 4,069,699 with another 750k to "minor party" candidates).

However, the remaining votes to be counted are almost entirely provisional ballots which were cast on the day of the election, where Harris is estimated to have outpolled Cooley by 3 percentage points. It is becoming increasingly likely that Harris will be the first Black woman to be California Attorney General and the first Black person to be elected statewide in over 3 decades!

CA-AG: Cooley Pulls Ahead Of Harris In Latest Vote Tally

With the vote totals updated on Friday afternoon, Republican Steve Cooley has pulled ahead of Kamala Harris for the first time in the post-election day tallies and currently leads by 22,817 votes.

Steve Cooley (Rep)     3,518,918 46.0%
Kamala D. Harris (Dem)     3,496,101 45.7%
Diane Beall Templin (AI)    133,186 1.7%
Peter Allen (Grn)     195,921 2.5%
Timothy J. Hannan (Lib)     192,018 2.5%
Robert J. Evans (P&F)     123,197 1.6%

Hopefully this does not include a large percentage of Los Angeles County ballots or else things would look  very bad indeed for Ms. Harris to become the next Attorney General of California.

With estimates of more than 2 million outstanding ballots to be counted and Cooley's campaign claiming there are more outstanding ballots in the 40 counties he won than the 18 Harris carried this result is really too close to call. With that many ballots, one probably has to give the edge to Cooley.

CA-AG: Harris Lead Now Down To 4 Digits

In the down-to-the-wire election for California Attorney General ,Kamala Harris's slim lead over Steve Cooley has been significantly reduced to 9,364 (out of over 7 million total) as numbers come in around the state, although the campaign is still expressing confidence since there are nearly one million outstanding ballots, most of which were cast within the last few days of the election when Harris was clearly leading. (In order to have a lead now, Harris must have received more votes on Election Day itself, and historically absentee and provisional votes follow the pattern of election day ballots.)

The latest tally is:

Candidate		Votes	Percent
	Kamala D. Harris (Dem)	3,307,599	45.9%
	Steve Cooley (Rep)	3,298,235	45.8%
	Diane Beall Templin (AI)	125,507	1.7%
	Peter Allen (Grn)	185,729	2.5%
	Timothy J. Hannan (Lib)	180,682	2.5%
	Robert J. Evans (P&F)	117,303	1.6%

I am still relatively confident that Harris will win, but it's gnna be a squeaker. It may even involve a recount!

Kamala Harris Now Holds Slim Lead Before Absentees Counted

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris

The latest numbers (100% of precincts counted) from the Secretary of State Debra Bowen (who was re-elected last night) show that San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has a pretty good chance to become the first female attorney general of California:

Kamala D. Harris    DEM 3,292,836    45.9%
Steve Cooley        REP 3,277,998    45.7%
Timothy J. Hannan   LIB 179,594      2.5%
Peter Allen         GRN 184,841      2.6%
Diane Beall Templin AI 124,841       1.7%
Robert J. Evans     PF 116,690       1.6%

That's a lead of 14,838 votes. There are still absentee ballots and provisional ballots outstanding. Absentee tend to be more conservative than the electorate while provisional can be either liberal or conservative, so basically all we can say is that Harris has done amazingly well in her first statewide race for office. Even if she loses the race, maybe she should consider running for Dianne Feinstein's U.S. Senate seat in 2012?

UPDATE 11/03/2010 4:37PM
The Registrar Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles County is reporting that it has some 399,960 votes to be counted. Assuming that Harris maintains her 53%-39% edge in these Los Angeles County ballots, then this should results in at least an increase in Harris' lead of 50,000 votes (assuming a 12-13 point lead for Harris in these ballots). I think we can safely say that Harris has pulled this one out. In the rest of the counties there are probably no more than 800,000-1,200,000 votes to be counted, since Los Angeles generally has about 1/3-1/4 of all votes cast statewide. Cooley would have to win all those non-LA County ballots by a greater margin than 53-47 (or 6 percentage points more than Harris) assuming there are 1.2 million ballots outstanding, and would have to win by a margin greater than 54-46 (or 8 percentage points greater than Harris) if there are only 800,000 non-LA ballots outstanding to be counted. Both scenarios seem to me to give Cooley a very unlikely chance of winning. Of course it's possible, but not very probable, that the outstanding ballots could have an overwhelmingly different character than all other ballots and be very pro-Cooley but that's a very low probability possibility. Congrats to Attorney-General-elect Kamala Harris!

Saturday Politics: Field Poll Says Newsom Leads; Harris Tied With Cooley

The latest Field Poll shows that in the Lieutenant Governor race Gavin Newsom is leading Abel Maldonado 42-37 while Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris are basically tied 39-38 for California Attorney General.

I'm pretty sure Gavin will win the LG race but I'm worried about the AG race. The internal details from Field are below:

Cooley and Harris are obtaining broad support of rank-and-file voters within their own respective parties. Among Republicans, Cooley is preferred 71% to 6%, while Democrats are supporting Harris 68% to 13%. Non-partisans and those registered with minor parties, who represent 17% of likely voters, are narrowly backing Harris by a 34% to 32% margin.

