But the complicated interaction of Propositions 25 and 26 may further snarl the budget making process.

Prop. 25 decreases the vote needed in the state legislature to pass the budget from two-thirds to a simple majority, a move its sponsors had hoped would expedite the passage of a budget each year.   Prop. 26 increases the vote needed to pass fees from a simple majority to two-thirds.  Actual tax increases already require a two thirds vote.

“You can pass a budget but you can’t raise any revenue, whatsoever,” said Fred Glass, spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, Prop. 25’s main sponsor.

The Prop. 26 campaign, whose slogan was “Stop Hidden Taxes,” was framed around its opposition to Prop. 25. The campaign claimed Prop. 25 would surreptitiously raise taxes despite an explicit statement in the measure that it would not.  In August, the Third District Court of Appeals ruled that Prop 25’s language reflected its intent.

Among the nine measures on the California ballot, only two others – Propositions 20 and 22 appeared to be winning, both also aimed at checking the  power of state lawmakers. Prop. 20 removes the legislature from the congressional redistricting process. Prop. 22 prohibits the state from taking funding from local governments.

“The vote in favor of Prop. 22 was a loud and clear message to
Sacramento lawmakers for them to do their jobs and keep their hands
off our funding,” said Doug Fry, president of the League of California
Cities Fire Department, one of campaign’s sponsors.

For Prop 20, the message to lawmakers was to keep their hands off of
district lines, too. “We want to be able to vote for our elected officials in fair
districts,” said Susan Shafer, spokeswoman for the Prop 20 campaign.

Voters defeated Prop 23, a measure backed largely by out of state oil companies that would have  suspended California’s tough, new law requiring reductions in greenhouse gasses. Prop 27, a measure that would have abolished a new citizens commission on redistricting and returned the power to the legislature, was also defeated.

Legalized recreational weed in California will have to wait for another election cycle.  Prop. 19, a measure that would have made the state the first in the country to ok the sale and consumption of marijuana,  was headed for defeat, failing to produce the surge of young voters its sponsors had predicted.

Medical marijuana propositions in Arizona and South Dakota and a proposal that would have made it easier for cannabis farmers to distribute their crop failed as well.

According to a March 2010 California Field Poll, almost two-thirds of voters thought the government didn’t respond to their needs. This sentiment echoes the anti-tax anxiety that seems to pervade the country.

Of the 37 states that placed measures on the ballot this election, 10 states beside California had measures that would limit or decrease taxes or make it harder for new taxes to be passed. Washington voters
may raise the vote threshold needed to pass new taxes in the legislature from a simple majority to a two-thirds majority.

Alan Auerbach, Robert D Burch Professor of Tax Policy and Public Finance at UC Berkeley, said the distrust of government and taxes is hardly a surprise.

“If the economy grew steadily for a year or two, the feelings would be much more positive,” he said.

Brown, whose first tenure established his reputation as a maverick who dated singer Linda Ronstadt, proposed that California launch its own space program and declared “small is beautiful,” ran this year as a veteran who knew how to handle the Legislature, the state’s deep budget deficits and political dysfunction. At 37, he was California’s second-youngest governor, and at 72, he will be California’s oldest governor.

Speaking to voters from the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland, Brown assured the electorate that he’s up for the job while showing a bit of his unconventional side.

“While I’m really into this politics thing, I still carry with me that sense of missionary zeal to transform the world, and that’s always been a part of what I do,” Brown said.

Whitman conceded shortly after Brown’s speech, speaking to supporters in Los Angeles with cautious optimism about her hope for a new era of state government.

“Our challenges are daunting and they won’t be solved by politics as usual. But we do need leaders in Sacramento to rise to the occasion and work together,” she said. “It is my hope that a new era of bipartisan problem-solving begins tonight, because the people of California deserve no less, and tomorrow we are all Californians.”

In this election, Brown’s win may be the only example in the country of a governor’s seat flipping from a Republican to a Democrat. The House majority has turned over to Republicans, Democrats lost their super majority in the Senate, and at least nine states traded Democratic governors for Republicans.

Brown has a rich political legacy. He served as California’s governor for two terms from 1975 to 1983, the mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007 and attorney general since 2007. He ran for president three times. His father, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, was governor from 1959 to 1967.

Brown attacked Whitman’s lack of experience in government, comparing her to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and painting her as a tool of corporate interests.

For Whitman, a career businesswoman and former CEO of internet company eBay, this was her first foray into politics.

Whitman focused on Brown’s ties to labor unions and his difficulty with solving Oakland’s problems as mayor to try and detract from his image.

