Sheila Kuehl
When Kuehl was elected as a Democrat to the California Assembly in 1994 a Republican majority was seated for the first time in 20 years. This was due largely as an out-flowing of the enthusiasm stoked up by Newt Gingrich's strategy supporting Republicans for the Federal Legislature. Kuehl recalled "The Republican majority was quite a different kind of Republican, not a moderate, not a Rockefeller Republican. They were primarily Bible-thumpers and very right-wing. So it was not the most welcoming Republican group, though they loved Zelda Gilroy, and it was very difficult for them because they already liked me so much…. And to their surprise, we all got along very well. ...The Republicans were pretty horrible about LGBT stuff. They all virtually said stuff like, 'Well, they're all spawn of the devil, oh, but not you, Sheila….'"
Joe Shell
Among Shell's financial backers was A. C. "Cy" Ruble, former chairman of Union Oil Company of California. In Bakersfield, Mary K. Shell, then Mary Hosking (born 1927) of the Kern County Republican Women's Association, worked for the nomination of her future husband. In the same election, two other conservatives, including Howard Jarvis, the future father of California Proposition 13 (1978), challenged liberal U.S. Senator Thomas H. Kuchel in the primary. Kuchel easily prevailed to gain renomination. He had initially succeeded Nixon in the Senate in 1953. The 1962 elections were the first in California in which cross-filing across party lines had been abandoned.