L.A. City Attorney, Carmen Trutanich, introduces Atty Gen candidate Steve Cooley, who while ahead in the counting at 11pm on Election Night, declares victory in front of on-air TV news cameras. As the votes were tabulated overnight, Cooley's wide 10% point lead over Democrat opponent, S.F. District Attorney Kamala Harris, dwindled. By the morning, votes for Ms. Harris actually exceeded Mr. Cooley's by 38,000 votes. As of 9am publishing time, Ms. Harris leads, but the race is still too close to call.
If her victory holds, Harris would become the first African American and first woman ever to hold the job of California attorney general. Cooley ran on a strong law-and-order message, while Harris emphasized environmental protection in her campaign. Harris proved to be a prodigious fundraiser, and received campaign help from President Obama in the closing weeks of the campaign. - Anthony York in L.A. Times Blogs
Some political analysts had all but written her off. Harris had failed to secure endorsements from most state criminal justice organizations, they noted. And, as an attractive woman with liberal roots in the Bay Area, the daughter of a Tamil Indian mother and a Jamaican American father, she just didn’t fit the profile of the state’s “top cop.”- The Nail-Biter Race in California
"Cooley looks like an Attorney General, and she doesn’t," says California political expert Barbara O’Connor, a Cal State Sacramento professor of communications.
Still, Harris’ campaign successfully launched her onto the national stage as a rising Democratic star.. Should Harris go on to beat Cooley, she will be the first woman, the first African American, South Asian American Attorney General of California.
by Gina Piccalo in The Daily Beast