Whitman has also had to field questions about a voting record even she describes as “atrocious” — she didn’t vote in any elections for 28 years.

Her polling numbers took a dive in late September when an undocumented immigrant, Nicky Diaz, publicly revealed that she worked for Whitman as a housekeeper for nine years, and was mistreated and underpaid.

Whitman responded that she was unaware of Diaz’ status while Diaz was an employee, and fired the housekeeper as soon as she learned that Diaz was not in the country legally. Though the affair may have helped Whitman secure support with conservatives, she lost any hope of the Latino vote.

Whitman campaigned in Latino communities more than most state-wide candidates in the past, producing a handful of Spanish television and radio ads and making appearances in the heavily Latino Central Valley. She has spoken out in support of water rights for agriculture.

But the majority of Latinos in California have typically voted for Democrats since Proposition 187 in 1994, an anti-immigrant initiative that would have denied services such as health care and education to those in the state illegally. Proposition 187 passed, but was later struck down in court as unconstitutional.

Latinos make up 37 percent of California’s population, although they only make up 21 percent of registered voters. Of likely voters, they comprise 18 percent, making their voting influence almost half of their actual proportion of the state’s citizens.

As governor 1975-83, Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, sought by his political ally Cesar Chavez to empower his United Farm Workers Union who sought contracts with growers in the nation’s No. 1 farm state.
Brown’s support for Chavez led to bitter criticism from growers that he unfairly favored the union, but he helped cement his reputation with Latino voters.

Whitman attracted national attention for spending more than $140 million of her own money on her campaign, more than any other state candidate in U.S. history. In total, her campaign spent about $160 million. She attempted to deflect criticism for her spending by asserting her independence from special interests. Brown spent more than $25 million.

California voters are hoping the next governor can rescue the state from years of staggering deficits – this year’s shortfall was $19 billion, and next year’s is predicted to be $20 billion. The bitter partisan divides in Sacramento have made enactment of budgets an annual exercise delay and political point scoring that will complicate the job for the incoming governor.

The toll for Schwarzenegger, elected on a promise to halt the partisanship, was serious: his approval rating was an abysmal 23 percent in September.

The unemployment rate in California is at 12.4 percent, and both candidates promised to focus on job creation. Whitman’s proposal centered on attracting new business to the state, and Brown’s looked to green technology as a source of jobs.

This election, the country is primarily focused on Democratic losses in the House and Senate, but many of the country’s Democratic gubernatorial seats are vulnerable as well.

Many governors will have the responsibility of overseeing redistricting of congressional and legislative districts. The task arises only once every ten years, after the US Census is completed and legislators need to redraw district lines to account for population changes. The way those lines are drawn can spell political security or instant death for members of congress and legislatures. In many states, it is the governor who signs the legislation enacting the new districts.

Two propositions on the California ballot this election are using the electorate to fight over redistricting – 20 and 27. Prop. 20 extends the reach of an independent redistricting committee formed by an initiative passed in 2008, Prop. 11, and gives them the ability to define congressional districts as well as state. Prop. 27 strikes down Prop.11 entirely, and brings redistricting responsibilities back to the Legislature.

The most visible and significant change will of course be Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the first woman Speaker of the House and first Speaker from California. It remains unclear whether Pelosi, 70, will choose to seek a leadership post in the Democratic minority.

“It will hurt California to lose the Speakership, which probably ensured that any unique concerns of the state were at least considered in the legislative process,” UC Berkeley political science professor Rob Van Houweling said. “However, with such a large delegation than includes a number of Democrats and Republicans, I think the state will continue to be well represented in the House.”

California Democrats also will lose influential House chairmanships. George Miller (D-Martinez) who served as the Obama administration’s Capitol Hill point person on education, relinquishes his chair of the Education and Labor Committee. Miller’s demotion could imperil Obama administration goals on reforming the No Child Left Behind education policy. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) will no longer preside over powerful Commerce and Energy Committee, and Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys) steps down as chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Waxman has served as a major player on Capitol Hill during the Obama administration, as his work encompassed everything from the bailout of auto companies to climate change legislation. His chairmanship now likely passes to Joe Barton (R-TX), best known for apologizing to BP after the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Republican legislators from Southern California will take on key House leadership positions and chairmanships. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), one of the GOP’s so-called Young Guns, will now be the top-ranking California Republican and the fourth-ranking Republican in the House. He could move even higher in the leadership if Mike Pence (R-IN), chair of the House Republican Conference, resigns to run for governor of Indiana, as expected.
Darrel Issa (R-San Diego) will take over the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, once led by Waxman. Issa has promised to use this new position to conduct wide-ranging investigations, including a probe of the Obama administration’s SEC case against Goldman Sachs. Issa has said Obama committed an “impeachable offense” by offering an administration job to Joe Sestak to drop out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary against Arlen Specter.

