SACRAMENTO (AP) -Former NBA All-star Kevin Johnson held a narrow lead Tuesday in early returns in his quest to unseat a two-term incumbent for mayor of California's capital city.

Johnson was trying to persuade voters by touting his experience as an inner-city developer and school administrator. Incumbent Heather Fargo has been criticized as uninspiring and underachieving.

With 204 of 456 precincts reporting, Johnson was leading Fargo 45 percent to 43 percent. Five lesser-known challengers split the rest of the vote.

If neither top candidate wins more than 50 percent, Johnson and Fargo would be forced to continue their campaign until a run-off in the November general election.

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.

On Tuesday, he'll learn whether voters agree that California's capital city needs a new direction.

His campaign to unseat two-term incumbent Heather Fargo has been 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. But he said he has knocked on nearly 20,000 doors in his grass-roots 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.Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.