Cooley is maintaining large preference leads among voters in the traditionally Republican-leaning regions of Southern California outside of Los Angeles County (47% to 28%) and the Central Valley (44% to 30%). In his home county of Los Angeles, Cooley narrowly trails Harris 43% to 37%. Harris is preferred by a nearly two-to-one margin (52% to 27%) in the San Francisco Bay region where she lives. She also leads in less populated areas of Northern California outside the Bay Area (45% to 23%).

There is also a big coastal county-inland county divide in voter preferences in the A-G race. Cooley leads by eighteen points (46% to 28%) among voters in the state’s less populous inland counties, while Harris is preferred by six points (42% to 36%) among voters living in counties bordering the Pacific Ocean or San Francisco Bay.
Women are backing Harris by eleven points, 43% to 32%. Men are supporting Cooley by twelve points (45% to 33%).

Voters age 65 or older are backing Cooley by five points (44% to 39%). He leads among voters age 40–49 (39% to 34%). Harris is leading Cooley by four points (40% to 36%) among voters 50–64. Voters under age 40 are about evenly divided in their preferences.
White non-Hispanics favor Cooley by eight points (43% to 35%). Harris is preferred by large margins among Latinos and African-Americans. Each of the three Asian-American voter segments examined by the poll were dividing their preferences fairly evenly between the candidates, although large proportions remained undecided.

Cooley is preferred by two points (40% to 38%) among the 55% of voters who either already have voted by mail or intend to do so in the coming days. Among the 21% of voters who have already voted Cooley’s lead is even wider – 46% to 38%. Voters intending to vote at their local precinct on Election Day are evenly divided, 37% for Cooley and 37% for Harris.

CA-AG: Help Elect Kamala Harris!

CA-AG: Steve Cooley Unhappy With $150K Salary

WATCH: EQCA Tries To "Shame" Whitman and Cooley

In light of statements by Republican candidates Steve Cooley and Meg Whitman that they would defend any court ruling in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, Equality Califorina is launching the following television ads.

Whitman's gubernatorial opponent, Jerry Brown, is the current Attorney General and has refused to defend Proposition 8, as has current Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is running against Cooley for Attorney general and has said she would not defend Proposition 8 in court because she feel it is unconstitutional.





The ads are set to begin airing on Monday, September 27, and will run on the CNN, FOX and MSNBC affiliates in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego and Palm Springs metropolitan areas

MadProfessah Endorses Kamala Harris for AG

I attended the Equality California statewide candidates forum on Sunday April 25th which was a rare opportunity to see all 6 Democratic candidates running to be the next Attorney General of California.

From left to right, the candidates in the picture are Assemblymember Ted Lieu, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, former Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, Assemblymember Pedro Nava and Assemblymember Alberto Torrico. The likely Republican opponent in November is Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley.

I have seen a number of the Attorney General candidates in small group settings in my capacity as Steering Committee member of the Stonewall Democratic Club and elected delegate of the California Democratic Party.

Previously, I had been impressed with Pedro Nava. He has been endorsed by the smartest politician in California politics, LA County Democratic Chair Eric Bauman and he generally is a very effusive and energetic speaker. Unfortunately, he has very little money, although he does have Parke Skelton as his political consultant.

At the forum, it was the first time I was seeing Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico in action, and he said some very impressive things about education ("should be a civil right") and rehabilitation that made me want to take another look at him. Torrico has nice ideas but doesn't seem to be ready for the scale of a statewide race. Yet.

Ted Lieu is probably the strongest supporter of the LGBT community and hardest worker of the group (the male Judy Chu!) which has won him many LGBT Democratic club endorsements, even in such a hotly contested field. He points out that he can repeat the Ted Chiang statewide win of 2006 for State Controller, but I just don't think one can equate a State Controller race with a State Attorney General race. I do agree that the Southern California candidates have an advantage. Those are Delgadillo, Torrico and Lieu. Lieu is the only Asian in the race, and they vote in excess of their proportion in the population, which statewide is nearly 12% (statewide the Black population is close to 6%).

It's true that Nava, Delgadillo and Torrico all have Spanish surnames in a state which is hurtling towards majority-minority status, but the electorate, even the Democratic primary electorate is still majority white. Delgadillo ran for and lost this race to Jerry Brown, and instead of giving him a leg up in this race, the odor of food past it's purchase date lingers around his campaign.

However, I think this is trumped by Kamala Harris being the only woman in the race. I think the fact that she is a prosecutor (even if she is from the liberal enclave of San Francisco) will allow her to distinguish her from the crowd of guys she is running against. She's a pretty electrifying speaker and has the most "star power" of the group. She's also raised the most money (except for the self-financing Chris Kelly, who has essentially "pulled a Whitman" and written himself two $2 million checks).

On the issues, I would be happy with any of the candidates as the next Attorney General, but by electing Kamala Harris California would be really signaling we have truly entered the Obama era of politics, by electing the first African-American statewide official since Mervyn Dymally for Lieutenant Governor a generation ago when Jerry Brown was his running mate in 1974.