David Dreier (R-San Dimas) is in line to chair the Rules Committee, a position he held until the Democratic takeover of the House in 2006. The Rules Committee chair has a significant influence over the final edits of legislation before they reach the House floor for a vote. If Republicans make good on their threat to repeal aspects of the Obama Administration’s 2010 health bill, Dreier will shepherd those efforts.

Buck McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) is in position to take over as chair of the Armed Services Committee, an enormously important position with regard to U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the past month, McKeon has criticized the Obama administration’s position on potentially transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. He has also said that allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military could have a negative impact on military readiness.

Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) may return to one of the most powerful positions in the House, chair of the Appropriations Committee. Lewis chaired the committee, which makes decisions on all aspects of federal funding, from 2005 to 2006. He would need a waiver from the Republican leadership to take the position, because of Republican term limits on committee positions.

“Lewis is someone who is quite happy with earmarks and extracting things for his district and presumably his state,” UC Berkeley political science professor Jack Citrin said. “But there are other members of the Republican leadership of the House who are hostile to that, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.”

The wave did, of course, topple Democrat Nancy Pelosi from her post as the Speaker of the House, the first woman and first Californian to hold that job. It will also mean the loss of important committee chairmanships for veteran California Democrats like George Miller of Martinez, who heads the education and labor committee; Henry Waxman, who heads the House energy and commerce committee; and Howard Berman, who heads the foregin affairs committee. Republicans Darrell Issa, Bud McKeon, David Dreier, Jerry Lewis and Kevin McCarthy are in line to assume leadership positions under Republican control.

By late Tuesday, Republican David Harmer was the only California congressional challenger with a clear lead in the polls. Harmer, running in California’s 11th district, centered in San Joaquin County, was leading Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney 49 percent to 46, with 61 percent of precincts reporting. At midnight, the Associated Press declared the race too close to call.

Most polling and prognosticators estimated that the GOP was likely to pick up between 55 and 60 congressional seats, more than enough to claim the  House majority. By late Tuesday night, Republicans had picked up 59 formerly Democratic seats. Each of the major networks had called a GOP House majority by 7 p.m. on the West Coast.

Key races in Florida, Indiana, Tennessee, New Jersey and large swaths of the mid-Atlantic and Rustbelt states went to the Republicans, with a number of important contests in New York and Pennsylvania going to the GOP, too.

Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, appearing before a crowd at the party’s victory headquarters in Washington D.C., expressed enthusiasm about the early results. “We are about to do the one thing Americans want done, and that is to fire Pelosi,” Steele said.

But most of the action took place outside the Golden State. Of California’s 53 congressional representatives — the largest delegation in the House — only three Democratic incumbents entered Tuesday with their jobs in real danger: McNerney, a former wind-turbine company CEO and two-term incumbent; Jim Costa in the 20th district, which stretches from Fresno to Bakersfield; and Loretta Sanchez, a four-term representative from the state’s 47th district, in Orange County. One incumbent Republican, Dan Lungren in the 3rd district northeast of Sacramento, held a slim lead in polls over Democratic challenger Ami Bera entering Tuesday.

Despite Harmer’s lead, his press coordinator, Melissa Subbotin, wouldn’t yet claim victory. “We’re going to wait,” Subbotin said. “That’s not everybody’s favorite thing, especially on the West Coast, but that’s what we’re doing.”

Sanchez held a 50-43 lead over Republican Van Tran in the 47th district race at 11:30 p.m., with 51 percent of the vote tallied, and Lungren was leading Bera 50-43 with 75 percent of precincts reporting. By midnight, Vidak was trailing Republican challenger Andy Vidak of Hanford by less than 1 percent. Vidak had been considered a longshot until the final weeks of the campaign, when he received an influx of cash from the national Republican party and benefited from televised ads attacking Costa that were paid for by independent nonprofit groups, including Carl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Political Strategies. Sixty-nine percent of CD-20 precincts have reported their results.

“On a national scale, Republicans have a good tailwind,” said Richard Temple, a Sacramento political consultant. “Every seat they can take away from the Democrats gets them closer to majority control, so every seat in play is important. But in California, it’s unique in that there aren’t a lot of competitive seats. So (this election) won’t dramatically change the dynamics of the California delegation, but people in California should still care about it.”

