WILDMAN DECLARED ASSEMBLY WINNER : FINAL MARGIN IS 192 VOTES.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

After a grueling 17-day wait, Democrat Scott Wildman pulled off a stunning upset victory in the race for the 43rd District Assembly seat, acing out Republican John Geranios by just 192 votes, officials announced Friday.

``There has been a perception in this district that it was not a winnable race for a Democrat,'' Wildman said. ``I always was confident, but I may have been the only one in the state of California.''

The win makes Wildman the 43rd Democrat in the 80-member state Assembly. This was the last Assembly race to be decided.

The 43rd District Assembly seat has been a Republican stronghold for decades. In most election years the race has been decided in the primary season - whoever won the Republican primary would go on to win the election.

It seemed that the rule would hold true again this year, especially since Geranios, a businessman and business school professor, was plowing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into his campaign.

By mid-October, campaign finance reports showed that Geranios was outspending Wildman seven to one.

Wildman, a union representative for United Teachers-Los Angeles, had spent just over $100,000, while Geranios had spent more than $700,000.

But at the same time, Democratic polling showed Wildman was in a statistical dead heat with Geranios. Armed with that poll, Wildman was able to persuade the California Democratic Party and the state's biggest labor unions to target his campaign with late contributions.

The response was overwhelming and Wildman took in hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last weeks of the campaign.

Wildman used the money for a series of last-minute mailers and to organize a massive get-out-the vote campaign involving 1,000 volunteers, many of them union members.

Also, between February and October more than 14,000 new Democrats registered to vote in the district, part of a massive voter registration drive undertaken by the Wildman campaign.

``It was a total sneak attack,'' Geranios said Thursday about the massive last-minute infusion of cash into his opponent's campaign. Geranios also blamed his showing on a poor voter turnout on Election Day.

Geranios could not be reached for comment Friday.

The candidates had waited 17 days for the final results. The race was too close to call the morning after the election, and remained too close to call as 190,000 absentee ballots and thousands of provisional ballots were counted. Wildman stayed in the lead throughout the ordeal, but at one point the margin was as slim as 81 votes. Finally on Friday, county election officials said they were done counting all the ballots.

``It was definitely worth the wait,'' said Wildman.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Scott Wildman

`Worth the wait'

(2) John Genarios

Incumbent unseated