San Francisco

California Democrats await mayoral race results

The future of San Francisco — and to some extent, the fortunes of California’s Democratic Party — hung in the balance Tuesday as voters decided whether to elect a Green Party maverick or Willie Brown’s chosen successor as the city’s next mayor.

Elections officials said 78,000 absentee ballots — an unusually high number — were returned. Of those turned in before Election Day, Democrat Gavin Newsom was heavily favored, with 46,192 votes, or 65 percent, to 24,409, or 35 percent over the Greens’ Matt Gonzalez.

The tight race, coming so soon after Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election as governor, has been seen as a gauge of whether California’s Democrats have lost touch with their core constituents. The party has maintained a near stranglehold on elected offices in the city for decades.

Washington, D.C.

Supreme Court urged to soften Miranda warning

Government lawyers Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to give the police more freedom to question suspects without first warning them of their right to remain silent, and most of the justices sounded as though they were inclined to do so.

“Miranda does not require officers to give the warnings,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist said. “It is a conditional thing.”

If an officer warns a suspect of his rights, and the suspect talks, his words may be used against him in court. But a failure to give the warning does not mean that all the evidence must be thrown out, he added.

“I respectfully disagree,” replied Jill M. Wichlens, an assistant public defender from Denver. She argued that the court’s own opinions made clear that the penalty for failing to warn suspects of their rights was that no confessions or evidence obtained may be used.

The exchange Tuesday came as Justice Department lawyers and a Missouri state prosecutor urged the justices to adopt a scaled-down version of the Miranda warnings.

Illinois

Former senator dies day after heart surgery

Paul Simon, the bow-tie-wearing missionary’s son who rose from crusading newspaper owner to two-term U.S. senator and presidential aspirant, died Tuesday after complications from heart surgery. He was 75.

Simon was surrounded by family members at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield when he died, according to a statement from Southern Illinois University, where Simon started a public policy institute.

Simon had a single bypass and heart valve surgery Monday at St. John’s Prairie Heart Institute.

The southern Illinois Democrat’s political career began with his election to the state Legislature in 1954 and culminated with his election to the U.S. Senate in 1984. He campaigned for the presidency but dropped out in April 1988 after only winning his home state’s primary. He retired from Congress in 1997.