There's 2 sides to that coin, though. The Green candidate took over 400k votes, and even still McClintock lost. With such strong Green support here, its a damn shame we can't make more of it.
True enough; this has got to feel like deja vu for poor Tom. I believe he lost his '94 race for this same office by an equally slim margin.
I propose that the GOP use a new strategy; let's go to the third parties who are similar to us (Libertarian, Constitution, Reform) and persuade them not to run a candidate against us.
It worked to a point for Tom this time and last with the Libertarians who declined to run a candidate both times and helped him considerably. If he could have convinced the American Independents to do the same he'd probably be Controller today.