The one thing that turned Fresno's DA race

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The voters have spoken and a new Fresno County district attorney will take over in January.

Lisa Sondergaard Smittcamp talked to Action News about the tough campaign and how her election night gathering turned into a celebration.

"The margin was really telling, I think, to express what the voters thought about the campaigns," she said.

Smittcamp won by a large margin, getting nearly 59% of the vote, compared to 41% for the incumbent, Elizabeth Egan.

The beginning of the end of Egan's tenure at the DA's office may have been December 2011 when she didn't speak publicly about county supervisors cutting the salaries of prosecutors. That's part of what prompted Smittcamp to challenge her. But as for the campaign, it may have been one endorsement that changed everything.

When Lisa Sondergaard Smittcamp quit her job to run against her boss, many outsiders -- like ABC30 political analyst and defense attorney Tony Capozzi -- didn't understand why she was willing to take on an uphill battle.

"I thought there's no issue here," he said. "Unless you have a scandal, a traffic ticket scandal, or some cover-up, something of that nature, I don't see any basis to run against an incumbent district attorney."

"When you have high attrition and low morale that is so severe that it affects public safety, that in and of itself is a scandal," Smittcamp said.

The former deputy district attorney said she ran for the people in the DA's office -- the prosecutors, the investigators, the secretaries, and everyone else. Many of them endorsed her, too, even as they worked for her opponent, Elizabeth Egan.

But Capozzi says the endorsement that gave Smittcamp's campaign credibility came from Fresno police Chief Jerry Dyer. From there, he says Egan's campaign made a series of miscalculations.

"Mrs. Egan started going negative against the challenger," Capozzi said. "That wasn't a good choice. She should've been arguing crime rate's down, people are being put away in jail."

Egan chose not to comment Wednesday and as of late in the day, she had neither conceded nor talked to Smittcamp at all. But as results came in Tuesday night, she told Action News she was proud of her 11 years in office and she'd be back at it for seven more months.

"I'll be back at work," Egan said. "I want the office to heal no matter what and that will be my first order of business."

Prosecutors tell us Egan wasn't at the office Wednesday, though, so the transition will have to wait until at least Thursday.