PARTIES PONDER PRIMARY PATTERNS; CROSSOVER VOTES MIGHT HAVE SWAYED REPUBLICAN SENATE RACE.

Byline: Paul Hefner Daily News Sacramento Bureau

Thousands of voters took advantage of California's first blanket primary to cross party lines, but political strategists could only take morning-after guesses Wednesday about what crossover voters had in mind.

Results in Los Angeles County and statewide suggested strongly that some voters disregarded their own party affiliation and gravitated toward high-profile contests, particularly the Democratic race for governor and the Republican battle for U.S. Senate.

While 3.3 million votes went to Democrats in the hotly contested three-way race for governor, nearly 750,000 fewer ballots were cast for the party's Senate candidates, where incumbent Barbara Boxer faced only token opposition.

Just the opposite was true for Republicans, where 376,000 fewer voters cast ballots in Attorney General Dan Lungren's cakewalk gubernatorial nomination than in the Senate duel between Darrell Issa and State Treasurer Matt Fong.

``I think it does suggest that people went where the action was,'' said Steve Greene, assistant director at USC's Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics. ``But you don't know what they were doing when they got there.''

An initiative approved by voters last November scrapped California's closed primary system, which had allowed only registered members of a party to select its nominees. Instead, this year's ballots contained the names of every candidate from every party, leaving voters free to support a Democrat in one race and a Republican in another.

Judging by the numbers, that's exactly what they did.

In Los Angeles County, Democrats seeking the party's nomination for governor got 86,357 more votes than there were party members at the polls. Republicans saw the same phenomenon: while only 425,494 party members cast ballots, GOP candidates in the Senate race collected a total of 494,867 votes.

The 69,000-vote difference had to come from Democrats and other voters outside the party. But were they voting for the candidate they liked, or for one they thought their true pick could beat in November?

``Anecdotally, I know of many many Boxer supporters who thought they were trying to be helpful when they voted for one of the Republican candidates,'' said Roy Behr, spokesman for the Boxer campaign. ``There was definitely some of that going on.''

Only time will tell how many Trojan horse votes were cast, however.

``No one knows, and anyone who claims to know is just not being honest about this,'' said Mike Madrid, political director for the state Republican Party. ``There's a lot of head-scratching going on in California today.''

The political itch may be strongest among Republicans in light of an exit poll that showed 24 percent of Fong's support on Tuesday came from Democrats.

Fong's margin of victory was only 132,000 votes statewide, so if the poll is correct, then non-Republicans may have decided the race, Madrid said.

``Never before, certainly in California history, nor in American history, have members of another party, in effect, chosen the nominee and the standard-bearer for another party,'' he said. ``That may well be the case here, and that's disconcerting.''

But it wasn't troubling to Fong's victorious campaign staff, who said they hope to hold on to their crossover vote in the Nov. 3 general election.

``Clearly, we benefited from an open primary,'' said Steve Schmidt, a Fong campaign spokesman. ``That should scare Barbara Boxer to death.''

Daily News Staff Writer Jennifer Knight contributed to this report.