Former Democratic state Senator Jackie Speier won Tuesday’s congressional special election to replace the San Francisco Peninsula’s late and very great U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, who died in February.

The Associated Press reported that the 57-year-old Speier had a solid lead including about 77 percent of absentee ballots in San Mateo and San Francisco counties, with those ballots covering more than half of the election’s vote count. Speier was projected to win the 50-percent-plus-one margin needed to avoid a runoff and head to Washington without further challenges to fill out the rest of Lantos’s 2006-08 term.

The former San Mateo County supervisor and assemblywoman spent almost three decades building her base in the heavily Democratic suburban district, serving as a state senator before getting termed out in 2006. She came into the runoff with little serious competition and endorsements from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plus U.S. Sens. Boxer and Feinstein. Political consultant Alex Tourk, Newsom’s ex-deputy chief of staff, ran Speier’s runoff race.

San Mateo County elections manager David Tom told the San Francisco Chronicle that the special election turnout for the 12th District was, “very light, which is a little bit disappointing.” Speier’s competitors included fellow Democrat Michelle McMurry plus the Green Party’s Barry Hermanson and Republicans Greg Conlon and Michael Moloney, who ran against Lantos in 1998 as a Libertarian and then in 2002 and 2006 as a Republican.

Lantos died Feb. 11th at age 80 about a month after doctors diagnosed him with esophageal cancer. The Hungarian-American Holocaust survivor was a titan of Capitol Hill human rights issues and also an animal lover, but after 27 years in Washington he said he would not run for re-election following the cancer diagnosis.

In 1978 Speier was an aide to U.S Rep. Leo Ryan when that Bay Area Democratic congressman’s was killed in Guyana during a fact-finding trip about the Jim Jones cult there. Jones and his 900-plus followers committed mass suicide at their Jonestown compound before some of them ambushed and killed Ryan, with Speier shot five times and then waiting 22 hours before being rescued an airstrip tarmac. After recovering Speier ran for Ryan’s seat and though she lost she built her political credentials, culminating in Tuesday night’s victory.