18 Months ago I posted a diary promoting Kamala Harris for CA-AG. I have wanted to post another diary, promoting her, ever since, but this time, I wanted to write something personal, not just a PR piece, parroting what her campaign puts out. Now, today, on Facebook, a good friend of mine, someone who has long been very politically active, posted a question about the CA-AG, and I responded, expressing my support for Kamala Harris, and one other individual also responded, which sparked a debate, between myself and him, but I am being generous in describing it as a debate, because what it was, was not an intelligent debate at all, it was a Republican Rovian Swift-boat attack to discredit Kamala and it illustrates, I believe, what we are dealing with today in this mid-term election, and why we must MUST vote, and vote passionately, to finish what we started, in '06 and '08 ... no matter what Obama might or might not have done. Cause, it ain't about him, it is about us, and every other role in government, at every level, local and national. It matters, so ...
***** GOTV *****
What follows is the "blow-by-blow" day-to-day analysis of the race, starting from last Wednesday, November 10th, when Cooley was leading by 43,000 votes, to today, Friday, November 19th.
Kamala's Favorite Quote:
"You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last."
~ my mother, Shyamala G. Harris ~
A Look at the Attorney General race--Kamala Harris
by Eric Garcetti ~ President, Los Angeles City Council
NOTE: I have received the expressed permission from
Eric Garcetti to post this commentary on DailyKos.
www.facebook.com/garcetti
www.EricGarcetti.com
UPDATE #16: WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 10TH MORNING
Cooley up by 43,000+ votes.
The current SoS stats have Cooley up by 43,000+ votes.
The LA bump did what we expected, with a bump of about 10,000. Harris's gap was narrowed, but a 7:30 update widened it back to where we started yesterday. While many of the votes came in from more conservative places, this is still a sizable gap and many of the votes came in from more liberal counties. These should be the end of the VBMs prior to election day and the last VBMs and provisionals should be more for Harris, but by a narrow margin. If the rest break at a 2% margin for Harris (she won election day by about 3%, but this factors in the VBM dynamic), Harris would gain about 25,000 votes in the remaining ballots, not enough to close the gap. But since Cooley has gained so much in the last couple of days, she may gain as much as 4-5% on these remaining ballots.
Max Kanin's 8PM update last night was the best, so I will reprint it here from the comments section:
"I looked at the updates today. Harris only net gained 9,971 votes out of LA County. She also net gained only 322 in San Francisco. Cooley appears to have net gained 4735 votes in Sacramento County. However, ther was some excellent news ...today. Another 16k ballots were counted in San Diego County and Cooley was held to a net gain of 2570 votes. In Ventura County, Cooley was held to a net gain of 378 votes. Harris picked up a netgain of 5,285 votes in San Mateo County, 177 votes in San Benito County, and amazingly net gained 1276 votes in Orange County today!
What is striking about Orange County is where the ballots are coming from. 3185 of the ballots counted today were VBMs returned at the precinct on election day. 4,723 of the ballots were provisionals. And 1,343 of the balltos counted today were paper ballots. For whatever reason, they did not finish the 1,175 remaining regular VBMs. I wouldn't expect Harris to gain votes out of Orange County but I do think that the results bode well for her in that the new round of ballots counted today were those cast in some form on election day.
As for what's left to count in Orange County:3,239 Paper Ballots1,175 Regular VBMs12,763 VBMs returned at the precincts.37,139 Provisionals."
Look for Alameda County and Los Angeles to close this gap (some of LA's vote isn't on this morning's SoS web site), probably by about 15-20,000 votes.
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UPDATE #17: WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 10TH AFTERNOON UPDATE
Cooley up by 9,555 votes.
Wow! Looks like a big bump back in Harris' direction with Alameda and Ventura being reported on the SoS web site as reporting in today so far. This takes Harris to less than 10,000 votes behind Cooley (9555 to be exact). I'll try to see how much is left in LA and in some of the other big counties, and we'll have a better sense of that when the SoS puts out its Unprocessed Ballots Report at the end of the day.
UPDATE #18: FRIDAY NOVEMBER 12TH EVENING UPDATE
Harris now leads by 5,576 votes (UPDATE: 3609 votes)
Sorry for the radio silence--day job and all :) So, it was a very exciting couple of days with Cooley's lead cut to under 10,000, then jumping up to almost 20,000, then Harris taking a lead again in the late Friday ballots (remember that LA County is doing late Friday and Tuesday updates). Harris now leads by 5,576 votes (UPDATE: 3609 votes). So here is the quick and dirty of what is left:
- There are an estimated 900,000 votes left, so don't get too excited yet.
