Election Results: California and Los Angeles Analysis

In California, "Republican" Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger beat challenger Democratic State Treasurer Phil Angelides by over a million votes, 55.8% to 39.2%. The rest of the statewide races went along with Mad Professah's pre-[election endorsements, which were all won by Democrats except for one: Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, Secretary of State Debra Bowen, State Controller John Chiang, State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, Attorney General Jerry Brown and Republican Insurance Commisioner Steve Poizner. In addition, very gay-supportive Judy Chu the District 4 seat on the Board of Equalization.

In the statewide ballot propositions, the first 7 ballot measures (including 43 BILLION DOLLARS of bonds for all sorts of infrastructure projects) were approved, while the next 6 measures were rejected, including the odious "teen abortion/parent notification" Proposition 85 and the Libertarian tax-hating wet dream Proposition 90. Unfortunately the progressive oil tax measure for alternative energy measure Proposition 87 was also rejected.

In statewide legislative races, in Assembly District 80 Democrat Steve Clute is barely losing to Assemblymember Bonnie "I wouldn't kick him out of bed" Garcia in a race in which he barely beat openly Black gay mayor of Palm Springs Ron Oden in the Democratic primary in June.

Openly gay Assemblymembers John Laird and Mark Leno easily won election to their final Assembly terms, they make up the increasingly tenuous California LGBT Legislative Caucus which also includes State Senators Sheila Kuehl, Christine Kehoe and Carole Migden. Unless there are some new openly gay or lesbian people elected in 2008, the entire openly gay and lesbian delegation in Sacramento will disappear.

The California Legislative Black caucus will increase in size from six to nine: Assemblymembers Karen Bass, Curren Price (new), Wilmer Carter (new), Laura Richardson (new), Sandre Swanson (new), Mervyn Dymally and State Senators Ed Vincent, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Kevin Murray. Equality California says that more than half of theBlack caucus: Ridley-Thomas, Price, Richardson, Swanson and Bass were all EQCA PAC endorsed candidates who support full marriage equality for same-sex couples.

Locally in the City of Los Angeles, Mad Professah endorsed ballot propositions Measure R (term limit relaxation and ethics reform) passed easily while Measure H (low-income housing)failed by a few percentage points to reach the necessary two-thirds threshhold.

In the judicial races, both California State Supreme Court justices endorsed by MadProfessah won: Carol Corrigan and Joyce Kennard were retained with over 72% of the vote. In the L.A. County Superior Court judgeships (where there were actually some races) MadProfessah endorsed Sanchez, Gutierrez, Zacky, Tillmon and Barquist; only Gutierrez and Stuart lost.