For Republicans, regaining control of the House was largely contingent on winning back seats the party lost during the 2006 and 2008 elections, when Democrats made significant gains in traditionally conservative districts, like California’s 11th, where in 2006, McNerney was able to knock off seven-term Republican incumbent Richard Pombo. McNerney retained the seat in 2008 as his district came out in support of Barack Obama, but entered Tuesday trailing Harmer, the Tea Party-favored Republican nominee, in some private polls.

“The problem for Democrats (nationally) is that Obama now has fewer backers than he once did, chiefly because the economy is awful and he has been President for two years,” said David Karol, a government professor at American University. “They are losing races not only in historically Republican districts, but in more competitive ones and even in some Democratic areas.”

But not so in the Golden State, where McNerney and Sanchez represent the exception, even though close to three-quarters of the state’s voters disapprove of the job their congressmen are doing in Washington, the Field Poll reported in October.

“Californians aren’t as pissed off as the rest of the country,” said Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “Obama’s approval ratings are higher here than nationwide. It’s a pretty blue state, and it’s likely to stay a pretty blue state this election.”

That’s because California’s demographic makeup tends to shield it from many national trends, said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. California’s large population of non-white residents, DiCamillo said, tends to view government-sponsored programs and health care insurance overhaul more favorably than the nation as whole.

Further, California’s independent voters – who make up a quarter of the state’s registered voters — tend to be more left-leaning than decline-to-state voters elsewhere.

So while 72 percent of Californians view Congress unfavorably, early polls indicate that independent voters here support most of the state’s Democratic slate, incumbents included — a departure from other generally blue states like New York, where several Democratic members of congress faced stiff challenges from the GOP.

Among the early Republican victories was Florida’s 8th district, where Republican Daniel Webster, who previously served in the House, defeated freshman Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson, a major GOP target, 56 percent to 38. Republicans also won in Florida’s 24th district, where Sandy Adams defeated first-term Democrat Suzanne Kosmas.

“The incumbents with underlying strength are hanging on,” said John McNulty, a political science professor at SUNY Binghamton, citing aggressive fund raising and high-profile endorsements as examples of “strength.” “It looks like the Republicans sent the herd at the Democrats who won their seats the last two cycles.”

But Katie Merrill, a political consultant in Berkeley, said even Republican pick-ups in the 11th and possibly the 3rd districts won’t necessarily signal a revival for the party in solidly blue California.

“Republicans in California need to win the governor’s race if they’re going to do anything of any impact,” Merrill said. Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Republican Meg Whitman to win the governorship earlier Tuesday. “It looks like this is really just a matter of voter turnout, and perhaps not really this Republican ‘wave.’ The Republican party in California needs to do a lot more than win back CD-11 to show they’ve gained ground in the state.”

Allen Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, a political almanac of sorts, agreed that California’s Republican Party still has a long ways to go before it can make a significant dent in the state’s congressional delegation.

“The Republican Party in California has almost become a regional party,” Hoffenblum said. “It’s not a statewide party. But (CD-11) is a region where they’re still competitive. You look at the figures, and the district leans Republican. And this year is a good year to be a Republican.”

Mid-term elections almost always benefit the party out of power. Since 1950, the president’s political party has lost seats in Congress during mid-terms in every election but two, in 1998 and 2002, when Republicans were able to stretch out their majority. During the last mid-term election, in 2006, Democrats gained 30 Republican seats nationally – the biggest mid-term swing since Democrats coughed up 54 of their seats in the House in 1994, during the Clinton administration.

Much of Republicans’ fervor has been directed toward Speaker Pelosi, who became one of Republicans’ favorite symbols of excessive Congressional spending. Harmer was on hand earlier in October at a Stockton rally organized by Steele aboard a “Fire Pelosi” tour bus.

Republican spirit this year has also been bolstered by the vocal rise of the Tea Party, both in California and nationally. And while few Tea Party-backed candidates have been able to gain much serious traction in California, the endorsement has appeared to benefit Harmer, whose father served as the state’s lieutenant governor under Ronald Reagan, a Tea Party icon.

“must win” for the Democrats to keep a majority in the Senate, and her apparent victory now assures Democratic control regardless of the outcome in other close Western state races.

Nonpartisan polls have shown Boxer up by as much as 10  points in the days leading up to the election, but she was taking no chances as she rallied voters at Oakland’s Jack London Square yesterday.

