Day 10 after polls: Bera is 711 votes ahead.
By Sujeet Rajan
WASHINGTON, DC: California Democrat Congressman Ami Bera is developing a knack for coming from behind to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. He did that famously two years ago, when he erased a deficit against Republican Dan Lungren 9 days after the polls concluded in the District 7 race, to become a freshman US House of Representatives member in his second attempt, becoming only the third Indian American politician to grace Capitol Hill.
Jump to the 2014 polls, and it’s déjà vu. Once again, this time 10 days after the polls got over on November 4, Bera for the first time has erased the deficit against his Republican opponent Doug Ose to jump into a marginal lead, though voting is still bafflingly going on, with perhaps thousands of votes yet to be tallied.
On Friday, Bera had notched 87,643 votes (50.2%), versus the hapless Ose – a former Congressman, who must have felt like Rocky Balboa when polls closed on November 4, with a lead of over 3,000 votes – who has 86,932 votes (49.8%) in his favor. Bera had won with two percentage points two years ago, with a lead of over 9,000 votes.
Bera’s 711 votes lead right now may yet prove to be a mirage once all the votes are painstakingly counted, and Ose might still reclaim his lost glory. But, Bera has maintained with confidence all along that he will emerge the winner, and his camp has issued statements to that effect. For Ose, it’s turning out to be a nightmare, as his lead got slowly whittled, and he finds himself lagging in the race now in the Sacramento district.
Speaking to Capital Public Radio, Bera said in Washington, DC: “You know last time we were tied up on Election Day and when it was all said and done we won by 9,000 votes. This time we were down 3,000 on Election Day, went to 2,000 to 500; we’re up 711 votes, so I feel pretty confident we’re going to win this thing.”
1 Comment
u sound like a 1-sided liberal partisan hack…so much for objective journalism. Somehow, the GOP guy is automatically “hapless”? Liberal journalists These Days!