Meg Whitman was in the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association suite at the Universal City Hilton giving a short talk to the HJTA Board of Directors and invited guests, but purposefully positioned next to the television so those in the room could both listen and look at her without missing the final minute or so of the Lakers-Celtics playoff game.
An aide entered the room, Blackberry in hand, and interrupted to say the Associated Press had just called the Republican gubernatorial race for Whitman. Those in the room burst into applause and the basketball game was ignored.
A close fought basketball game is a good metaphor for the coming gubernatorial race, because that’s what it promises to be – back and forth, one side getting ahead then falling behind, and the contest stays close to the end when the winner pulls away by a couple of points. And there will be plenty of intentional fouls.
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This is not your father’s Republican Party, as the old saying goes. The familiar attack against the Republicans fielding a slate of white guys for the constitutional offices does not apply. Two women – "Two business women from the real world," as Whitman called them in her victory speech, U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina and Whitman; a third woman, Treasurer candidate Mimi Walters; a Latino, Lt. Governor candidate Abel Maldonado, and an African-American, Damon Dunn, candidate for Secretary of State, all won their primary elections.
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We heard much about "the Republican Wing of the Republican Party" during the campaign. While the Republican primary voters seemed to select a more moderate group of candidates, the Democrats chose the San Francisco wing of the Democratic Party. Those old enough to recall U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s speech nominating Ronald Reagan for his second term, she derisively labeled Democratic opponents to Reagan’s foreign policy "San Francisco Democrats" because the Democrats held their convention in the city by the bay that year. The term came to stand for the most liberal Democrats.
Well, a couple of San Francisco Democrats won their primaries for statewide office. Lt. Governor nominee Gavin Newsom and Attorney General nominee Kamala Harris will be tagged with the San Francisco Democrat label, meaning they are far to the left. The tag may not have the punch it did in Reagan’s day, at least here in California, but with both Newsom’s and Harris’s opponents closer to the political center, the campaigning against San Francisco Democrats could make a difference in November.
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Once again the old adage about initiatives played out -money can almost guarantee an initiative will make the ballot but money cannot guarantee an initiative will pass. Propositions 16 and 17 proponents outspent their opponents by super-large margins, yet both measures apparently failed.