Why would my district vote for liberal Susan Davis AND ultra-right Shirley Horton?

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I don't get it. Why did they re-elect Susan Davis, a fairly liberal Democrat, to Congress, but re-elect Shirley Horton, a far-right wingnut, to the California State Assembly? The two districts don't overlap exactly, the one for Susan Davis is a little larger, but I don't see it as enough to make that much difference. It's basically the same group of people.

[goclark]

1. And why would California elect Jerry Brown and Debra Bowen(sp.)

And elect Aaaarnold by such a huge margin?
I'm from CA and it smells to high heaven to me.

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2. I don't get the Arnold thing either. I see right through him, why don't they?

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4. Arnold had a whole lot of help from Mr. Die Bold or some other tricks

because nothing has changed here.

He has done nothing different ~ he still can't even say CALIFORNIA and doesn't care to learn how to say it.

So telling.

[AndreaCG]

5. From what I read, Arnold did change his tune

He reached out to the groups he offended like the teachers and the nurses. And he distanced himself from Bush. I think it was a sham, and he'll be back to regular R BS tactics, but it worked.

Plus did Angelides give him a fight? Was it his fault or the media's by not covering him or both?

[goclark]

6. Not aware of how he reached out

Heard ADS from those groups saying they were supporting Phil.

Phil was running as a Democratic Team player and other team members, not Cruz, got in but Arnoold not an overwshelming victory ~ fishy to me.

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8. One year ago, I thought he was dead meat. But he took a whole year to

"reinvent himself" for the re-election. He called a special election in 2005, which cost the state $20 million (so I heard). He had some things he wanted to do, but the Democratic-controlled state legislature refused to pass them. So he took them directly to "the people" and called a special election, which was one year ago, and all of them failed. I thought his political career was over. Even at the beginning of this year's campaign, he was behind in the polls. But the primary campaign for the Democratic nominee was brutal (Steve Westley vs. Phil Angelides) and used up a LOT of money.

Meanwhile Arnold's team was carefully crafting his new image as a "moderate," whatever that means, and even promoting him as an environmentalist. He signed a global warming bill for California (which of course isn't going to work unless the rest of the world also does the same thing). And there were other photo-ops like that, on other issues. For about 6 months his handlers conducted a very careful image-building campaign promoting a new, more appealing Arnold, nothing like the "I'm goin to kick their ass" Arnold of a couple of years ago. I have to admit some of their commercials were extremely well-done, especially the ones that painted Arnold as an environmentalist. They showed the most beautiful scenery that California has to offer, and had soft acoustic guitar music, and then tried to say that Arnold is protecting all of that. They were very seductive commercials.

Once Angelides won the Democratic nomination, the Arnold camp decided on a theme for their anti-Angelides campaign, and it was basically that Angelides would take us backwards. Most of those commercials showed Angelides walking, but it was run backwards, illustrating how he would take California backwards. And they piled on the fact that Angelides wanted to raise state income taxes (but of course neglected to mention the fact that he only wanted to raise them on high-income taxpayers, not middle-income). Arnold's camp did run a very slick campaign, and did it for at least 6 months without stopping, and as a result Arnold's popularity began to slowly, steadily rise, and by the time the fall campaign went into full swing, Arnold was approx. 15 points ahead of Angelides in the polls.

By contrast, Angelides' campain was kind of uninspired and his commercials seemed a bit amateurish compared to Arnold's beautifully produced spots. Angelides did make some good points against Arnold in these, but mainly with words instead of without the powerful imagery and music. And Angelides simply lacked the name recognition and "star power" of Arnold. A surprising number of Democrats actually supported Arnold this year, which disappointed me. I believe that now that the election is over, he will show his true colors, and side with big business on most issues. All in all, it's a lesson in how image is far more important than reality in politics these days.

[KSU Wildcat]

3. The country is split right down the middle.

We Democrats must be very careful because there is just a fraction of a percent of the people who lean right and those that lean left. I just hope that none of our people make a little screw up and throw it the other way for the 2008 election.

[Starlight]

7. A lot of people automatically vote for the incumbant. They don't know any better.