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Kamala Harris

Updated Nov. 24, 2010 at 12:26 p.m.

Republican attorney general candidate Steve Cooley conceded defeat to Democrat Kamala Harris Wednesday morning, a week before the Nov. 30 state deadline for vote certification.

Cooley trailed by more than 50,000 votes in one of the closest statewide races in recent memory. Although Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, declined to declare victory, her win is all but assured. She becomes the first woman in the top law-enforcement post in state history.

About 150,000 votes across the state remained uncounted, according to the Secretary of State’s office, which will continue the count until Nov. 30. But the odds of Cooley overturning Harris’ lead have been decreasing by the day.

The result places Harris in the company of governor-elect Jerry Brown, lieutenant-elect Gavin Newsom and Sen. Barbara Boxer, Democrats who together made a clean sweep of the top statewide races in a year when California defied the Republican wave that flipped the House of Representatives and a few statehouses.

In defeat, Cooley, the popular district attorney of blue-leaning Los Angeles County with a reputation as a Republican moderate, blamed the state party’s collapse for his narrow loss. He was comfortably the top vote-getter on the Republican ticket.

“It is unfortunate that someone who is a non-partisan, non-politician could not overcome the increasingly partisan tendencies of the state,” Cooley said, “even for an office that by its nature necessitates a non-partisan approach.”

Following Cooley’s concession, the Harris campaign thanked Cooley. It said it would wait to declare victory until state officials call the final vote tally next week.

Cooley’s loss will compound Republican misery three weeks after gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s costly defeat and reopen a fresh round of recriminations within a party in crisis.

Earlier this month, with Cooley leading by the narrowest of margins and the vote count dragging on, his strategist, Kevin Spillane, said the word “Republican” next to Cooley’s name on the ballot was a “huge anchor that dragged him down, exacerbated by the collapse of the GOP ticket in the final week of the campaign.”

Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant and publisher of the political insiders' Target Book, said that the Republican brand had lost legitimacy in the state as it struggled to fit both its hard-right base and California’s moderate majority under one banner.

“It’s a regional party, it’s incapable of running competent races statewide,” Hoffenblum said, adding that the rapidly growing number of Latino and Asian voters are “turned off on the shrill debate coming from Republican white males on a daily basis.”

Harris’ victory and her imminent departure will only add to the tumultuous political scene in San Francisco, where two top elected officials are vacating their seats. City Hall is already consumed by intrigue as the Board of Supervisors jockey to appoint an interim mayor to replace Newsom. If Harris resigns from her district attorney’s post before Newsom relinquishes his seat, it will fall to him to appoint the next district attorney.

The two San Francisco Democrats will also become two of the highest-profile officials in Sacramento. Harris, who enjoys an unusual degree of personal support from Pres. Barack Obama, will break more than one precedent as a woman of Indian-American and African-American heritage assuming the attorney general’s office, a natural stepping stone for the governor’s office. And Newsom, with his visible role in the gay marriage debate, is nationally known and has already run for governor once. Both are young, potentially in the mix for future runs for the governor’s office and could mount formidable campaigns, Republican analysts say.

The road ahead for Cooley, 63, looks altogether different, as he signaled the end of a long prosecutorial career on Wednesday.

“I will complete my third term and finish my career as a professional prosecutor in the office where it began over 37 years ago,” he said in a written statement. “I look forward to continuing to serve the people of Los Angeles County as District Attorney with the same commitment and enthusiasm I have always demonstrated.”

He added: "The campaign was a fascinating and very positive experience.”