SACRAMENTO -- Former NBA All-Star Kevin Johnson survived his first political test Tuesday, forcing a runoff election against the two-term incumbent in California's capital city.
Neither candidate secured enough votes to win outright in a mayoral race that drew national attention and claims of dirty politics after old sexual misconduct accusations surfaced against the challenger.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Johnson was leading incumbent Heather Fargo 47 percent to 40 percent. Five lesser-known challengers split the rest of the vote.
The candidates needed more than 50 percent to win the contest outright.
Johnson was ebullient Tuesday night in a brief address to energized supporters at an inner-city art gallery he helped develop.
"They said we didn't have enough experience. They said we mismanaged the campaign. They said all the negative stuff would stick," Johnson said. "The prognosticators were wrong."
In contrast, the mood at Fargo's Election Night party was subdued, and not just because she would not win a third term outright.
Her original party at a downtown Mexican restaurant had to be evacuated after a 30-foot tree branch collapsed on supporters gathered on the patio, sending one woman to the hospital.
Fargo called it a "freak accident" and moved the party to her campaign headquarters.
Fargo said she was preparing to start fundraising anew after being outspent three-to-one by the millionaire former ballplayer who drew stars such as Magic Johnson to his campaign events.
"I'll be focused on trying to remind people what Sacramento is like now and what it was like before I became mayor," eight years ago, said Fargo, who has been criticized as uninspiring and underachieving.
Johnson returned to Sacramento after his playing days were over to reform his old high school and rebuild his struggling Oak Park neighborhood. He then set his sights on politics, believing his hometown was failing to reach its potential.
His campaign to unseat Fargo was short but furious, featuring more mudslinging than substantive discussions about the future of the city of 475,000.
Johnson, 42, has been dogged by old sexual-abuse allegations since he announced his candidacy in March. He also has faced complaints about his nonprofit development agency and criticism from gay activists after saying he doesn't support same-sex marriages.
The hometown hero returned to Sacramento in 2000 after playing 12 seasons with the Phoenix Suns to launch redevelopment projects and turn his former high school into a charter school with ambitious goals.
He said he became disillusioned with the city's leadership and bureaucracy, frustrations that prompted his run for mayor. The rough-and-tumble of a high-stakes political campaign has proved far scrappier than any NBA matchup he was part of, Johnson said.
Shortly after he entered the race, challengers made public two previous police investigations into whether he behaved inappropriately with teenage girls.
Phoenix police investigated an allegation that Johnson, then 29, molested a 16-year-old girl in 1995. No charges were filed, but The Sacramento Bee obtained a draft legal document that showed Johnson paid the girl $230,000 in a confidential settlement.
In 2007, a student at the school Johnson helped develop, Sacramento Charter High School, accused him of touching her inappropriately. Police investigated and found the claims to be without merit. As in Phoenix, no charges were filed.
Johnson emphasizes that he was not charged in either case and has cited confidentiality in declining to address the accusations in detail. He said he knocked on 23,000 doors in his grassroots campaign, and voters have only rarely brought up the allegations.
That demonstrates they're more concerned about issues such as rising crime and downtown development, he said. Johnson characterized the attacks against him as part of a "dirty campaign" designed to deflect attention from the issues.
Fargo, a former community activist who ran largely unchallenged in 2004, also has had her image tarnished during the campaign.
She refused to denounce a negative union mailer that attacked Johnson's character and last week asked the city's police chief to reopen the investigation into the girl's allegation at Sacramento High. The police chief declined.
Fargo, 55, also was put on the defensive when the Bee reported she had taken numerous international trips to environmental conferences of dubious benefit to the city.
She has acknowledged acting slowly on two major city projects that have been stalled for years: remaking a contaminated former railyard into a housing and entertainment complex and transforming the run-down K Street corridor a block from the Capitol.
Fargo touted the new restaurants, homes and commercial development in the city's midtown core, recent changes that have boosted the city's nightlife.
