State Sen. Tom McClintock on Friday surged to nearly a 1,800-vote lead in the tight congressional battle against Democrat Charlie Brown, perhaps sealing victory in the foothill 4th District.
"We're not claiming victory, but we just think it's mathematically impossible for (Brown) to win," said Bill George, spokesman for McClintock.
George said the thousands of Placer County votes tallied Friday stretched McClintock's lead from barely 300 votes to 1,793, with only about 4,500 more votes to count in the nine-county district.
Brown spokesman Todd Stenhouse said Brown would not concede, noting that thousands more votes remain to be counted, most of which are provisional ballots that "have been breaking very, very strongly for Charlie."
"We remain committed to the same goals that we've been committed to all along, and that is that every vote is counted in this historic election," Stenhouse said.
County election workers throughout the district have been verifying and counting late-arriving absentee ballots and provisional ballots since the Nov. 4 election.
McClintock has never trailed as the daily tallies have been added to the total, although the margin has waxed and waned.
After Placer's votes were counted Friday, McClintock held a lead of 183,489 to 181,696 over Brown, George said.
Regardless of the final tally after all absentees and provisionals are accounted for, each county in the district will have to manually count 10 percent of the ballots.
Under state law, if the initial count after Election Day has a race within a half of a percentage point, all jurisdictions in the district must perform a hand count of a portion of ballots to verify the accuracy of voting machines.
The race to replace retiring Rep. John Doolittle in a traditionally Republican district pitted Brown, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who challenged Doolittle two years ago, against McClintock, a longtime GOP state legislator who represented a Southern California district.
Call Bee Capitol Bureau Chief Dan Smith, (916) 321-5249.
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