“You are sending me back to fight for the middle class, to fight for jobs, to stand up against the special interests,” Boxer said. “My opponent wanted to create jobs in China, but I want to create jobs in Concord, Chula Vista and Chino.”

Republicans are expecting to take control of the House of Representatives and pick up seats in the Senate, which would force President Barack Obama to preside over a divided government in 2011. For Democrats, even prospects of a slimmer majority in the Senate would represent something of a consolation prize on a night where Republicans are expected to win big victories in governors’ races as well .

“There’s some that say it’s better if Obama can blame a Republican Congress for failure to get things done, and that saving the Senate won’t help you much,” UC Berkeley political science professor Rob van Houweling said. “But Obama is already having tremendous problems with appointments, and a new Republican majority in the Senate would make it even harder.”

Republican candidates identifying with the party’s more conservative Tea Party wing are leading in a number of Senate races, including in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania—states Obama won in 2008. Boxer’s opponent, Republican Carly Fiorina, has courted Tea Party support, but appears headed for defeat.

Severe recession and economic dislocation are dragging on Democratic candidates across the country. Voters have confronted a national unemployment rate of more than 9 percent for most of the Obama administration, including a 9.6 percent unemployment rate on Election Day. If Boxer wins, she’d overcome the electoral handicap of California’s 12.4 percent jobless rate.

While the West Coast economy suffers from many of the same problems as the rest of the country, Boxer is capitalizing on other issues. she chairs the Senate committee overseeing the environment, an issue that resonates strongly with California voters. In addition, Boxer’s opponent Fiorina has expressed pro-life views in a state where more than 70 percent of voters support abortion rights, according to the most recent Field Poll. Fiorina has also had to defend her record as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard at a time when voters hold big business in low esteem.

The president’s party often loses Senate seats during a midterm election (1998 and 2002 were recent exceptions), but severe economic dislocation will likely exacerbate Democratic losses in this election. Critics of the Democratic campaign strategy have suggested that Obama could have created a greater economic stimulus package in 2009, but Berkeley political science professor Eric Schickler said fundamental weaknesses in the economy were almost inevitably going to affect Democrats’ electoral fortunes.

“Maybe with a bigger stimulus you would have ended up with 9.1 percent unemployment instead of 9.6 percent, but all people would see is the 9.1 percent unemployment rate anyway,” Schickler said. “Financial recoveries are slow, so some losses for the majority party are already baked into the cake.”

Her claim is at least partly true. Unemployment was at 11 percent in December 1982 and February 1983, according to the state Employment Development Department.

But on average, unemployment hovered around 8 percent while Brown was in office. The rate dipped to just over 6 percent during 1979 and was under 9 percent when Brown’s second term ended.

During the term following Brown’s, unemployment steadily declined to just over 5 percent. [What we don't know is what the employment rate was when Brown started in office. The department's data only goes back to 1976.]

In last night’s gubernatorial debate, Meg Whitman suggested—not for the first time—that Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32) will hurt the 97 percent of California jobs that are not directly linked the to the “green economy.”  There’s no right answer here, since we’re dealing with projections on future employment figures, but here’s what California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) had to say.

The LAO  gives some fodder to Whitman by saying AB 32 could lead to short-term job losses. The LAO is pretty equivocal, however, on AB32’s long-term impact on jobs.

The main takeaway:  “[The LAO] believes that the aggregate net jobs impact [of AB 32] in the near term is likely to be negative, even after recognizing that many of the programs phase in over time…In the longer term, its net effect on jobs—potentially either positive or negative—is unknown and will depend on a variety of factors. In a relative sense, however, its effect on jobs in both the near term and longer term will probably be modest in comparison to the overall size of the state’s economy.

There’s plenty of information out there from proponents and opponents of AB32, but the LAO’s analysis has the least partisan contamination.

“Not only is California’s credit rating the lowest in the United States, but we are ranked behind Kazakhstan, Mexico and many others,” Lockyer told a Political Science Association audience on the UC Berkeley campus last night. “We’re rated low, and that adds to our borrowing costs.”

California’s legislative session ended on August 31, with members of the Assembly and Senate unable to close a $19 billion deficit in California’s proposed $90 billion 2010-2011 budget. With outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger threatening to veto any budget that misses his goals on taxes and spending, California may be without a budget until well after the Nov. 2 election. The state has missed its June 15 budget deadline in 23 of the last 24 years, but previous budget impasses have never lasted past mid-September.

Lockyer didn’t say when he expected the budget to pass, but explained that the delay is exacting a price on the state. “It’s in the neighborhood of $50 million to $55 million more money that is spent every day than would be spent if the budget were adopted,” he said.

