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 County results Stephens: 40–50% 50–60 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% Bell: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in California |
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The 1918 California gubernatorial election was held on November 5, 1918. Incumbent governor William Stephens was re-elected over independent Theodore Arlington Bell. The 1918 election is notable for its invocation of the Hawson amendment, a law designed to prevent a candidate from winning the nomination of another party via cross-filing; after Republican mayor of San Francisco James Rolph won the Democratic primary, the Democratic Party was left without a nominee.
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In the Republican primary, Stephens defeated Rolph by approximately 23,000 votes. He also won the Prohibition and Progressive primaries. Rolph won the Democratic primary by 14,000 votes over famed prosecutors Francis J. Heney and Thomas L. Woolwine and received the most combined votes of any candidate across all primaries. However, under the Hawson amendment passed the year prior, Rolph was unable to accept the Democratic nomination because he had not won his own party's nomination. As a result, the Democratic Party was left without a nominee in the general election.
In the general election, Stephens defeated Theodore Arlington Bell, who had been the Democratic nominee in 1908 and 1910 and entered the race after the primary as their de facto candidate, by over 130,000 votes. Stephens was the first governor elected with an absolute majority of the vote since Henry Gage in 1898 and won the highest share of the vote since Frederick Low in 1863.
