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California Election Rundown

By Brian Doherty
June 7, 2010
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California primary and proposition elections happen tomorrow, and while polls may show many issues seem already settled in voters mind, there's still lots of down-to-the-wire politicking, especially in the more-contested GOP races.

Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, seems set to win the GOP gubernatorial nomination with double-digit polling leads, to run against former governor and current attorney general Jerry Brown from the Dems--but she's not letting her campaign rest.

And former Gov. Pete Wilson assures voters that a Gov. Whitman would be tougher on the legislature than he was reputed to be. Her rival Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner was going door-to-door trying to convince voters that high high-spending rival was lying about his record.

But the L.A. Times' George Skelton wonders why modern Republican primary voters of the conservative variety might claim to revere Ronald Reagan's memory, but would hate him as a candidate because of his overly liberal record as California governor.

Meanwhile, in the GOP Senate primary, another female former Silicon Valley exec, Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina, seems set to win, and has Sarah Palin doing robocalls for her. Her rival Tom Campbell is doing his own personal mass calls to GOP voters, reminding them polls show he might have a better chance of beating incumbent Dem Boxer in the November election.

And in the Democratic senate primary, political blogger Mickey Kaus looks set to be trounced by Boxer, but remains happy he got a chance tobring his pet issues of the Party's obeisance to labor unions and lack of toughness on immigration to the fore.

Ballotpedia has a great resource listing June 8 ballot propositions, plus the ones held til November and possible future ones, filled with links to detailed information including proposition texts and what they would do, who is for and against them, and why.

Image taken by Flickr user lonelysandwich. Used under user Creative Commons license.

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