California’s constitution requires both the Senate and the Assembly to pass a budget by a two-thirds vote, making the state one of only three that require a “supermajority” to approve a budget. Even though Democrats have a large majority in both California houses, two Senate Republicans and five Republican Assembly members would have to vote with the Democrats in this session for a budget to pass. That hasn’t come close to happening.

The November’s ballot contains one possible long-term solution to this nearly annual legislative logjam, Lockyer said. Proposition 25 would enable the legislature to pass a budget by a majority vote and would penalize legislators for not meeting a budget deadline.

“One of the things I like about it is that if legislators don’t adopt a budget on time, they don’t get paid,” Lockyer said. “They forfeit their salaries for every day that there’s a stalemate.”

The treasurer was less optimistic about potential budget-balancing revenue from Proposition 19, the November California ballot initiative that calls for the legalization and taxation of marijuana. While Lockyer supported the legalization of medicinal marijuana during his 1990s tenure as California’s attorney general, he has joined the majority of statewide officials and candidates for state office—including Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown—in opposing Proposition 19.

“I don’t think legalizing marijuana would produce economic results and tax results that are substantial,” Lockyer said. “There are some economists who think there could be substantial public health costs with marijuana legalization.”

In a year when California expects competitive statewide elections for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, Lockyer is expected to easily win his bid for a second term as treasurer. While he supports fellow Democrat Jerry Brown in the governor’s race, he doubts Brown or Meg Whitman will change California’s byzantine budget process.

“But the thing that make me chuckle about Meg is that she controlled a small Board of Directors at EBay,” Lockyer said. “As governor, she’d have 120 legislators that hate her guts and think they can do a better job. That promises some interesting things out of Sacramento.”

Earlier this month, Perata destroyed his car tire driving through this pothole next to his campaign headquarters. He talked to neighbors and found out he wasn’t the only one who’d had this problem.

So Perata—a Sacramento powerbroker who represented Oakland and other East Bay cities in the Capitol for twelve years, including four as the top Senate Democrat—started calling city officials. Before long, he and his staff were speaking with the Public Works Department. Perata learned that the city had paved over the pothole six times in the past year, but not addressed the root of the problem: overflowing water from the sewer system beneath the street.

“That’s a management problem,” an exasperated Perata told a campaign audience last week in East Oakland, a district he represented in both state and county government. “Don’t blame the workers—it’s not their fault for filling a work order dutifully. But who’s the clown that hasn’t figured it out after six times? That’s a management problem.”

With a booming voice that doesn’t require a microphone at campaign events, Perata frequently describes himself as a “results guy, not a process guy.” In a blue suit and black mock turtleneck, Perata, 65, shook hands among old friends and new acquaintances in a mostly African-American audience at Youth Uprising, an leadership and job training center for teens and young adults near Castlemont High School in East Oakland. He’s quick to remember a constituent who came to him with a problem in county government many years ago or church ministers he’s worked with on social programs.

On the campaign trail, the invocation of the pothole problem is a standard Perata theme: What might seem like minor issues on Oakland streets reflect more serious deficiencies at City Hall. He told campaign audiences at both Youth Uprising and West Oakland’s Acorn apartments that the city has “no excuse” for not addressing garbage on the streets of these neighborhoods.

While not mentioning incumbent mayor Ron Dellums by name, Perata is suggesting that the city needs a firmer hand in City Hall and that he’s the one to provide it. “Good mayors in active cities go around and manage by driving and walking around,” Perata said, citing Chicago Mayor Richard Daley as an example. “They see things, write stuff down, and call the department people. The next morning, the mayor goes back out to see if the people did their jobs.”

Part of Perata’s pitch to voters is the idea he would bring a Chicago-like discipline to City Hall. But could he turn Oakland city government, a hodgepodge of 40 boards and commissions, into a well-oiled political machine? Like Perata, Dellums and former mayor Jerry Brown returned to Oakland from political positions outside the city with visions of changing the culture of Oakland government. Both mayors struggled to bend the bureaucracy in their direction. Perata acknowledges it’s hard to shift from Washington D.C. or Sacramento to Bay Area government, but sees former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, who had previously served as California Assembly speaker, as someone who made the transition. “Willie Brown has his detractors, but the city worked when he was mayor,” Perata said.

In addition to citing Willie Brown, Perata takes a page from the New York mayor Rudy Giuliani playbook—talking about clean streets and top-down accountability. He also has some positive things to say about how current New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has managed New York City.

