[Publius]

You're forgetting something about Rafferty.

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.

[Fiji Hill]

Following his primary victory in June, 1968, Rafferty's campaign quickly began to unravel due to mismanagement as well as the candidate's own shortcomings. At one point, he trailed Cranston in the polls by 25 points and was dragging down the GOP ticket in California. Tom Reed and Lyn Nofziger started turning things around after taking charge of the campaign a few weeks before the election, but it was too late. Rafferty lost by four points.

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.