Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, clung to a three-vote lead Wednesday morning, Nov. 7 in the costly race for an Inland district targeted by Republicans.

Cervantes’ challenger, Republican Bill Essayli, led in early returns Tuesday night. But Cervantes surged ahead, getting 26,731 votes to Essayli’s 26,728 votes in results posted by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters at 7:28 a.m. Wednesday.

The next registrar update is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday.

Countywide, about 200,000 vote-by-mail ballots, 45,000 provisional ballots, and 5,000 damaged remain to be processed. Also, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday must be counted.

In an emailed statement, Essayli said he was “humbled by the tremendous support I received from 60th District voters.”

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“Currently, the race is essentially tied and there are thousands of ballots remaining to count. We are monitoring the processing of the ballots to ensure every vote gets counted. I look forward to being the next Assemblyman for the 60th District.”

Cervantes’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cervantes, who defeated GOP incumbent Eric Linder in 2016, is defending her seat for the first time in a district representing part of Riverside to go with Corona, Norco, Eastvale, and Jurupa Valley.

Essayli, a former federal prosecutor, made the effort to repeal California’s gas-tax increase a centerpiece of his campaign. Cervantes’ vote was key in the legislature’s passage of a transportation funding bill that raised the state gas tax by 12 cents a gallon.

Prop. 6, a ballot measure that would have repealed the tax hike, failed statewide, but passed with 58 percent of the vote in Riverside County.

The race for the 60th became a pawn in a larger battle over whether Democrats can maintain their Assembly supermajority. Republicans had targeted the district as a pickup opportunity.

As a result, outside money flowed into the district. Independent expenditure committees spent more than $767,000 to support or oppose Essayli and Cervantes, who raised more than $5 million combined for their campaigns in the 60th Assembly District.

Underscoring the 60th’s importance to Democrats, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, spent part of the final weekend before the election campaigning for Cervantes in her district.

Thanks to two other Assembly seats going from red to blue, Democrats have kept their supermajority regardless of the 60th’s final outcome, said Rob Pyers, research director for the nonpartisan California Target Book, which studies legislative races.

“Democrats need 54 (seats), they had 55 going into this election, then picked up those two additional seats, putting the number at 57,” he said.

“From a practical standpoint, to judge from the array of business groups who lined up behind (Democrat) James Ramos (who won the 40th Assembly District in San Bernardino County), odds are a GOP incumbent is being replaced by a moderate Democrat. So even if Cervantes lost to a Republican, there wouldn’t be too much of a change from the status quo.”

Pyers added: “I’m really curious to see how the late votes (in the 60th) shake out. If the counting pace from the primary is any indicator, we may have a wait ahead of us.”