The Republican tide washing across much of the nation Tuesday stopped at California, as Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Republican Meg Whitman in the California governor’s race and Barbara Boxer won re-election to the U.S. Senate, beating back a spirited challenge from former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.

As of this morning, with 96 percent of precincts reporting, Brown has received 53.8 percent of the votes; Whitman received 41.2 percent.

Brown, who last left office as governor in 1983, promised to bring together Republicans and Democrats on issues such as improving education and expanding renewable energy.

“I take as my challenge forging a common purpose,” he said last night to a crowd in Oakland.

In conceding Tuesday night, Whitman said she called Brown to wish him well.

“Tonight has not turned out quite as we had hoped. We’ve come up a little short, but certainly not for lack of hard work, determination and a clear vision for making our state better,” she told supporters at Universal City near Los Angeles.

The current governor also weighed in.

“Congratulations to Attorney General Jerry Brown on his hard-fought campaign and his victory tonight,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “Jerry has demonstrated his commitment to the people of California throughout a lifetime of public service as governor, mayor of Oakland and attorney general, and I pledge to work with his incoming administration to provide the most efficient and smooth transition of power possible for the people of California.”

This morning, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, Boxer had received 52.3 percent of the votes, well ahead of Fiorina (42.4 percent).

Fiorina this morning conceded to Boxer at a news conference at her campaign office in Irvine.

It was a different story Tuesday night, though. After exit polls predicted Boxer would win easily, but early returns showed a close race, Fiorina defiantly took the stage in an Irvine hotel ballroom and refused to concede. But Boxer’s lead grew as more ballots were counted. With more than 99 percent of precincts reporting this morning, any doubt about Boxer’s victory was erased.

“I have spoken to Senator Boxer and wished her well,” Fiorina said at the conference. She said she won among independent voters, “but in the end we could not overcome the registration advantage that Democrats have, in particular in L.A. County.”

Fiorina, who spent $6.5 million of her own money on the campaign, said she had no regrets and was proud to have run a campaign on the principles of “out of control spending” and onerous government regulations.

“The American dream is becoming too hard for too many people,” she said.

Fiorina did not say anything about her plans now, although she closed her seven-minute concession speech by saying, “The fight is not over, the fight has just begun.”

Among ballot measures, Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana, was headed for defeat, as did Proposition 23, which would have suspended California’s global warming law. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Proposition 19 is trailing by a nearly 8-point margin; Proposition 23 is behind by a more than 20-point margin.

Proposition 25, which would allow state lawmakers to pass a budget with a simple majority instead of two-thirds, also was ahead, by a 10-point margin.

Meanwhile, Proposition 21, an $18 DMV fee to fund parks, is headed for defeat, and Proposition 20, which would require the districts of members of Congress to be drawn by an independent commission, also was passing. Proposition 26, which would require a two-thirds vote for state fees, appeared headed for victory. And Proposition 27, an attempt by Democrats and unions to eliminate an independent commission approved by voters to draw political district boundaries, lost in a landslide.

Democrats lead in most other state constitutional office races, including lieutenant governor, where San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is holding a large lead over Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado.

Whitman and Fiorina were hoping to capitalize on Californians’ sour mood over the slow rate of economic recovery to defeat Democratic Party elder Jerry Brown and oust Boxer from the Senate seat she has held for 18 years. The GOP was hoping the same approach would win swing voters in a handful of highly competitive congressional races in California.

Democrats, on the other hand, asked voters to stick with them, promising better times ahead.

To say that the epic gubernatorial battle between Whitman and Brown was a study in contrasts is probably the political understatement of the millennium.

In her attempt to end the “curse” of the billionaires and multimillionaires who wanted to be California governor — Al Checchi, Jane Harman, Bill Simon, Steve Westly — and failed, Whitman stunned the political world with the pace and ferocity of her spending.

By shelling out at least $141.5 million of her own money, Whitman slashed her family’s net worth by more than 10 percent. She smashed New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s record for self-funding. And she turned the race into the most expensive statewide election in U.S. history. The final tab is expected to exceed $200 million, exceeding the old record of $80 million set in 2002 when the Republican Simon ran against Gov. Gray Davis.

