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In California, Boxer Wins Senate Race, and Brown Is Governor
2010-11-03 08:04:05.599 GMT
By JESSE McKINLEY
(New York Times) -- SAN FRANCISCO — Feeling pessimistic, but
bucking the national trend, California voters decided against a
pair of untested Republicans in favor of old-school Democrats on
Tuesday.
In the governor's race, the state's attorney general, Jerry
Brown, 72, was elected California's oldest chief executive and
will return to the office he held from 1975 to 1983. Mr. Brown's
victory came despite the record $140 million spent by his
Republican challenger, Meg Whitman, a former chief executive of
eBay who was trying to become the first woman to be elected
governor in California.
But on Tuesday night, it was Mr. Brown — whose first
go-round as governor was marked by anecdotes about his sometimes
orthodox thinking and his celebrity dating habits — who triumphed
in the nation's most populous state.
"It looks like I'm going back again. As you know I have the
know-how and the experience," Mr. Brown said, standing with his
wife, Anne Gust, who helped run his campaign. "This time, of
course, we have a first lady, which we didn't have last time."
Mr. Brown said he recognized that voters were unhappy. "I'm
praying that this breakdown that's been going on for so many
years in the state capital and in Washington, that a breakdown
paves the way for a breakthrough," he said. "And that's the
spirit that I'm going to take back to Sacramento."
Senator Barbara Boxer was declared the winner over Carly
Fiorina, a Republican whose résumé included six years as the
chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Mrs. Boxer, considered one of
the most liberal — and most vulnerable — members of the Senate,
consistently attacked Ms. Fiorina's corporate record, which
included large-scale layoffs and her unceremonious firing by
Hewlett-Packard's board of directors in 2005.
In her acceptance speech, Mrs. Boxer called her re-election
to a fourth term "the toughest and roughest campaign of my life."
"Everything was thrown at us in this election," Ms. Boxer
said, who shared a stage with her Democratic counterpart, Senator
Dianne Feinstein. "Including the kitchen sink and the stove and
the oven."
Both Mr. Brown and Mrs. Boxer provided victories for
Democrats in the West on a night when swathes of the Midwest and
the South went for Republicans. In the new House, California
figured to lose several important chairmanships and the speaker's
chair, now held by Nancy Pelosi. But California Democrats, who
control both houses of their state legislature, sounded proud of
not joining a Republican wave.
"I think people in California are saying, 'We don't want
that Tea Party stuff.' " State Senator Darrell Steinberg said.
Ms. Whitman's loss stung, considering the money she spent. A
disciplined campaigner who rarely strayed from her talking
points, Ms. Whitman was hurt by revelations in late September
that she had long employed a Mexican housekeeper who was living
in United States illegally. Ms. Whitman had fired the
housekeeper, but the seeming disconnect between her actions and
her public support of stiff penalties for employers who hire
illegal immigrants seemed to stagger her campaign. It also hurt
her with Latino voters.
In her concession, Ms. Whitman struck a conciliatory note,
saying it was time to "unite around the common cause of turning
around this state we love."
"I believe that if we all work together to demand change for
Sacramento, we will be successful," she said.
Both Ms. Whitman, who is a billionaire, and Ms. Fiorina, who
received $21 million in severance pay from Hewlett-Packard, were
in their first political campaigns. Mr. Brown first ran for
office in 1969, has served as the state's secretary of state and
the mayor of Oakland, Calif., and has run for president three
times. Mrs. Boxer has served three terms in the Senate and five
in the House of Representatives. Republicans had high hopes in
California, in part because of Ms. Whitman's spending power and
Ms. Fiorina's reputation as a street fighter, a trait she
illustrated in a series of fiery stump speeches.
And late Tuesday, Ms. Fiorina refused to concede, saying the
race was still too close to call. "It's going to be a long
night," she said.
Ms. Fiorina courted conservatives with her strong opposition
to abortion and her embrace of offshore drilling, but economic
issues were far and away the most dominant theme of the campaign.
California has struggled with a $19 billion spending gap, which
contributed to a three-month period this year when the state went
without a budget.
The state — one of the most affected by the foreclosure
crisis and housing collapse — also has an unemployment rate of
more than 12 percent, with joblessness at twice that level or
higher in some areas. Nearly 9 out of 10 voters in California say
they are worried about the economy in the coming year, including
nearly half who are very worried, according to an Edison Research
exit poll.
Such grim expectations played a significant role in the
campaigns, with no candidate offering an easy fix. And voters
seemed ambivalent about their choices on Tuesday.
Ms. Whitman admitted as much in a late commercial. "I know
many of you see this election as an unhappy choice," she said,
"between a longtime politician with no plan for the future and a
billionaire with no government experience."
Republicans are badly outnumbered in California: 44 percent
of registered voters are Democrats, compared with 31 percent who
identify themselves as Republicans. Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina
had pinned their hopes on independents, who make up more than 20
percent of the electorate.
Even in such liberal areas as San Francisco, where
registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a six-to-one ratio,
there were signs of voter disenchantment. Michael Purdy, 40, a
Democrat, said he was concerned about the state of the nation and
the treatment of President Obama by Republicans.
But Mr. Purdy said that although he usually voted a straight
Democratic ticket, he had crossed party lines in several
statewide races. "I just felt there were people who were better
qualified."
Democrats were initially worried about Mr. Brown, who did
not run a particularly active campaign until after Labor Day. His
campaign also committed a number of gaffes, the most serious in
October when a recording surfaced of an aide's calling Ms.
Whitman a "whore." Mr. Brown apologized, but never identified or
fired the staff member who made the remarks.
Ms. Whitman's campaign had hoped that controversy, as well
as her potential landmark victory, would pull female voters into
her camp.
Despite hard times, some voters seemed to have faith in the
California dream. Sabrina Hernandez, 29, a cake decorator from
Berkeley, said she was feeling "pretty hopeful" on Tuesday and
planned to vote for Democrats. "You can't expect things to change
overnight," she said.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
-0- Nov/03/2010 08:04 GMT
