Independent threatens all-Dems club
Ex-Republican Poizner leads insurance commissioner vote
Republicans were once again shut out of California’s statewide offices Tuesday, but for the first time in history, an independent candidate was threatening to join that Democrats-only club.
Steve Poizner, a former Republican who changed his voter registration to no party preference, was narrowly leading Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara of Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County) in the race for the job of state insurance commissioner, a post he first won in 2006 when he was still in the GOP.
Poizner had 52 percent of the vote to Lara’s 48 percent with 34 percent of precincts reporting.
Since independent voters now outnumber Republicans in California, the PoiznerLara race could be a portent of a very different political future for the state, with independent candidates becoming more common.
One of the only other competitive contests in statewide races featured a pair of Democrats running for lieutenant governor. Eleni Kounalakis, ambassador to Hungary under former President Barack Obama, won the No. 2 seat in state government by defeating state Sen. Ed Hernandez of West Covina (Los Angeles County).
Hernandez has served in the Legislature since 2006. Kounalakis, daughter of wealthy Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, was making her first try for elected office.
The other statewide races pitted Democrats against Republicans, and the results were blue across the board. Since 2006, when Poizner became insurance commissioner and Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected governor, no Republican has won a statewide race. This trend continued Tuesday.
Xavier Becerra, who has been attorney general since Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him in 2017 to replace now-Sen. Kamala Harris, defeated Republican Steven Bailey, a retired Lake Tahoe-area judge.
Democrat Fiona Ma, a state Board of Equalization member and former San Francisco supervisor, beat Atherton Republican Greg Conlon for the treasurer’s job. Secretary of State Alex Padilla won his bid for a second term over Republican Mark Meuser. Controller Betty Yee resisted a bid by Republican Konstantinos Roditis to keep her office.
In the state Board of Equalization race for the Bay Area’s District 2, San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen easily defeated Republican Mark Harris, a Silicon Valley real estate agent.