Whitman’s opponents called her spending “obscene.” Whitman, the former eBay CEO, dubbed it a smart “investment.”

Brown, on the other hand, ran a bare-bones race, devoid of the army of consultants that typically accompany high-profile gubernatorial campaigns. He relied on his lifelong political network and friends who were willing to contribute to his cause at little or no cost.

One of them, longtime Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, created some widely heralded ads, including one that had Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Whitman, pictured side by side, spouting the same phrases — no doubt handed to them by the same band of GOP consultants. Many of Whitman’s ads were attacked by nonpartisan fact-checking groups and news outlets as false and distorted in their attempt to put Brown in a “tax-and-spend liberal” box.

Brown’s ability to avoid an expensive summer battle with Whitman was probably the key to waging an aggressive and competitive fall campaign. Union groups helped fend off summer attacks with assaults of their own on Whitman, so that by Labor Day Brown was essentially in a dead heat with Whitman and had $35 million on hand to use over the last two months — enough to be competitive with the billionaire businesswoman.

Brown’s strategy against Whitman was aided by a rough Republican primary, in which Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner hit Whitman hard over “insider deals” she got from Goldman Sachs and forced her to the right on the illegal immigration issue. And immediately after the primary, union groups unleashed what eventually amounted to a $30 million onslaught of ads that depicted Whitman as a serial liar and infrequent voter.

Still, Brown faced heat from members of his own party who were worried that he wasn’t showing sufficient fire and was allowing Whitman to define him as a “failed” lifelong politician. Many Democrats wanted him to answer Whitman immediately and directly. But the former two-term governor and Oakland mayor displayed a rare sense of patience for a politician, one borne of an innate confidence that voters had their own views of him that couldn’t be swayed, even by tens of millions of negative advertising.

It also helped Brown that voters were showing signs of Whitman fatigue. She had been on radio since September of last year, and on TV every day but three since February. Brown, meanwhile, continued to produce headlines from his job as attorney general but remained strategically detached from the governor’s race, insisting that voters would get enough information to make an educated choice.

Even if his strategy was effective, it took the story of Whitman’s former maid, Nicky Diaz Santillan, to break the race wide open.

On Sept. 29, Santillan appeared with celebrity attorney Gloria Allred in a teary news conference and alleged that Whitman made her feel “like a piece of garbage” when she fired her and refused to help her resolve her status as an illegal immigrant.

The story captivated Latino communities and ultimately crushed Whitman’s hopes of winning support from a significant segment of Latino voters despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on Spanish-language political advertisements, wooing them with hopeful messages that “jobs are on the way.” And the political damage from “Nickygate” turned out to be even greater than expected.

In mid-September, the state’s three major polls — Field Research, the Public Policy Institute of California and the Los Angeles Times/USC — found that the race was a dead heat. By the time they released their next surveys after the housekeeper scandal, Whitman had lost the Latino vote, the women’s vote and the independent vote.

Whitman’s treatment of her former maid “was seen as revealing her character, and for women especially that’s very dangerous,” said Melissa Michelson, a political-science professor at Menlo College in Atherton. “For men to come across as tough can be seen as a positive characteristic. But it’s tricky for women to come across as tough without being perceived as mean. She was seen as kind of mean, when women are supposed to be caring and nurturing.”

Whitman also lost a lot of women’s votes when she refused at last week’s women’s conference to agree to taking down her negative ads, Michelson said. “Once Jerry Brown agreed that he’d take his negative ads down, she was expected to play nice and she didn’t,” Michelson said.

“She was a poor candidate with a poorly run campaign and had too many warts from her financial career,” said former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. He blamed Whitman’s “inexperience and her campaign’s lack of creativity” for not being able to shoot ahead in the polls by Labor Day after spending tens of millions of dollars during the summer.

The Whitman campaign had argued that it needed to spend the money to counter misleading union ads aimed at helping Brown.

Mercury News staff writer Mike Zapler and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Ken McLaughlin at kmclaughlin@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5552.