During World War II, Rafferty was classified 4-F because he had a bad leg and walked with a cane. But on VJ Day, Rafferty threw away his cane. This came out in the course of opposition research, and once the Democrats made it public, Rafferty looked like a hypocrite.
That's why Cranston picked up so many Republican votes.
Cranston went on to lead a charmed life. He first came up for re-election in 1974, the year of the Democrtic sweep that followed Nixon's resignation. His opponent, Republican State Senator H. L. Richardson, ran an eighteenth-century-style campaign against Cranston, spending much of his effort issuing wordy position papers, in the form of pamphlets, on the issues of the day. He only got 35% of the vote. Cranston's next opponet was tax reformer Paul Gann, who was a poor campaigner.
In his final bid for re-election, Cranston even got a few conservative votes, as his opponent was Congressman Ed Zschau (rhymes with Mao), a leftist "Republican" congressman from the San Francisco Bay area who agreed with Cranston on most issues. Nonetheless, Zschau almost knocked him off.