Dellums has not said whether he intends to seek re-election, while city councilmember Jean Quan has declared herself a candidate and city councilmember Rebecca Kaplan is exploring a run. Perata has the longest record in elected office among the declared candidates in Oakland mayor’s race, dating back to his days as a county supervisor in the 1980s. He can call in favors from business and labor leaders he’s helped during his days in Sacramento, and can also point to legislative accomplishments he brokered in Sacramento on gun control, environmental regulations and health care that have benefited Oakland residents. Perata says he always found a way to align the broader interests of the California Democratic Party with his constituents’ needs in the East Bay.

“For the last 20 years, I’ve been as involved and aggressive on the fundamental issues in Oakland as anybody,” Perata said last week during an interview in Rockridge. “Almost everything I wanted to do in Sacramento that was beneficial to the state—whether it was on gun control or infant mortality—was twice as beneficial to my district.”

In campaign appearances, Perata presents himself as an agent of active government and accountability. People supporting Perata—including U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Oakland police union—point to his record of surviving state budget negotiations with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and a carjacking on Piedmont Avenue as signs of a decisive leader who’s cool under pressure.

But while Perata’s long history in office comes with its share of accomplishments, it also comes with its share of controversies. In a Bay Area that prides itself on its progressive politics and a play-nice ethos, Perata is often the bête noire of the blogosphere. Commenters on the San Francisco Chronicle or East Bay Express bristle at what they perceive as Perata’s heavy-handed style and penchant for wheeling and dealing. One East Bay group has set up an “Anyone But Don Perata for Mayor” website.

One deal Perata helped broker has already come under scrutiny in this mayoral campaign. During his tenure on the county Board of Supervisors, Perata backed the agreement between the city, the county, local developer Ed De Silva and Raiders owner Al Davis to renovate the Oakland Coliseum to entice the football team to return to the city in 1998. The city and county voted to guarantee $197 million in loans for the stadium renovations, and both Oakland and Alameda County are still servicing those debts.

“We don’t need a mayor whose funding for the developers left this city with a Raiders deal that will leave us paying $24 million a year until 2025,” Perata opponent Jean Quan said at a March campaign event. “If it weren’t for the Raiders deal, we’d have twice as many people working in our parks and working with our kids.”

At the height of his power in Sacramento, Perata faced a five-year FBI investigation into charges that Oakland lobbyist Lilly Hu funneled money into his campaigns. The FBI raided Perata’s house in 2004 as part of its investigation, but he was not charged when the investigation ended last year. He characterizes this episode as a politically motivated vendetta by the Bush administration when he was the most powerful Democrat in California state politics. He says the bottom line now is that he’s now the most vetted candidate in the mayor’s race, and that he’s proud to run on his record. He also doesn’t seem to mind that he’s acquired a reputation as something of a political tough guy, and a small picture of “The Godfather” Don Corleone sits on a shelf in Perata’s campaign office, next to pictures from community centers and social welfare programs he’s helped to establish.

“[The FBI] couldn’t even find the slimmest of a nail to hang their coat on, and they went through everything,” Perata said. “If all the other stuff I have done in my career—including a very good job as president pro tem under that pressure—is not a sufficient counterweight to an allegation never proved, then a person is not going to vote first, second or third anyway.”

The reference to “first, second or third” reflects a new wrinkle in Oakland politics. This year, the city’s elections will take place under instant runoff voting, eliminating the traditional June primary and moving all voting for city offices to November. Under the new system, voters will rank their choices for mayor, meaning Perata won’t have the opportunity to go one-on-one with any opponent. In this environment, blocs of voters who might otherwise split their votes could coalesce around the “Anyone but Perata” campaign.

In early campaigning, Perata has returned to Oakland districts he represented in state and county government

“Don Perata is someone who has high positive ratings and high negative ratings with voters, so he’s not going to get lots of second-preference votes,” said UC Berkeley political science professor Bruce Cain. “If it turns out to be a close race, those subtleties could matter.”

Even though the votes will be tallied in a new way under IRV, Oakland’s 2010 mayoral contest hinges on the traditional urban politics triumvirate of crime, education and economic development. Crime often takes center stage in Oakland—a city of 400,000 that has averaged 120 annual homicides over the last three years—and Perata is quick to point out that he likes the direction new police chief Anthony Batts has taken the department.

“I’ve told Batts that if I’m elected mayor, I’m backing his hand for the entire time he has a contract [through 2012],” Perata said. “He’s gone out and been in the community—heard from you and decided what needs to be done. I will support this chief and won’t second guess him.”

