Smiling Edmund "Pat" Brown has led the Democratic Party to a sweeping statewide victory and became last night the second Democratic governor in the last sixty years.

Brown, in defeating his Republican opponent, Senator William Knowland, carried the entire Democratic slate with him into state office. One observer, in a statement to the CRIMSON last night, called the election "a democratic victory from top to bottom."

Speaking in Los Angeles, Donald Rose, Democratic Party chairman for Los Angeles Country, said California "will definitely have a Democratic state assembly and a Democratic state senate--something," he observed, "which has not happened for a long time."

In the race for Senator, Rose said Democratic candidate Clair Engle held "a substantial lead" over former Republican governor "Goodie" Knight.

Rose told the CRIMSON that his party "was not losing any of its congressional seats." In fact, he noted, the Democratic candidates were leading in three races where Republicans formerly held the congressional seats.

In a near-record turn-out, nearly 80 per cent of the eigible voters in California cast their votes in the off-year election. Rose said the vote "was not an all-time high"; but that it "compares with the vote of 1950, and some of the New Deal record turnouts."

However, Rose declared that the controversial right-to-work proposition "had definitely been defeated by more than a three to two vote." Another controversial measure, which proposed state taxation of private secondary schools, had also lost, he said.