California Election Returns

I can't believe so many west coast political bloggers are wimping out already. It's just after midnight and the results are shaping up like this:

With just over half the votes counted statewide, Phil Angelides has about a 4 percentage point lead in the Democratic primary for governor, over Steve Westly. That lead has been holding at about that percentage for an hour or so.

Meanwhile, Debra Bowen seems on her way to a convincing victory for Secretary of State on the Dem side. With nearly 55% counted, she has over 60% of the votes. Jerry Brown has a similarly wide margin for the Attorney General nomination.

John Chiang is ahead in the Controller race with over 53% to Joe Dunn at about 47%. The Lt. Governor race is very close.

Here in Humboldt, with 123 of 131 precincts reporting--about 94% of the vote--Paul Gallegos is leading in the D.A. race, 53.26% to Worth Dikeman at 46.62%. But the last precincts are expected to go to Dikeman, so no winner yet, maybe. My guess is Gallegos has it.

And Measure T (restricting corporate campaign donations to local corporations) is winning passage by roughly the same margin. Its opponents conceded defeat. But Props 81 and 82 have failed here, as apparently they are in the rest of the state. Someone will have to explain to me what's wrong with funding libraries. No surprises in other county races I know anything about.

The southern CA race is of interest is the special election for Duke Cunningham's House seat (the Duke is in deep corruption do-do) between Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Bilbray. With about 56% counted, Bilbray is maintaining a lead of about 5 percent. For Busby to make it this close in a solid Republican San Diego district is amazing. And even if she loses, I believe she gets another shot at the seat in November. But almost half the votes remain to be counted there.

UPDATE at 1 am: With about 2/3 of the votes counted, Bilbray is maintaining this same lead. Angelides is also maintaining his margin with 70% of the statewide votes counted. Apparently there won't be anything new from Humboldt tonight.
UPDATE 2: With nearly 80%, Bilbray's lead has declined about a half percentage point.
UPDATE 3am: Bilbray maintains a lead with over 90% counted. All the other races seem to be tracking as they were at midnight.