Daniel Bice and Mary Spicuzza

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

With the race for governor hanging in the balance, Milwaukee city officials turned over more than 45,000 uncounted absentee ballots for official verification shortly after midnight.

The results helped give Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers his first comfortable lead on Tuesday over Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Evers, the state schools chief, eventually edged Walker by about 29,000 votes.

Milwaukee County Clerk George Chistenson said his office received about 46,000 early and absentee ballots from the city long after all other votes had been counted in the county. The city waited to tally those votes until it finished counting other ballots.

From those late ballots, Evers received 38,674 votes, or 84% of the total, and Walker 7,181.

Brian Reisinger, a spokesman for the Walker campaign, raised questions about the validity of some of those votes.

"Thousands of ballots were damaged and had to be recreated," Reisinger said, clarifying that he was speaking of the Milwaukee County votes. "Until there is a comparison of the original ballots to the recreated ballots, there is no way to judge their validity."

Overall, Christenson said Evers received twice as many votes in Milwaukee County as did Walker. Evers got a total of 263,199 votes in the state's largest county while Walker received 124,880.

Walker has for years had a strained relationship with the city. He has clashed with Mayor Tom Barrett on just about every issue, from a sales tax to fund public safety to shared revenue payments and issues around local control.

Political observers have been predicting that the city could play a crucial role in this race.

RELATED:Democrats' hard lessons from 2016 spur turnout efforts in Milwaukee for Nov. 6 election

Turnout dropped dramatically here in 2016, and there has been a heavy push to reinvigorate city voters and get them to the polls.