The California Election

I have written about my group of friends called the OFPG, who meet periodically in a clubhouse downtown to yabber about politics. One of our members does a lot of public pontificating (or punditing - depending on whether I think his conclusions are correct).

At today's lunch he suggested that the election in 2006 came in three stages - and that those stages may have influenced how the election came out. He argues that the GOP did not like the Governor's bond proposals but wanted to make sure that Angelides was not going to win. Thus, in the early stages of the campaign, when a lot of absentees voted, the Governor won but only closely and the bond proposals were going down. Then, a few weeks before the election, the Governor switched his strategy to ignore his opponent (as the rest of the state did) and to concentrate on winning the bond campaigns. Those actions led normal GOP voters to stay home - they thought they could relax because Angelides was not going to win, and they were not inclined to vote for the bonds. But the bonds campaign brought out some of the Westley democrats who, while voting for the Gov and the bonds, did not vote for other GOP candidates down the ballot. He asked the Secretary of State's office to do some runs based on timing and seems to think that this trendline developed.

In my annual Voter Guide - that this year went to 250 families (a new record) - I commented that I liked both candidates for Secretary of State and that while I favored one over the other I would be fine with either. For some voters, especially the Westley democrats, that kind of flexibility broke the other way. He would argue that the races for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State were decided by this third wave. He might also possibly suggest that the race for controller was also decided by that group - although we did not discuss that one and I think the larger issues of campaign contributions influenced Strickland's candidacy negatively. My friend's analysis seems sound.

So if this is all true, why did Bustamante lose? Cruz came into this election with a couple of liabilities. There were more than a third of the voters in his primary who voted against him. Unlike some of the other constitutional races, there was no compelling reason for moderate democrats to vote against the GOP candidate. At the same time, Poizner was willing to spend a boatload of dough, against a candidate who was lazy in raising his own funds. It is hard to understand why any person would want to give to a candidate for insurance commissioner whose major campaign issue seemed to be a Jenny Craig Ad. (Cruz touted his weight loss plan - perhaps a post election new venture.)

What is interesting about my friend's analysis is that it supports the idea that Californians are less BLUE than supposed and considerably more independent.