Harman Leads in O.C. Election

Huntington Beach Republican Assemblyman Tom Harman took an early -- but narrow -- lead Tuesday in a special election for a vacant Orange County seat in the state Senate.

Harman was leading fellow Republican Diane Harkey, a Dana Point councilwoman, by less than 1% of the vote from among 64,000 absentee ballots whose results were announced just after polls closed at 8 p.m. Democrat Larry Caballero trailed.

At 11:30 p.m., with 39% of precincts counted, the top two candidates were 439 votes apart, each with about 38% of the vote. Caballero had 24%. It appeared that no candidate was set to win a majority of the vote to claim the 35th District seat outright. As a result, whoever prevails between Harman and Harkey will face Caballero in a run-off June 6.

Both Republican camps were settling in for a long night. About 5,000 absentee ballots returned Tuesday won’t be counted until today.

“We’re doing very well,” Harman said earlier in the evening from his home, where supporters gathered. “We’re cautiously optimistic with these numbers.”

Harkey campaign manager Scott Hart said his team scrambled last weekend to contact voters who hadn’t returned absentee ballots to urge them to do so. They had hoped to secure enough of a lead from absentee voters that Tuesday night wouldn’t be such a nail-biter.

No luck, said Harkey from her campaign party at a club near John Wayne Airport.

“It’s not what I would have liked to see, but it’s only a 1% difference,” she said. “I was told it would be a very tight race, and it’s a very tight race.” Taking on an incumbent, she added, was “a huge mountain to climb.”

Harkey, a retired banker, put nearly $500,000 of her own money into the race and spent an additional $180,000 in contributions to take on Harman, who was elected to the Assembly in 1998.

Harman, an attorney, has been hoping to switch to the Senate after being termed out of his Assembly seat. His wife, Diane, is running to replace him there.

By late March, Harman had spent about $400,000 in contributions on his race.

The seat became vacant in December when state Sen. John Campbell (R-Irvine) was elected to the House of Representatives.

The tone of the campaign was set early, with Harkey’s campaign sending out the first mailers, accusing Harman of being too liberal for the conservative district. Republicans outnumber Democrats there by 100,000 voters.

Harman hit back, saying his six years’ experience in the Assembly gave him the edge over Harkey, who was elected to the council in 2004.

He defended his legislative record and turned the tables on Harkey, labeling her a liberal in voter mail.

Voters were deluged in the closing weeks by mailers from both campaigns and from several independent efforts. Harkey’s campaign sent out nearly three dozen mailers; Harman sent out far fewer.

Two powerful Sacramento interest groups weighed in for Harman, including $220,000 from the union representing the state’s prison guards and $75,000 from the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians.

Harkey got a boost from the Orange County Republican establishment. Pitching in $150,000 was a group called the Alliance for Orange County Taxpayers, whose contributors included longtime GOP donors Buck Johns, Doy Henley and Howard Ahmanson, owner of Fieldstead & Co.

The Lincoln Club of Orange County, a local fundraising powerhouse, spent $67,850 on an independent anti-Harman effort, and $20,000 came from the conservative California Republican Assembly to help Harkey.

The sprawling district, with nearly 514,000 voters, includes all or portions of Aliso Viejo, Corona del Mar, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Dana Point, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Palma, Laguna Beach, Los Alamitos, Midway City, Newport Beach, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Sunset Beach and Westminster.