Has the popping of Champagne corks been premature?

We're referring to the defeat of Proposition 23, which has been hailed as the game-winning home run for California's climate change law.

But celebrations have turned to fears about the impact of what some have called its "evil twin" - Prop. 26, which passed Tuesday. That's the initiative relabeling environmental mitigation and other fees as taxes, requiring the virtually impossible to get two-thirds vote, thus starving state and local treasuries even further.

"In effect they will stop (AB32, the climate change law) with this," said Scott Hauge, president of Small Business California, who supports the law, "along with many of us in the business community." Hauge was referring to San Ramon's Chevron Corp. (which was "neutral" on Prop. 23) and the California Chamber of Commerce, both of which poured millions of dollars into Prop. 26.

According to a UCLA School of Law study last week, the initiative "could have substantial and wide-ranging impacts on implementation of the state's health, safety and environmental laws," including AB32. Noting that the state imposes regulatory fees for such programs, the study said Prop. 26 will "make it harder to fund these programs in the future."

First of all, when are we ever going to admit that ballot propositions like these are far from ideal? Voters hardly have the time and inclination to figure out how a particular proposition might play out, let alone how it might affect other propositions.

Still, if there is one area of law that deserves to be thrown into chaos, it's this one. Californians are famously pro-environment (who isn't? I like birds and blue skies, too), but state progressives use that tendency to craft all sorts of growth-smothering, business-destroying environmental regulations that are more about power and control than they are about saving the planet.

Californian pols are also adept to appealing to state voters' vanity. Despite years of depression level economics, everyone from the Governator on down likes to talk about how California is "on the vanguard" and "leading the way" for the rest of the country. Then they strike heroic socialist realist poses for the cameras while looking purposefully into the distance (I call this the Year Zero Face). The state's cap&trade law promises blue skies, which everyone hears about, but relies on faulty science and an enormous tax burden to accomplish its goals. Somehow this is never quite included in the discussion.

Still, while I like the idea of the state's environmental regs being thrown into at least temporary chaos, I do need to castigate the state GOP, which really slept on this and other propositions, all to its extreme disadvantage. For example, there was Prop. 25, which eliminated the supermajority requirement for passing taxes. I am a pretty plugged in guy, but until I read the voter guide a couple days before the election, I hadn't heard a word about this. By contrast, you couldn't listen to the radio for 20 minutes without hearing a "Pass 26" ad. Losing the tax supermajority was a disaster for the state, the taxpayers, and to the GOP. There was no organized opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of voters hadn't heard of Prop. 25 until they entered the voting booth.

Meanwhile, no Republican stood up to support passing Prop. 23. Our Republican governor led the opposition! Our Republican candidate for governor refused to say anything. And our Republican Senate candidate, when asked directly her position on Prop. 23, said she hadn't studied the issue. What do you need to study? By contrast, Barbara Boxer had a ready answer.

Agreed that Boxer is obnoxious, mean, and not as smart as she thinks she is. But, you know what? When someone asked her about Prop.23, she had an answer: she's against it. She also said passing it will result in the loss of US jobs. Plus, the oil companies are in favor of it. So, there you go.

Stupid? Sure. Misinformed propagandizing? Absolutely. But, Boxer is a pro speaking to an audience, that wants to know where she stands and why. That will take you a lot farther than stuttering answers about the complexity of an issue.

That's how it's done state GOP.

The Republican woman who has the best chance to win in California on Nov. 2 is not billionaire Meg Whitman, who has spent more than $140 million of her own money to make sure every living thing knows who she is. It's Carly Fiorina, another former Silicon Valley CEO with thinner pockets but a looser campaign style who has drawn incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer into a dead heat.

The two Republican candidates have not campaigned together, but when they have appeared at the same event, it has been Fiorina who gets the attention, pounding a shot of Tequila and letting loose a rolled-r trill at the Hispanic 100 Lifetime Achievement Award dinner in Newport Beach (Orange County) this month.

Even as Fiorina piggybacks on Whitman's high-tech ground operation to mobilize voters, her campaign is betting that she won't be sucked down with Whitman should the former eBay CEO lose the race for governor to Democrat Jerry Brown.

Sen. Barbara Boxer thinks she's struck election gold in California by charging her rival, ex-CEO Carly Fiorina, with outsourcing. The real story is how Boxer has chased millions of jobs out of state with her politics.

Last Wednesday's radio debate between California's two senatorial candidates repeatedly circled the issue of jobs in a state with 12.4% unemployment, second highest in the nation.

Incumbent Boxer's trump card was that her opponent, while chief of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2006, outsourced jobs. "She laid off 30,000 workers, shipped jobs overseas and says she's proud of her record — well, that's her record," said Boxer.

Problem is, Boxer is a far bigger outsourcer. The unemployment rate in her state is 25% higher than the national average of 9.4%, and the number of jobless Californians is 66% higher than when she took office 17 years ago. Her 90% liberal voting record based on National Journal data has much to do with it.

Boxer, first elected in 1992, would not rate on anyone's list of most influential senators. Her most famous moments on Capitol Hill have not been ones of legislative accomplishment, but of delivering partisan shots. Although she is chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, it is telling that leadership on the most pressing issue before it - climate change - was shifted to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., because the bill had become so polarized under her wing.

For some Californians, Boxer's reliably liberal voting record may be reason enough to give her another six years in office. But we believe Californians deserve more than a usually correct vote on issues they care about. They deserve a senator who is accessible, effective and willing and able to reach across party lines to achieve progress on the great issues of our times. Boxer falls short on those counts.

Unfortunately for Californians who are eager for change, Fiorina has firmly staked out positions that are outside of the state's mainstream values and even its economic interest. The list only begins with her openness to offshore oil drilling, her opposition to the Roe vs. Wade abortion rights ruling and her unwillingness to support even the most commonsense gun-control measures to keep assault weapons off the street or to deny guns to suspected terrorists on the federal "no fly list."

One might argue, as Fiorina does, that the latter are settled issues and thus should not be determinant in an election that should be laser-focused on jobs. But efforts to expand health care and take action against climate change - issues with both moral and economic consequences for future generations - are very much in play, especially if Republicans gain control of the Senate. Fiorina has said she would vote to repeal the landmark health care bill, and her support for a state initiative that would halt definitive action on climate change until unemployment reaches 5.5 percent shows a disdain for science and a disregard for this state's potential to take the lead in an emerging green economy. She is similarly unrealistic in her insistence that immigration reform must wait until the U.S.-Mexico border is absolutely secure.

Boxer, 69, has built a political persona as a crusader, a self-described fighter for liberal causes, beginning with her first election to the Marin County Board of Supervisors in 1976. She has taken lonely and unpopular stands, from voting against the invasion of Iraq to forcing former Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., to resign amid charges of sexual harassment.

She was one of only 14 senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

"You have to, at the end of the day, consider all the facts in front of you and vote your conscience on some of these questions, even if you're one of just a handful of people," Boxer said in an interview. "You remember those moments."

"I'm a fighter for the people I represent," Boxer said. "I have a very strong sense of when they're being hurt, and I'm not afraid to go up against the people that are trying to hurt my people. That's why I've got a lot of special interests that want me gone. Polluters want me gone. The far right, they want me gone."