Pretty good night out here in California for Democrats, though that didn't seem to be the case nationwide. Brown and Boxer won of course. The Democrats seem to have retained all the House seats except for Jim Costa's, which is a race that really came out of nowhere. But I had the opportunity to prove Nate Silver wrong here in CD-11, where the OFA team and myself apparently managed
to get Jerry McNerney another term in office against some fairly stiff odds. And while it looked like California might elect a Prop 8-defending drug warrior Republican for A.G., which still doesn't compute for me, it looks as if Kamala Harris pulled the upset, which is good news for, well, everyone in the state.
As for propositions, Prop 19 expectedly went down for defeat (though not by a terribly wide margin, as I expected), but the majority budgets amendment passed. Regrettably, the more conservative off-year electorate also approved another 2/3 tax rule that was widely pushed by oil companies and the Chamber of Commerce/Howard Jarvis types. But it didn't win by much. Those people did lose their fight to repeal the state's global warming initiative, by a pretty hefty margin as it turns out. So, you gotta take victories where you can.
So there you have it. Not a perfect night, but a very good one overall.
