All Other News

By JIM SANDERS
Friday, November 10, 2006
Muddying Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's coattails, Democrats captured five of six down-ticket offices despite the Republican governor's landslide victory, according to election results Wednesday.

"I think people were motivated on the Democratic side to send a message - you saw that across the country," said Tony Strickland, a Republican who lost his bid for state controller.

Democratic winners were John Garamendi, lieutenant governor; Jerry Brown, attorney general; Debra Bowen, secretary of state; Bill Lockyer, treasurer; and John Chiang, controller.

Steve Poizner, newly elected insurance commissioner, was the only Republican to join Schwarzenegger in a top state office.

Wednesday's final results were unofficial, because hundreds of thousands of absentee and provisional ballots have not been counted.

By JUDY LIN
Friday, November 10, 2006
One of the Legislature's few competitive seats remained too close to call Wednesday as Republican Lynn Daucher led Democrat Lou Correa by just 13 votes out of nearly 78,000 counted in the Orange County-based 34th state Senate District.

Election workers in Orange County still had an estimated 20,000 or more late absentee and provisional ballots to count before determining the winner of the race to succeed Sen.

By JOHN HILL
Friday, November 10, 2006
California and several other states that considered changes to private property rights delivered a mixed verdict Tuesday.

While voters in 9 of 12 states approved measures to limit government use of eminent domain, California and two others rejected more ambitious proposals to compensate landowners when rules and regulations reduce property values.

Still, backers of California's Proposition 90 said the vote showed that such a measure could pass, and vowed to gather signatures to put it on the ballot in 2008.

"The bottom line is we're going to be back better funded and stronger than before," said Kevin Spillane, a Proposition 90 campaign consultant.

Opponents said they would try to defuse such a move by getting the Legislature to address eminent domain changes, minus Proposition 90's requirement that landowners be compensated when any regulation or law impinges on property values.

By PETER HECHT
Friday, November 10, 2006
After a parental notification law for abortion was defeated by the closest margin of any state ballot initiative in last year's special election, supporters were convinced they could win in a general election with a more diverse voter turnout.

But Proposition 85, which would have required doctors to notify a parent or guardian before performing an abortion on a girl under 18, went down to defeat Tuesday by 54 percent to 46 percent.

By AMY CHANCE
Friday, November 10, 2006
What was so amazing to some California political operatives in retrospect was just how badly Democratic state Treasurer Phil Angelides did at the polls on Tuesday, given the national tide for his party.

Even as Democrats across the country were taking control of the House of Representatives and threatening to do the same in the Senate, exit pollsters projected Angelides had lost the election by double digits less than five minutes after the polls closed.Democratic political consultant Gale Kaufman said Angelides could have given Schwarzenegger a run for his money _ if he had ever settled on a consistent campaign theme.

"You had the national current, you had all the right national as well as state issues.

Friday, November 10, 2006
We sympathize with anyone awakening from a three-year coma and suddenly reading the headlines.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger re-elected governor."

Whaaaaaat?

Yes, its true, this Hollywood icon has again won the governor's race.

By CARLA MARINUCCI
Friday, November 10, 2006
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turned bipartisan cooperation into a re-election landslide Tuesday, is expected to launch an ambitious 2007 agenda focused on issues that seem likely to expose deep divisions between the governor and legislative Democrats.

By MARGARET TALEV
Friday, November 10, 2006
Call it ironic, or perfectly fitting, that as she stood within reach of becoming the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, California Rep.

By PETER SCHRAG
Thursday, November 09, 2006
It'll take longer this year to mop up the floor, fumigate the premises and mouth-wash the bad taste away. The slime is deeper, the stench more pungent, and while it's ever-fashionable to complain about "negative" campaigning, there's negative on issues and then there's just plain slime.

The president, his "boy genius" Karl Rove, master of the politics of division, and the leaders and consultants of the GOP must have been certain their base is still infested with homophobes, xenophobes and racists.

By DAN WALTERS
Friday, November 10, 2006
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder and action movie star whose improbable political career appeared to have crashed a year ago, capped one of the most remarkable turnarounds in California political history Tuesday by winning another term as governor in a landslide of bipartisan votes.

The landslide buried Democrat Phil Angelides, abruptly terminating his lifelong quest for high political office, and was remarkable not only because it resuscitated Schwarzenegger's governorship a year after voters had massively rejected his "year of reform ballot measures," but because it ran counter to a powerful anti-Republican tide almost everywhere else in the nation.

The extent of Schwarzenegger's triumph was foretold in late pre-election polls and confirmed in both Election Day polls of voters and early hard vote counts.