California election results: So much for losing gracefully

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This is not shaping up to be the season of losing gracefully. Steve Poizner stopped well short of endorsing Meg Whitman after she trounced him in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Instead, he said she needs to prove she’s a hard-core conservative first. Chuck DeVore, GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, encouraged his supporters to vote for Carly Fiorina, the victor in that race, but then said in an interview she won’t get their votes ‘if she thinks that she has to run back to the middle to win.’

Now comes this concession statement from state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who lost in her bid in the race for superintendent of public instruction.

‘The victors in the race for superintendent of public instruction were two different wings of the same status-quo education establishment: ACSA’s [the Assn. of California School Administrators’] interests for administrators prevailed alongside CTA’s [the California Teachers Assn.’s] interests for teachers. The interests of the reform community, on behalf of parents and kids, lost.

‘I am deeply saddened by the outcome of this race, which had signaled so much hope for the possibility of true education reform in California and an overdue shakeup of an education morass which remains complacent with failure.’

-- Evan Halper in Sacramento