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Look at the final results and get back to me.

You'll make a dandy self-unfulfilling prophet. You admitted regretting your support for Arnold.

Add Schwarzenegger's and McClintock's numbers and you'll see that things were pretty dicey.

Dicey enough to win. There were a lot of Democrats that hated Arnold for what he turned out to be, a shill for crooks, who might otherwise have voted for McClintock. That's why Tom was winning elections by healthy margins in a district that voted for Al Gore. Think real hard on that one. People know an honest politician when they see one.

For the record, I have lamented Schwarzenegger's record as governor. I have never had second thoughts about voting for him.

Cruz Bustamante was an unacceptable man to be our governor, and in my estimation and that of the numbers from that election, he was too big a threat to become governor if you got your way.

This is how I saw it then and how I see it now.

Here was the registration breakdown in that October, 2003, Special Election: LINK

43.68% Democrat
35.30% Republican
21.02% Independent (1.9%) and mostly other (19.12%)

64.70% Non Republican Registered Voters at the time of the election

Republicans were outnumbered almost two to one. To be totally acurate, 1.832 to 1.

Cut that 35.3% down considering only about half of the Republicans are die hard Conservatives and what do you get? (And I would probably peg that at about 1/3rd, but for this discussion I'll go to 50% for argument's sake.)

You get 17.65% of the electorate voting for hard line Conservative principles. (only 11.8% if I am right and only 1/3rd are actually die hard Conservatives)

You observed this and thought McClintock was a sure winner if only I and other FReepers would have voted for him.

So going into that election, silly me, I thought it was impossible for McClintock to get the 17% or so the polls were stating he would get. What did he wind up with?

In that Special Election McClintock wound up with 13.5% of the vote. Let's recognize this for what it was. He needed 33.3% of that vote plus one if you break it down to Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, and McClintock. Of course that's an in your head calculation. Again, for accuracy's sake, it would work out to a bit less, because some folks did vote for others. Here's the actual breakdown. LINK

48.60% Schwarzenegger
31.50% Bustamante
13.50% McClintock
93.60% between them
09.40% others

This means that McClintock actually needed 31.2% plus one providing the others section didn't shift, if the vote was dead even. In actuality Bustamante pulled 31.5%.

If McClinton pulls 31.50% plus one (Bustamante's final tally plus one vote), where does the excess over and above the 13.50% come from? It isn't going to come from Busamante. It would come from Schwarzenegger. He would need at least 18.00% (plus one vote) from Schwarzenegger. Let's say he gets it. Where does that put the numbers? It puts McClintock at 31.5% plus 1 vote, Schwarzenegger at 30.60%, and Cruz Bustamante at 31.5%. Now, what would have happened if Schwarzenegger had been seen as vulnerable? Truth is, he would have bled off Democrat votes too, not just Republican votes.

This would have left this result:

30.60% Schwarzenegger (31.69% between the three)
31.50% Bustamante (32.65% between the three)
31.50% McClintock (plus one more vote than Bustamante) (32.65% between the three)

This doesn't even take any Democrat bleed off from Schwarzenegger into consideration.

I've tried to tell you it was a dead heat if McClintock had bled off votes from Schwarzenegger. You've never admitted it. Look at those figures. There's no way McClintock could have run the game on the other two, considering registration in the state. This would have left the three men with less than 1% difference in the vote. Who would have been McClintock's biggest rival? Curz Bustamante is the answer.

I've tried to tell you this for 12 years now. You still won't admit to it.