I believe Nixon was the liberal Republican candidate in the primary in 1962, and that his conservative opponent (Shell) is still alive. How close was the general election?
Actually, Nixon was the moderate in the race. 1962 was initially to have been a showdown between former Gov. Goodie Knight, a liberal (and Nixon hater); Nixon from the middle; and Assemblyman Joe Shell (who had been gerrymandered out of his Assembly seat by the 'Rats) from the Conservative/Goldwaterite side. Knight dropped out due to poor health, leaving his equally liberal fmr. Lt Gov., Butch Powers to try to pick up the mantle, but he dropped out, too.
Shell ended up with 1/3rd of the primary vote, but the primary had been so divisive, Nixon was never able to patch the party together and Pat Brown, whom had been plagued by low approval ratings, managed to rally and win, by 52-47% (300k more votes). One of the biggest problems that Nixon faced with the voters was that most believed he was merely using the office to run for President in '64 rather than fully committing to the job.
I don't know if Shell is still alive, he'd be 87 if he was.
Here's an interesting (and long) article on the '62 race:
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9797/9797.ch11.pdf