Elections 2008

When former Assemblyman Roderick "Rod" Wright talks about his upcoming election bout against Assemblyman Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton), he sometimes refers to a classic 1980 boxing match -- the one in which a younger Larry Holmes defeated legendary champion Muhammad Ali. "If you're Larry Holmes, you don't feel good about that fight," Wright said. "I would love to be in the [state] Senate being confirmed along with Mervyn Dymally, but that's not going to happen."

Here's a quick and simple postmortem for Tuesday's scarcely noticed California primary. First, what did it all mean -- especially for the November general election? What's the overarching message from voters? "It doesn't mean much, if anything," says Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, which chronicles congressional and legislative races. "It wasn't an election with any kind of strong currents," adds veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick. Agreed.

Backers of the defeated Proposition 98, which would have phased out rent control and broadly limited government's ability to take private property, vowed Wednesday to take the eminent domain issue to the state Capitol, in hopes of persuading legislators to do what voters would not.

The campaign against same-sex marriage in California was treading water until it got help from an unexpected corner: a Republican mayor choking up and announcing he would not betray his gay daughter. San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders had promised to oppose same-sex marriage. Then, last fall, hours before he was supposed to veto a City Council motion supporting gay marriage, he called a news conference at which he broke into tears.

Orange County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to place a measure on the November ballot letting voters decide if future pension increases for county government workers should be put to a public vote. If approved by voters as part of the Nov. 4 general election ballot, the measure would amend the county's charter to require that retirement benefit increases for county workers be approved by a majority of voters, with a study of the benefits' cost published in ballot pamphlets.

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to place a $7-billion bond on the November ballot. It would be the largest local school bond ever -- by far -- and would allow officials to tax property owners for building and repairing schools for the next 10 years. The funding package enshrined ambitious new goals, but critics questioned the need for the bond -- as well as a price tag that more than doubled in the last two weeks.

Large sums from outside the state are pouring into the campaign coffers of several hotly contested initiatives that will appear on California's November ballot, including funding for and against measures that would ban same-sex marriage and require egg ranchers to provide roomier quarters for hens.

Raising the specter of rampant development and a rising tide of street-choking traffic, a group of Santa Monica residents has begun pressuring friends and neighbors to vote in November for an initiative that would limit commercial construction for 15 years. Predictably, the Residents' Initiative to Fight Traffic, or RIFT, has created a schism in the city, where the desire to maintain the area's small-town scale and charms often conflicts with the need to create jobs and spur economic gains.

Reversing course from only a week ago, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 on Tuesday to put a sales tax increase for mass transit and road projects on the Nov. 4 ballot. However, the board also voted 3 to 2 to officially oppose the measure. Confused? Hey, it's local politics. First, the ballot issue. Last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board voted to put a half-cent sales tax increase on the general election ballot.

Earlier this year, Ohio election officials sent notices marked "Do not forward" to the state's registered voters, alerting them to the March primary. To the surprise of voting rights activists, 573,444 notices were returned as undeliverable in five counties alone, including the urban areas of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. The heavy return rate alarmed liberal activists.