- Of these votes, the biggest chunk is in Los Angeles County--209,000
- The next two biggest chunks are in San Diego (72,000) and Orange County (54,000). Combined these are 126,000.
- The other Cooley-leaning counties that still have at least 10,000 votes outstanding are: Kern, Fresno, Riverside, San Bernadino, San Joaquin (a smaller Cooley margin), Butte, and Ventura (also a smaller Cooley margin). These add up to a total of 172,886 more votes (combine with San Diego and Orange and you have about 299,000 votes in pro-Cooley counties)
- The other Harris-leaning counties with about 10,000 or above votes outstanding are: Yolo, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Napa, Monterey, Mendocino, Marin, Humboldt, Contra Costa, and Alameda. Together, they have about 302,539 votes left, which together with Los Angeles means there are about 512,000 votes in pro-Harris counties.
- The remaining votes are scattered in smaller amounts, some in pro-Harris counties and some in pro-Cooley counties.
- I expect the remaining votes to break in Harris' favor by about 25,000 votes if they reflect the percentages in these counties on the day after Election Day. But since there is ample reason to believe that the remaining votes (late VBMs and provisionals) will break a few percentage points more in Harris' favor, she could pick up an additional 2-5% of this vote, giving her another 4-10,000 votes. This would leave Harris with a win of about 40-45,000 votes in the end.
In conclusion, things are looking very good for the Harris camp.
UPDATE #19: SATURDAY NOVEMBER 13TH AM UPDATE
Harris ahead by 3,609 votes.
From the LA Times last night:
"Updated numbers from several counties put Harris ahead by 3,609 votes.
Harris, the Democratic candidate, was buoyed by updated vote counts from several counties where she had outpolled Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, the Republican, on election day, including Los Angeles, Contra Costa, Marin and Santa Clara.
[As of 6:30 p.m. Friday]
Harris ahead by 303 votes.
Harris had 4,117,728 votes compared to 4,117,425 for Cooley, according to a Times review of website updates by all 58 counties.
[Updated at 8:25 p.m.]
Harris ahead by 3,609 votes.
The numbers give Harris 4,131,847 votes to Cooley's 4,128,238.]
The secretary of state reported late Friday that Harris was leading by about 5,500 votes, but its count lagged more than 150,000 votes behind the most recent figures provided by each county."
That said, the SoS web site has only 4,083,742 votes for Harris and only 4,069,699 for Harris. This would be about a 14,000 vote lead, but notice these are lower numbers of votes for both candidates than the LA Times' numbers, which should thus be more accurate.
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UPDATE #20 SATURDAY NOVEMBER 13TH PM UPDATEHarris Harris ahead by 3,609 votes.
Thanks again Max Kanin for an update on today (from my comments section on this note)--
"Most counties were not counting (or not updating) today but a few counties did update their numbers. Cooley net gained 2189 votes in Orange County today. Though going by the LA Times numbers, Harris would still lead statewide by 1420 votes. The good news is that Orange County is nearly done processing ballots. They estimate 11,089 left overall to process including:
- 175 Regular Vote By Mail ballots
- 4665 Regular Vote By Mail ballots returned at polling precincts
- 6,198 Provisional ballots
- 51 Paper Election Day ballots
Cooley was able to regain the lead last week largely on the strength of Orange County reporting its Vote By Mail ballots. But this week, the number of gains has dropped to a mere trickle. Harris has retaken the lead and there's not that much left to count.
Also, Harris gained 351 votes in San Francisco today. Cooley gained 77 votes in Ventura County today."
UPDATE #21 SUNDAY NOVEMBER 14TH UPDATE
Harris ahead by 14,091 votes.
The Secretary of State web site now has more votes counted than the LA Times' analysis and has Harris at 4,094,756 votes and Cooley at 4,080,667 votes for a lead by Harris of 14,091 votes. This is a difference of 1 voter among every 500 that voted. Incredible. Looks like the new votes came in from Nevada County today and there were votes from San Bernardino, Contra Costa, and Orange reported yesterday (Saturday).
