Low turnout, close results

In the marquee battle on Tuesday’s statewide primary
election ballot, state Treasurer Phil Angelides held a slight edge
over Controller Steve Westly for the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination as election results trickled in Tuesday night.

As of 10:52 p.m. Tuesday with 30.3 percent of precincts
reporting, Angelides had garnered 47.4 percent of the vote to
Westly’s 43.6 percent and appeared to be headed for a
showdown with incumbent Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in
November’s election.

“It’s early in the evening but things are looking
good,” Angelides said in a televised speech from his campaign
headquarters in Sacramento Tuesday.

Despite trailing as the early results came in, Westly remained
hopeful.

“I’m feeling cautiously optimistic,” Westly
told reporters in a televised statement Tuesday night.

The election, which flirted with record-low voter turnout
numbers, also decided candidates for positions including attorney
general and lieutenant governor.

Oakland Mayor and former Gov. Jerry Brown held a large lead over
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo for the Democratic
nomination in the attorney general race.

In the race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant
governor, state Sen. Jackie Speier and Insurance Commissioner John
Garamendi were in a virtual tie Tuesday night. On the right side of
that race, state Sen. Tom McClintock easily won the Republican
nomination.

In the gubernatorial race, Angelides and Westly capped their
campaigns with last-minute stumping up and down the state.

Making use of a chartered plane, Angelides held rallies at San
Diego, Burbank, Oakland and Sacramento on Monday. Meanwhile, Westly
travelled around Los Angeles to make his late-game appeal to local
voters.

Angelides has overcome significant deficits in polls in recent
weeks to take a slight lead in most polls.

This lead seemed to prove fatal for Westly, who has taken
criticism for what some have characterized as an excessively
negative campaign.

Westly’s campaign refused to pull a particularly
controversial television advertisement that suggested Angelides was
responsible for the dumping of sludge into Lake Tahoe in 1989.
There is no evidence Angelides had any knowledge of the event.

Angelides has also run several TV advertisements with negative
portrayals of his opponent.

The vitriolic fight between the two has failed to garner much
interest among voters. Prior to Tuesday, election officials
predicted near-record low voter turnout.

Only voters registered as Democrats and those not registered
with a political party were eligible to vote in the
Angelides-Westly race.

Since this race was the most-hyped item on the ballot, there was
considerably less incentive for non-Democrats to vote and this
could have contributed to the low voter turnout, said Political
Science Professor Joel Aberbach.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, newspapers
repeatedly ran stories predicting record-low turnout among
“weary” California voters. A Field Poll released
Tuesday predicted 34 percent of registered voters would turn out,
which would break the current record low of 34.6 percent from the
2002 gubernatorial primary.

Gracelyn Valdez, a first-year sociology student working at the
polling station in the De Neve dorm on Election Day, said Tuesday
afternoon that few students had visited those polls.

Among the few students who voted in De Neve, first-year
political science student Tristan Schulhof said he only voted in
the gubernatorial primary race.

“I wanted to select the governor contender that I thought
was most qualified,” he said.

In a case of political musical chairs, a number of state
politicians campaigned for new positions after term limits forced
them out of their current seats.

Outgoing Attorney General Bill Lockyer won the Democratic
nomination for treasurer and termed-out state Sen. Joe Dunn was
trailing John Chiang for the Democratic nomination for controller.
Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado was in a virtual tie with
former legislator Tony Strickland in the Republican race for
controller.