It is the only race in the state which has gone into overtime, but that's not why would be Attorney General Steve Cooley decided to take in the Lakers-Kings game Wednesday night.
His campaign manager said Cooley isn't backing out of an invitation for donors to join him in a luxury box for the price of $2,500 a ticket.
While Cooley counted bucks at the Arco Arena, they're still counting ballots down the road in Sacramento. On election night, Cooley thought the count led to victory.
"If it changes, then it's one of those Dewey moments," Steve Cooley, Los Angeles County District Attorney.
Cooley was referring to an election 62 years ago, when headlines wrongly proclaimed that Thomas Dewey had defeated Harry Truman for president.
Cooley was so far ahead on election night, an e-mail was sent at one in the morning for a celebratory morning news conference. But this invite he did back out of because by morning his opponent, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, was winning. She crushed the L.A. District Attorney on his home turf, leading in L.A. County by 14 percentage points.
"Steve Cooley, who has won election in Los Angeles County, as a non-partisan, couldn't transfer that as a republican," according to Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, NBC4 Political Analyst.
In the race for California Senate republican candidate Carly Fiorina finally conceded the race to democrat Barbara Boxer early Wednesday, after going to bed still hopeful. But again, in the overnight hours, the vote tally from the state's largest county dashed her dream.
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"But in the end we could not overcome the registration advantage that democrats have, and in particular, in L.A. County," says Carly Fiorina, Republican Candidate for Senator.
25% of California's voters are in L.A. County, which Jerry Brown carried by 31 points, and which gave him a decisive win.
On Wednesday Governor Elect Brown talked about the new challenge which awaits.
"A big mess up there. I want people to understand, I didn't create this mess. I haven't been there for 28 years, but I'm going to do everything I can to make it better," according to Jerry Brown, California Governor Elect.
For Harris the challenge is still winning, but her campaign strategist says the tight race already has had a hugely positive effect, saying she's now a rising star of the democratic party, and is now poised to have her own Truman moment, and possibly a long future of making her own political headlines.