UPDATE #22 MONDAY NOVEMBER 15TH UPDATE
Harris ahead by 13,796 votes.
I missed a Secretary of State update at 5PM last night that puts the totals at 4,095,203 for Harris and 4,081,407 for Cooley, with Harris continuing to lead by almost 14,000 votes (13,796 to be exact). These votes came in from Orange County, which accounts for why Harris lost about 300 votes among 1300 votes counted from there.
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UPDATE #23 MONDAY NOVEMBER 15TH EARLY AFTERNOON UPDATE
Harris ahead by 15,199 votes.
First SoS numbers of the day have Harris up now by 15,199 votes (4,100,656 to 4,085,457), so about 9,000 more votes and Harris picked up a lead of more than 14000 from those. Expect this to be more of the trend as we move forward. These votes came from Ventura, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties. More provisionals than VBMs are now outstanding, and these will break for Harris most likely.
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UPDATE #24 MONDAY NOVEMBER 15TH EVENING
Harris ahead by 31,483 votes.
Jump for Harris--up by 31,483 (4,127,981 to 4,096,498). These came at least partially from Alameda, Alpine, Contra Costa, Del Norte, and Siskiyou. Trends continue upward for Harris.
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UPDATE #25 MONDAY NOVEMBER 15TH NIGHT
Harris ahead by 31,483 votes.
So a the SoS web site has about 774,000 votes outstanding. 437,000 of these are provisional, of which about 85% will count. There are 44,558 damaged ballots, of which about a third can be discounted. With VBMs, that leaves about 693,000 ballots. If you discount the percentage that didn't vote for anyone for AG and those who voted for someone else besides Harris and Cooley, you have about 610,000 votes left with a 31,483 vote lead for Harris. The remaining votes that are going to one of them would have to break with a more than 5% vote margin for Cooley--highly unlikely, given both the county mix and the high percentage of provisional ballots, which will reflect Harris' 3% Election Day margin more accurately. Expect Harris to win by 50-100,000 at this point.
UPDATE #26 TUESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH AM
Harris ahead by 30,997 votes.
Last night, SoS updated numbers and Harris lost a bit, but not much (4,138,170 for Harris vs. 4,107,173 for Cooley). She is still up by 30,997 votes. They seem to have come from Colusa, Orange, and Riverside. Expect a big bump by end of day or tomorrow morning, when LA's Tuesday count comes in. She might be leading by as much as 40,000 or more by day's end.
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UPDATE #27 TUESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH PM
MORNING: Harris ahead by 18,064 votes.
AFTERNOON: Harris ahead by 29,738 votes.
So mid-day, Harris' lead had dropped to 18,064 when some smaller counties came in, together with Imperial, Ventura, and a couple of others. Looks like some LA ones dropped around 3PM, giving Harris a boost back to 29,738 votes (4,189,949 for Harris versus 4,160,211 for Cooley). There may still be an update later today.
Stay tuned....
UPDATE #28 WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 17TH EARLY AM
Approximately 761,000 votes are left to count. Of these, nearly 157,000 come from LA, but there are still a lot from both pro-Cooley and pro-Harris counties. About 600,000 of these will have a vote for either Harris or Cooley that gets counted. Cooley will need to win by a 5% margin to tie things up, which is unlikely, given the geographic distribution and the later nature of the ballots left.
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UPDATE#29 WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 17TH PM
Harris ahead by 30,730 votes.
Harris up by 30,730 at the end of the day (4,203,346 votes for Harris versus 4,172,616 for Cooley). 672,000 left to count. There are still a lot of votes left to count from Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego (about 185,000 in those counties), strong pro-Cooley counties. Add in San Joaquin (a milder pro-Cooley county), and the big chunks of pro-Cooley votes add up to about 225,000. LA is down to only 94,000 left, but combined with Marin and San Francisco, Sonoma, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Napa (146,500 combined), there are about 240,500 in pro-Harris counties. Will continue to be a nail-biter, but Cooley now needs to win by a margin of about 6% in the remaining votes to close the gap. This is still highly unlikely.
