After trailing early, Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, has widened her lead over Republican challenger Bill Essayli in the hard-fought race for an Inland Assembly seat.

Meanwhile, Karen Spiegel and Russ Bogh continue to lead Eric Linder and Jeff Hewitt, respectively, in the races for two seats on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, although Bogh’s lead over Calimesa Mayor Jeff Hewitt has narrowed in recent days.

The updated posted by the county Registrar of Voters at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16 showed Cervantes leading Essayli, a former federal prosecutor, by 2,028, a 612-vote improvement from Thursday’s update.

Countywide, about 116,000 vote-by-mail and 45,000 provisional ballots remain to be counted. The next update is set for 5 p.m. Saturday.

“We’ve always felt that high turnout is good for us, and a lot of Riverside County residents participated in last week’s election,” said Cervantes campaign spokesman Derek Humphrey. “We feel good about the trend.”

Cervantes led Essayli by 1,416 votes going into Friday, a lead that has grown consistently throughout the week. She trailed on election night and went ahead by just three votes the morning after before losing and regaining the lead.

On Nov. 12, the Essayli campaign said at its request, the registrar “agreed to take a number of requested actions, primarily concerning the review of vote-by-mail ballot signature verifications.”

“Our request for corrective actions was based on observations that temporary workers were processing vote-by-mail ballots without adequately verifying signatures,” Essayli said in a news release. “The Registrar was also denying any campaign the ability to meaningfully observe this process and to request a secondary review of signatures that do not appear to match the signature on a voter’s registration card.”

Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer said: “The registrar’s office has complied completely with all state laws while counting ballots in all races during this election. In fact, the registrar’s office has made some accommodations that go beyond what is required by law in order to make the ballot counting and the results of the election even more transparent.”

The Riverside County Democratic Party accused Essayli of challenging the signatures in more than 130 ballots “in an effort to convince elections officials to disqualify registered voters who cast their mail ballot legally and on time.”

“Essayli’s behavior since the election is an affront to the voters of Riverside County, and his rhetoric around so-called ‘election integrity measures’ mirrors the same conspiratorial and baseless claims made by his idol, President Donald Trump,” said county party chair Tisa Rodriguez said in an emailed statement.

The race for the 60th – Eastvale, Norco, Corona, Jurupa Valley, and part of Riverside – became one of the most competitively and costly in the Inland Empire, with Republicans seeing an opportunity to flip a seat won by Cervantes in 2016.

The gas tax was a central theme of the campaign. Cervantes’ vote was crucial to passing a transportation funding bill that raised the state’s gas tax, something Essayli tried to capitalize on in a district with plenty of commuters.

Cervantes’ burgeoning lead mirrors a trend of late ballots in California breaking Democrats’ way. In Orange County, late ballots helped Democrats running for House seats overtake GOP candidates and make it likely that a once conservative bastion will have no Republican representation in Congress.

Spiegel and Bogh have led their races since election night, but Bogh’s lead over Hewitt went from 557 votes Thursday to 252 votes Friday. Spiegel’s margin over Linder stands at 3,138 votes as of Friday evening.

If they hang on, Spiegel and Bogh will replace the retiring John Tavaglione and Marion Ashley, respectively, on the five-member board.

Going into Friday, Riverside County ranked fourth among California’s 58 counties in the number of unprocessed ballots. In a Facebook post, the registrar’s office said it had 34 permanent and 300 temporary employees working seven days a week in two shifts – 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. – to count ballots.