It was a closed primary, but Davis ran ads in during the GOP primary season about Riordan flip-flopping on abortion in a successful attempt to get the conservative base to vote for the more beatable Simon. This was despite the fact that the gov. has no say in the abortion debate. Parental notification propositions are regularly defeated here and unlike the US Constitution, the CA Constitution has an express right to privacy.
So instead of having a governor like Riordan, who did a good job running LA, we got Davis.
Riordan at 73 was too old for a first-term Gov anyway.
Riordan was unelectable. He was a babbling fool loose cannon, as evident by his "Stupid dirty girl" comment
It was a piss-poor slate of candidates to choose from that year, between the loony RINO Riordan, the neophyte Bill Simon, and "boring as watching paint dry" Bill Jones.
Simon was the best of the lot and came about five percentage points of Davis (and could have won had he not been set up in the COPS debacle and having Gerald Parsky backstabbing him). Riordan would have never come anywhere close to Davis.
The Democrats almost slit their own throats with their primary tactic.