Max has a good detailed update and agrees with my conclusion:
- Fresno County: Harris + 84
- Nevada County: Cooley + 2
- Santa Clara County: Harris + 2626
- San Diego County: Cooley + 371
- San Francisco: Harris + 2185
- Orange County: Cooley + 126
- Riverside County: Harris + 138
- Ventura County: Harris + 93
- San Mateo County: Harris + 2799
Alameda County and San Mateo County have finished. The San Diego Registrar/County Recorder estimates that it has 27,000 ballots left to count. Orange County has 912 ballots left to process. This includes 72 Provisional ballots and 840 Vote By Mail Ballots dropped at election day precincts. There are 18,400 Provisional Ballots left to be processed in Riverside County. The next updates out of San Bernardino County, San Diego County, and Los Angeles County are scheduled for Friday.
Frankly, I think Kamala Haris has won this. I mean I don't want to jinx it and I'm unfortunately not great at mathematics/statistics. But I think the only question now is the margin. The small rural NorCal counties that went heavily for Cooley have mostly finished counting (and this week, the SOS website updated their numbers to include new returns). The few that haven't reported have small numbers to report at best. Provisionals, as expected, are breaking heavily in Harris's favor and she's winning them in Southern California counties that voted overwhelmingly for Cooley. Those counties have pretty much finished their counting of Vote By Mail ballots (which broke to him by far less than expected). The Central Valley counties that Cooley won big are pretty much the same story. Their Vote By Mail ballots did boost Cooley but by the same margins as before and the Provisionals broke to Harris. The Central Valley counties are pretty much done as well.
The only counties with significant outstanding totals are San Diego County with roughly 27k to count and Los Angeles County with 93k to count. With a 30k vote lead statewide, if every ballot in San Diego County went to Cooley, he'd still trail. And he's gained little in San Diego County. Yesterday, he net lost votes down there. And LA County has continued to move strongly in Harris's direction. While the number of votes left to count exceeds Harri's lead, I think statistically, it's almost impossible for Cooley to win at this point.
UPDATE #30 THURSDAY NOVEMBER 18TH AM
Harris ahead by 32,685 votes.
Early morning reports have Harris expanding her lead slightly based on new returns from Glenn County and possibly some late returns from yesterday from San Mateo and Riverside. The current count is 4,220,378 for Harris to 4,187,683 for Cooley, a lead of 32,685 for Harris.
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UPDATE #31 THURSDAY NOVEMBER 18TH MIDDAY
Harris ahead by 30,240 votes.
About 10,000 more votes reporting: 4,224,230 for Harris and 4,193,990 for Cooley--a lead of 30,240 for Harris. These results seem to have come in from Calaveras, Colusa, Shasta, and Ventura counties.
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UPDATE #32 THURSDAY NOVEMBER 18TH LATE AFTERNOON
Harris ahead by 29,399 votes.
Harris up 29,399 (4,245,849 to 4,216,450) with another 47,000 votes in from Sacramento, San Fancisco, Placer, Mono, and Alpine.
UPDATE #33 FRIDAY NOVEMBER 19TH EARLY MORNING--DECLARING THIS FOR KAMALA
Harris ahead by 29,406 votes.
Harris up 29,406 votes with another 10,000 or so in (4,250,391 to 4,220,985). Max has a mini-update from yesterday, which includes the stat that Orange County only has 464 ballots left, so my estimates (which have been based on the SoS outstanding ballots estimate (which is quite old for most counties) have been too big. There are probably only about 200,000-220,000 ballots left (and possibly as few as about 130,000).
Here is Max's update:
"An update to the Placer County website showed Cooley gaining 10256 votes. The update has been included with the SOS numbers but Harris still has just under a 30k vote lead. Placer County has finished counting and ...that this is their last update and the gain is relative to election day. Harris gained 46 votes in San Benito County, another 1164 votes in San Francisco County, and 314 votes in Stanislaus County. Harris also had a large gain out of Sacramento County today. Unfortunately, I lost track of the numbers and they updated very quickly. It seems like if my memory serves me correctly, she gained about 3000 votes today or so. Given how many Provisionals they had left to tabulate when they last updated, I'd have to believe that Sacramento County has either finished counting or is very close to the end. Cooley net gained 72 in Riverside County , 139 in Tehama County, and 92 in Orange County. Riverside County has 14,000 Provisional Ballots left to count. Orange County has 464 ballots left to count. Ventura County did not update today and I think they might be done (they've been updating even on weekends)."
