He was a heavyweight faux intellectual.
“liberal Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan “
I always wondered why he didn’t go down in 1980, bad candidate, eh?
Maybe should have nominated Yorty in Cali too.
Not a horrible candidate. To her credit, she did manage to win the Secretary of State’s office in 1974 as the rest of the GOP ticket went down in flames. She won a landslide reelection victory in 1978 taking 67% statewide. Even as a somewhat disappointing candidate, she should’ve knocked off Hart.
The California Senate candidate in 1980 was subpar, an elderly Paul Gann, who was even older than Alan Cranston. They should’ve run a young, hard-charging Conservative against Cranston (at least someone under 65 !). Yorty was even OLDER than Paul Gann. He might’ve fared slightly better. There was John Schmitz, but he was probably too controversial (he barely held a GOP State Senate district in his return to elective office in 1978 with under 50% of the vote where his GOP predecessor got 61% in the Watergate year of 1974). I’d have preferred to run either then-Attorney General Deukmejian or Lieutenant Governor Mike Curb, or even Rep. Barry Goldwater, Jr. (who was better than his father). I wish Sen. Sam Hayakawa had run for a 2nd term in 1982 and kept Pete Wilson out (though that might’ve just merely delayed him running until 1986 in lieu of Ed Zschau).