On public education, Perata—who was a schoolteacher in Alameda for 15 years before entering politics—has said that Oakland public schools can no longer operate on the “old model.” He has said he thinks that Proposition 98—the 1988 California law that determines public school funding under a strict formula—has harmed public education in California. He says the federal and state budget shortfalls mean Oakland will not be able to look to Sacramento or Washington D.C. for more funds, even though the Oakland Unified School District is operating at an $80 million deficit in 2010 and facing teacher strikes. Perata says that OUSD needs to be “smaller and more diverse in its program offerings” as the number of students has declined from 55,000 to 37,000 in the last decade. Despite this exodus of students out of the system, Perata says OUSD superintendent Tony Smith has the right ideas about partnership between the city government and the school district.

“I think this new superintendent is the right man for the job at the right time,” Perata said. “The city and the school district should be partners. We should be sharing afterschool programs, facilities, libraries—all these things should be done in common.”

In making his play as the candidate best positioned to jumpstart Oakland’s economy, Perata has already started soliciting ideas from local business leaders. “For business to thrive in Oakland, the city needs political leadership that understands how to make the government machine work and breakdown barriers to economic growth,” says Carlos Plazola, president of the Oakland Builders’ Association, an organization that has not yet endorsed a mayoral candidate.

“I’m impressed with Don’s record of getting bureaucracies to move forward and his ability to deliver on commitments,” Plazola adds.

At many of these discussions with local business leaders, Perata has vowed to bring new energy and personnel into the City Economic Development Agency and says he sees great potential for economic development in health care.

“The one thing that Oakland has that no other city in the Bay Area has are four medical centers, with 15,000 people employed in those centers,” Perata said. “Those are major assets. As mayor, I would put together a hospital district. They’ve done in it Birmingham, they’ve done it in Cleveland, they’re doing it in Pittsburgh. Health care is going to be the big-ticket item in the future.”

On the campaign trail, Perata believes he can win votes across the city—including among Oakland’s African-Americans, who make up around 33 percent of the city’s population. “I’m the only announced candidate that can campaign everywhere equally and be held accountable for it,” Perata said. “I’ve represented the African-American community—which is the largest single constituency in Oakland—and I’ve always had very strong support there. I’ve run against black candidates in these districts and beaten them.”

Perata’s supporters among the city’s African-American leaders include Nate Miley, an Oakland representative on the County Board of Supervisors. Miley was on the City Council that supported Oakland’s “strong mayor” initiative in 1998, and he said that Perata was ideally suited to lead city government under this system.

“Don Perata will be the first person as mayor to exercise that office the way it should be exercised. He’ll roll up his sleeves and concentrate on the welfare and well-being of the city,” Miley said at a Perata campaign event. “Some good things have happened in the administrations of Jerry Brown and Ron Dellums, but I think Don will drive the ball home. He’ll bring the city forward.”

Without a major African-American candidate in the race at this point, Perata won’t be the only one vying for support among one of the city’s largest and most active political constituencies. Jean Quan has already received the endorsement of Oakland’s State Assemblyman Sandré Swanson, a former Dellums colleague who is now Quan’s campaign co-chair. And Geoffrey Pete, vice chairman of the Oakland Black Caucus that recruited Dellums to run for mayor, told the Oakland Tribune he’d be inclined to support Kaplan if Dellums doesn’t run. “I think Kaplan can be solid enough on the African-American issues to win a sizable portion of the African-American constituency,” Pete said. “I think she is the candidate for the future of the city of Oakland.”

Oakland’s transition to IRV could intersect with the city’s diverse electorate in unpredictable ways. Under instant runoff voting—where individuals don’t have to put all their electoral eggs in one basket—candidates may “microtarget” Oakland voters as never before. For instance, women voters make up more than 53 percent of Oakland’s electorate, and Oakland has never had a woman mayor. Jean Quan—and Rebecca Kaplan, if she runs—may make that appeal to voters.

Back in front of Perata headquarters on Oakland Avenue in mid-April, East Bay Municipal Utility District and Oakland Public Works trucks descended on the pothole. They’d removed manhole covers and tested sewage pipes. It’s not clear that the Oakland city government can come running every time Perata calls—even if he wins the mayor’s office next year—but he’s taking it as an encouraging first step.

“I believe my political skill set is ideally suited to solve problems—so much of this is about persuasion,” he said. “You sweat the small stuff and when it comes to the big stuff, you’ll get it right. People will follow you.”