That said, I am calling this for Kamala Harris. There is no way (especially with the bulk of provisionals left coming from Los Angeles), that Cooley is going to see the last 200,000 ballots (of which only about 95% will have an AG choice, of which only 91% will choose either Cooley or Harris, and for the provisionals of which only about 82% will be counted, leaving a universe at best of around 142,000, of which Cooley would have to win these by 21%, which given the distribution, has less than a 1% chance of happening.
I know that those of you who have been following know that I have said a lot could happen and I have been wary to declare this one way or the other, but I have close to 100% confidence that she has won the race. Even if the outstanding ballots are wrong and there are twice as many ballots hiding somewhere, Cooley would still have to win these by more than 10%, which there is a less than 2% chance of him doing.
Any news organizations with a statistician can run the same "odds of" formulas, and they usually declare with much less data than what we have, but I think they should declare this one today, pending the SoS' confirmation that there are less than 500,000 votes left to count and given the geographic distribution.
I would expect her final margin of victory to be about 40-45,000 votes, possibly as high as 50,000 if the remaining ballots are mostly LA.
Congrats to Kamala! She is going to make a great Attorney General.
Congrats to Steve Cooley for a close race, but we can now wait for what the numbers unmistakably show.
Kamala Harris will be the next Attorney General for the State of California!
UPDATE #34 FRIDAY NOVEMBER 19TH MID-AFTERNOON 1:50pm
Harris ahead by 33,484 votes.
Harris is up 33,484 at 1:50pm (4,260,135 for Harris to 4,226,651 for Cooley) with another 16,000 votes in, probably from Monterey County mostly. Los Angeles votes if they come in on their own should put her above 40,000 votes, but will be counterbalanced from other places most likely.
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UPDATE #35 FRIDAY NOVEMBER 19TH LATE EVENING
Harris ahead by 43,040 votes.
Harris is up 43,040 votes after Los Angeles came in, as expected. 4,291,854 votes for Harris, and 4,248,804 for Cooley, so about 55,000 more votes were counted between 2 and 4 pm today. Tehama, San Francisco, San Benito, Nevada, Los Angeles, Fresno, and Del Norte all reported new numbers during this period. We will try and find out how many ballots are still out there at the start of next week. Expect some numbers to trail in tomorrow.
Max Kanin's detailed assessment:
- Riverside County: Cooley +386
- San Bernardino County: Cooley +1750
- San Diego County: Cooley +321
- Orange County: Cooley +117
- Imperial County: Harris +402
- Santa Clara County: Harris+1567
- Napa County: Harris +2518
- San Francisco: Harris +854
- Marin County: Harris +1918
- Los Angeles County: Harris +11054
Here is what remains outstanding from big Cooley strongholds:
- San Bernardino County: 8000 Provisional ballots
- San Diego County: 12000 ballots
- Riverside County:10400 Provisional ballots
- Orange County: They did not update from yesterday's 464 ballots left to process but considering gains today, I think they've probably finished counting.
The SOS totals (which do not include most of today's pro Harris updates except for San Francisco and Los Angeles County) now show Harris leading Cooley by 43050 votes. Now, I'm sure that Cooley's campaign, without media question, will simply say that every single one of the remaining ballots in the big southern California strongholds will go for Cooley. (Then they'll probably lob another nasty personal insult at Kamala Harris's campaign manager). But even if that were to be the case (which it obviously won't), Harris would still lead by 12650 votes statewide. And it would actually go higher once some of the other counties are factored in. In conclusion, it's over and she's won. :)
I'm immensely proud of of her, her campaign, and our state. Political pundits counted her out because she was from San Francisco, because she was liberal, because she unabashedly and unwaveringly supported gay rights, because she campaigned on non-traditional issues, because she was a woman, because she was black and Indian-American, and because "Cooley looks more like an Attorney General than she does." Yet she took on the great odds, fought hard, and pulled off the upset. She will be the first African American woman Attorney General in the country. This is the same office once held by the likes of Earl Warren, Pat Brown, and Stanley Mosk. Now it will be occupied by Kamala Harris. It's a truly incredible moment. She's going to make a great Attorney General. :)
2009 UCLA Law School Commencement Address (Part 1)
Remarks by San Francisco District Attorney Kamala D. Harris
2009 UCLA Law School Commencement Address (Part 2)
... a good prosecutor wins convictions,
a great prosecutor has convictions ...
... a crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind ...