While normal people are doing normal things, you are reading this political website, and two of our 
site contributors, Duana Dichiara and Adam Probolsky, are in the midst of the only real political drama going on in California right now (other than the ‘will Roach run in June’ situation in San Diego).
Yesterday’s race in the 35th State Senate District special election didn’t end in the early evening, or the late evening — for that matter it didn’t end this morning! Actually, as of right now, niether candidate has declared victory nor admitted defeat. Conservative Diane Harkey is less than 300
votes behind moderate GOP Assemblyman Tom Harman.
All of the action today was down at the Orange County Registrar of voters where the ‘defense’ (aka…Team Harman) was headed up by Dichiara and his business partner Jen Jacobs. The ‘offense’ (Team Harkey) was lead by Jimmy Camp, Scott Hart and Probolsky. All day long they led their teams in looking closely at the remaining thousands of absentee ballots were counted. (Even some prominent GOP lawyers were spotted including ‘defense’ lawyer Ben Davidian and ‘offense’ attorney Darryl Wold). Ultimately, the vote differential has norrowed to 289, with Harman holding the lead. Now 289 votes may seem like a few compared with the nearly 100,000 votes that were cast. But the reality is that in this kind of a situation it is in fact a fairly substantial lead. Especially given that the only remaining uncounted ballots are around 600 provisional ballots cast at polling places.
That said, as that number of votes separating Harman and Harkey shrinks, it increases the ‘cafeteria plan’ of options available to Harkey. Chief among these, of course, is a recount. If that happens, well Adam and Duane may become closer friends than ever before!
In the meantime, you have to wonder where Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh and State Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman ended up last night. You see, their plan was to enjoy a nice dinner, and then make an appearance to congratulate the winner! Well, maybe they are still having dinner…