Harris Hold On To Lead Over Cooley In Attorney General Race
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is leading Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley by 29,738 votes in the attorney general's race entering Wednesday's ballot count.
Harris has 4,189,949 votes to Cooley's 4,160,211, or 46 percent versus 45.6 percent, according to the Secretary of State's Office.
An estimated 761,218 ballots remain uncounted – 278,828 vote-by-mail ballots, 437,832 provisional ballots and 44,558 that are either damaged, could not be read by a machine and need to be remade and ballots diverted by optical scanners for further review.
Harris has led since Friday. Cooley, a Republican, had led from Nov. 5 until Friday.
When polls closed Nov. 2, Cooley declared victory. But by early Nov. 3, Harris led by almost 15,000 votes.
State law says county registrars of voters must complete the vote counting by Nov. 30 and provide their counts to the Secretary of State's Office by Dec. 3.
Harris is trying to become the first woman and first black to be elected as California's attorney general. Cooley is trying to become the only Republican in California to win a statewide election this year.
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