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Despite the multi-millions spent to defeat them, US Sen. Barbara Boxer was re-elected and state Attorney General Jerry Brown was elected governor of California.
Most of the “down-ticket” statewide races were also won by Democrats – at least as of 1:30am with 69% of the precincts reporting: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom beat Abel Maldonado 49% to 40.6% after some back and forth; Debra Bowen handily won re-election as Secretary of State; John Chiang was re-elected as Controller; Bill Lockyer was re-elected as Treasurer; and in a particular triumph of talent over outside money, Assemblymember Dave Jones beat Mike Villines 49.5% to 38.8% for Insurance Commissioner after the insurance industry poured in millions to buy Villines the election. Tom Torlakson is the new Superintendent of Public Instruction.
As of 1:36am, with 73% of the precincts reporting, Republican Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley had declared victory in the Attorney General’s race – but Democrat San Francisco DA Kamala Harris refused to concede: the polls ran 46.5% for Cooley, 45.1% for Harris. She told supporters she thought the results were trending her way.
In other state races – the best news was the defeat of Protect Marriage attorney Andy Pugno by Richard Pan: with 100% of the precincts reporting for the Assembly District 5, Pan had 56,386 (49.1%) to Pugno’s 53,006 (46.1%).
Also good news – openly gay Rich Gordon, Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins joined Speaker John A. Perez, Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano, and Chris Keho in the California LGBT Caucus, the largest number of LGBTs in a state legislature in the nation.
And history was made, we hope: with just over 64% of the precincts reporting, it looks like attorney Victoria Kolakowski will be victorious over her opponent with 50.6% of the vote against Deputy District Attorney John Creighton with 48.5%. Kolakowski will become the first elected openly transgender judge in America.
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