The race to watch for Republicans in tomorrow’s statewide primary election is actually the Democrat primary for Lt. Governor. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is battling it out with Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn. Hahn has great name identification from years of her family’s public service in the county, a far bigger media market than San Francisco. But Newsom is spending money and can probably do more to light up the core Democratic Left voters in the primary than Hahn.

The race is now very important because it will define some of the more obvious differences for voters in the Democrat and Republican statewide tickets in November. The odds are that Jerry Brown will win his primary for Governor in the Democrat party, and Meg Whitman and Abel Maldonado will most likely win theirs for Governor and Lt. Governor in the Republican primary. A “Whitman/Maldonado” ticket will look a lot different to California voters than a “Brown/Newsom” ticket from the standpoint of pure winnability. “Whitman/Maldonado” will look more like California to statewide voters, while “Brown/Newsom” will look more like two white liberal guys from San Francisco. If Hahn beats Newsom (which I think unlikely) the Democrats will have a much better matched ticket In the eyes of the average voter to take on the Republicans statewide.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.