Opinion:  California hasn’t shattered its glass ceiling, either

It was disheartening that the nation rejected a qualified, experienced woman on Tuesday and handed the keys to the White House to an unprepared reality TV show star instead.

But there is some solace in knowing that Californians, at least, were ready for a woman in charge. Hillary Clinton didn’t just win the vote in California on Tuesday; she swept Donald Trump by a yuuuuge margin.

At least there’s some solace until you realize that, despite its reputation as a haven for progressive politics, the Golden State hasn’t shattered its highest glass ceiling, either. And only a few women have even come close to the governor’s job.

In 1990, Dianne Feinstein won the Democratic primary in the gubernatorial race but lost the general election to Republican Pete Wilson. (There was a silver lining, though. Feinstein ended up winning the U.S. Senate seat that Wilson vacated to become governor, a job she holds to this day.) When Gov. Wilson ran for reelection four years later, he was challenged unsuccessfully by Kathleen Brown (Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister). More recently, former Hewlett Packard CEO and Republican Meg Whitman lost her gubernatorial campaign to Jerry Brown in 2010.

It’s all the more dismaying in light of that fact that 27 U.S. states, including some very conservative ones, have had at least one woman serve as governor. Sarah Palin in Alaska, Mary Fallin in Oklahoma and Nikki Haley in South Carolina, to name a few. Some states, such as Texas and Arizona, have elected women chief executives more than once.

It’s especially perplexing (and vexing) because California has such strong female representation in Washington, D.C. Both of California’s U.S. senators are women — Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and have been for nearly a quarter of a century. And the state’s electorate just picked another woman, Kamala Harris, to replace Boxer who is retiring. The Democratic leader of the house is another California woman, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who has the distinction of also being the first woman elected as speaker of the house.

Could things change with the next gubernatorial election? It’s possible. With the presidential election out of the way, the 2018 gubernatorial race has begun in earnest. Among those interested is Delaine Eastin, a former state superintendent of public instruction. It’s good to see a woman joining Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Treasurer John Chiang and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who finally announced Thursday he was officially in the race.

It would be nice to see more than one woman run, however. There are certainly more smart and talented women elected officials who could launch credible campaigns, were they so inclined: state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), Oakland’s Democratic Mayor Libby Schaaf, Fresno’s Republican Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who unsuccessfully ran for state controller in 2014, and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana), now that she’s lost her U.S. Senate race.

There are others, but not a lot of them. That’s due, at least in some part, to the lack of women holding city and county offices to act as a farm team. (There’s just one woman serving on the entire 15-member Los Angeles City Council, for example).

But it shouldn’t matter in the governor’s race. If we learned anything from the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003 — and, to a certain extent, the victory by Donald Trump this week — it is that you don’t have to have political experience to be elected to a position of power. You just need a healthy ego, a lot of gumption and enough renown to get free media attention. Plus, access to money, of course. Lots of it.

That means that the field is open to tech execs such as Marissa Mayer, president and CEO of Yahoo!, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and the author of “Lean In,” a book that reads like a feminist call to action. Politically minded celebrities, too. Gov. Sarah Silverman? Gov. Eva Longoria? Why not? (In fact, it might be easier for women with backgrounds in Hollywood to run campaigns because they are used to being held to double standards.)

But if Oprah Winfrey ever decided to run for governor — or anything, for that matter — forget about it, boys. It will be over the moment she tells voters to look under their seats.

mariel.garza@latimes.com

Twitter: @marielgarzaLAT