By Karen Ocamb

This was no election night nail-biter: on Nov. 7 moderate Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger clobbered his liberal Democratic opponent, State Treasurer Phil Angelides 56 percent to 39 percent, and in the process signaled the death knell for social conservatives in California.

"This should put to bed forever the idea that a socially conservative Republican can win here," Tony Quinn, an election analyst for the California Target Book campaign guide, told the Los Angeles Times. "This is very much a centrist state."

There are 6.7 million registered Democrats in California, compared to 5.4 million Republicans, with an additional 3.7 million unaffiliated voters who most often vote with the Democrats, according to the Times. Moderate Republicans such as Schwarzenegger who support domestic partnerships/civil unions for gays, abortion rights, stem cell research and environmental issues have been distancing themselves from the extremely partisan social conservatives who rule the state and national GOP. Last year, Schwarzenegger was politically spanked for his arrogance and partisanship in calling the expensive special election. The stinging defeat of his propositions led to his hiring of openly gay blue-dog Democrat Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff and the subsequent apology and compromise with the Democratically controlled legislature. That shift to the center won him, according to the Times exit poll, 91 percent of the Republicans, 53 percent of independents and 26 percent of Democrats.

After a bruising primary fight with State Controller Steve Westly, Angelides, meanwhile, had a hard time catching a break. Not particularly telegenic anyway, he repeatedly came across as a gangly nerd, looking at the audience instead of into the television camera for most of the only debate with Schwarzenegger, for instance. He also failed to catch fire with his own base, though among the five percent of voters who identified as gay/bisexual voters, 61 percent voted for Angelides compared to 32 percent for Schwarzenegger, according to the Times exit poll. Overall, Angelides won 70 percent of Democrats, 34 percent of independents and six percent of Republicans.

"We did the first poll and the most devastating single piece of information was that Angelides had a very high negative (poll rating) from the primary," Bill Carrick, Angelides' campaign strategist, told the Sacramento Bee. "He started out the general election with real damage."

Money rather than Schwarzenegger’s political coattails helped Republican Steve Poizner to trounce Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante 51 percent to 39 percent in the race for insurance commissioner. Poizner spent roughly $11 million to Bustamante’s $1.5 million, though many observers also noted that Bustamante’s weight-loss campaign ads failed to respond to Poizner’s withering ads linking the Democrat with campaign contributions from insurance companies he would regulate if elected commissioner.

"It was a constant barrage of attack ads, especially on Cruz," that led to the defeat of Angelides and Bustamante, state Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres told reporters. "Unless you have the money to rebut those attack ads, that's what's going to stick with the voters."

On the Democratic side, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein overwhelmingly won re-election, besting stridently anti-gay former state Sen. Dick Mountjoy (endorsed by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson) 60 percent to 35 percent; Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown convincingly won his race for Attorney General; and Attorney General Bill Lockyer won the race for state treasurer. With $10 million still in his campaign war chest, some politicos are already speculating that Lockyer is well-positioned to run for governor in 2010, though odds right now favor L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. (Some speculate that Schwarzenegger will run for the U.S. Senate when his term expires.)

The other three statewide races in which Democrats eventually prevailed were real nail-biters until returns rolled in from L.A. County, where turnout was 45 percent. The combined efforts of the L.A. County Democratic Party, labor, education and nurses gave Angelides 49 percent to Schwarzenegger’s 46 percent, with the Sacramento-based Democrat beating the Hollywood Republican in his own home town.

Up to midnight, the contest between pro-gay Democratic Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi and anti-gay conservative Republican Tom McClintock was neck and neck. The races were also close between pro-gay Democrat Board of Equalization President John Chiang and anti-gay Republican Tony Strickland for state controller and between state Sen.(and Sheila Kuehl friend) Debra Bowen and moderate Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

Republicans blamed losses on Schwarzenegger’s failure to campaign for other GOP candidates and low voter turnout in Fresno, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "The turnout in Republican counties was low compared to the turnout in counties where Democrats hold the edge,'' Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, told the Chronicle. "The conservative Republican base didn't show up."

"It came as a surprise,'' Stan Devereaux, a McClintock spokesperson, told the Chronicle. "We kept looking at the returns through the night and thought we had a chance, but when the returns (from Republican counties) came in, we didn't get the turnout.”

“We always knew that the race would be close because, despite McClintock’s ultra-conservative voting record, his public persona was well honed and he avoided the kinds of linguistic attack and diatribes so common from right-wing extremists,” Eric Bauman, the openly gay chair of the L.A. County Democratic Party and special assistant to Garamendi, told IN. Under the radar, however, McClintock “ran an extensive negative automated phone campaign that advised voters that Garamendi wanted to raise their taxes, give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants and allow gays to marry.”

But, Bauman added, “California continues to be national leader in acceptance of gays and lesbians and this week’s elections showed that every anti-gay candidate for statewide office was defeated” and all six Democrats who won statewide office support marriage equality.

“The one thing I gleaned from this election was the importance of L.A. in the statewide decision-making process. Clearly L.A. was the determining county for these statewide races,” said Stonewall Democratic Club President Michael Andraychak. His instinct tells him, however, that the LGBT community turnout, including in West Hollywood, was less than expected. If so, it calls for a re-thinking of strategy for the next election cycle.

Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California (EQCA), disagrees. According to the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder, turnout in West Hollywood was 38.4 percent. “Look at Judy Chu’s numbers [6,641 of her 8,527 votes were cast in West Hollywood] for the Board of Equalization. She was one of the candidates the EQCA PAC pushed for—she was part of our door-to-door and phone effort and the community knew her as someone who stood up for us. I had someone from San Francisco call me and say, ‘I can’t find Judy Chu’s name on the ballot.’ People adore her and she shows up—that’s why her numbers were what they were.”

Additionally, while it’s difficult to extrapolate how many of the votes were actually “gay,” 3,716 of pro-gay Assemblymember Paul Kortez’s total 12,610 votes in his race for the county Water Board came from West Hollywood. Koretz lost the race by 303 votes.

By contrast, Kors noted, since the state Democratic Party chose to put up two Democrats who did not support marriage equality—Steve Clute in the Palm Springs area and Lou Correa in Orange County—the EQCA PAC decided not to extend their resources in those races and the candidates lost. “The message to the Democratic Party is that they need to have candidates that stand for full equality, including our community,” Kors said.

Rick Jacobs, openly gay chair and founder of the politically progressive Courage Campaign, is also angry with the party. “There was a tidal wave of demand for change everywhere but in supposedly solidly Democratic California. Here, turnout hit a record low,” Jacobs told IN. “The California Democratic Party (CDP) made 135,000 voter contacts as of the end of October. To put that in perspective, MoveOn.org attempted over six million contacts and reached well over one million voters. MoveOn has existed for eight years; the CDP for at least 80. Based on this election and the non-performance of the CDP, we can expect California to be in play for the presidential election in 2008. The Courage Campaign is creating the statewide infrastructure to keep California progressives outside the party structure.”

Schwarzenegger told the jubilant crowd at the Beverly Hilton on election night that he believes he has a “mandate” from the people to build a brighter future for California. "I promise you in the next four years, I will protect your values and I will protect your dreams," he said.

On stage with Schwarzenegger was Jeff Bissiri, the departing executive director of California Log Cabin Republicans. “It was a great honor to be selected to be on the stage with the governor,” Bissiri told IN. “Californians of every community were represented and the LGBT community was included. For me personally, it was certainly one of the high points in my two years as Log Cabin’s California director.”

Kors told IN that Assemblymember Mark Leno of San Francisco will re-introduce the marriage equality bill on Dec. 4, “the first day of the legislative session.”