Politics is a lot like the stock market: Past performance doesn't guarantee future returns.

With that caveat, let's look at how the public voted Tuesday and ask: What does this mean for the public pension debate in 2012?

San Francisco: Mayor Ed Lee's pension plan whupped Public Defender Jeff Adachi's tougher measure.

Some 68 percent of voters backed Lee's plan, written with union input and promoted with labor's money. It requires city workers to contribute 7.5 percent of pay to their pensions, with future hikes or discounts tied to the pension fund's health.

Adachi's plan set a 7.5 percent minimum contribution, rising to 16 percent for the highest-paid employees during dire fiscal times.

Adachi also ran against Lee for the city's top job and lost by a wide margin.

Reformers' spin: "I don't think you can draw parallels" to upcoming pension overhaul attempts, said California Pension Reform spokesman Aaron McLear. His group wants to put a pension measure on next November's ballot.

That's a political lifetime. A lot can change, McLear said: "Hillary Clinton was leading the presidential polls four year ago."

Labor's spin: "If you put something modest on the ballot it will prevail over a radical measure," said Steve Maviglio, spokesman for union coalition Californians for Retirement Security.

Modesto: Three advisory measures asked voters whether city officials should replace guaranteed pensions with 401(k)-style plans (Measure Q), change pension calculations to curb "spiking" (Measure R) and whether the city should raise the qualifying retirement age (Measure S).

As of Wednesday, all three measures were passing with 58 percent of the vote or more.

Reformers' spin: "Polls show that the public wants pension reform," McLear said. "We don't think that's going to change."

Labor's spin: A cautionary tale. The author of Q, R and S, City Councilman Brad Hawn, placed second in his bid for mayor. Pension reform, Maviglio asserted, is not an issue on which to build a political career.

Ohio: Sixty-one percent of voters reversed a sweeping law limiting public employee collective bargaining, among other things.

Reformers' spin: An overreach killed by $30 million that labor raised to defeat it. "We need to do some of this reform," No. 2 ranking Senate Republican Keith Faber told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Underscore "some."

Labor's spin: Ohio Civil Service Employees Association President Christopher Mabe said, Ohioans "believe that government runs best when front-line workers have a seat at the table."

It's striking that labor now considers holding its ground or accepting lesser concessions a "win." With three pension proposals vying for next year's statewide ballot, including one backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, we'll soon know if this is a momentary swing or a deep-seated, enduring shift.

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Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at sacbee.com/blogs.

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