Harris ended up winning that 2010 election by less than a point, or just over 74,000 votes out of more than 9.6 million cast.

Her victory as California’s first female, first black and first Asian American attorney general came three weeks after her Republican opponent, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, had declared victory on election night. Smith still has the San Francisco Chronicle headline declaring Cooley the winner framed in his office.

Some see that victory as proof that Harris, a first-term senator who has already pushed her way into the crowded presidential primary’s top tier of contenders, can defy the odds: She won a race that few thought she could, as a black and Asian woman from liberal San Francisco who opposed the death penalty. Others say she was the beneficiary of outside factors, like that year’s Democratic wave in California.

“In essence, there’s some truth on both sides,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political science professor at the University of Southern California.

Facing the doubters

Harris, whose campaign said she was not available for an interview, doesn’t talk much about her 2010 race on the presidential campaign trail. But that race presented similar challenges to her presidential run, including doubts about her electability. She told The Associated Press earlier this month that those doubts are “not new to me.”