Tonight I'll do an election wrapup from various areas of interest. Since I have no election here this year, I watched several from afar.
First of all, does America REALLY think that the Democrats retaining their governorships in New Jersey and Virginia is that big a deal for 2006? New Jersey's a "blue" state, and in Virginia, while it went for Bush in 2004, outgoing Governor Warner was very popular and all Tim Kaine did was hitch his wagon to that.
For example, the New Jersey race was actually closer this time than in 2001.
2005:
Jon Corzine (D) - 1,150,687 (52.6%)
Doug Forrester (R) - 956, 795 (43.8%)
Minor parties - 78,115 (3.6%)
2001:
Jim McGreevey (D) - 1,256,853 (56.4%)
Bret Schundler (R) - 928, 174 (41.7%)
Minor parties - 42,138 (1.9%)
A case can then be argued that this is a Republican win - we were closer to winning than the last time. It's the Paul Hackett argument.
In Virginia, the numbers from 2001 to 2005 barely moved, as both parties polled last night about 1% or so below where they did in 2001, each election about a 5 point win for the Democrat. So it's debatable whether Bush campaigning for Jerry Kilgore really had that great of an effect either way.
On the other hand, I don't really count the Bloomberg win in New York City as a large win for the GOP, as Michael Bloomberg is about as nominal as a Republican as one can find outside the United States Senate.
And each side can spin about state election results. I'm sure the Democrats are crowing about their defeat of several of "Governator" Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives. That seemed to garner quite a bit of press. But notice in the same article the paragraph at the very end about Ohio, where the voters bitchslapped ballot initiatives by "Democrat-leaning" groups. That would be the unions, George Soros, and moveon.org. This is what the moveon.org website noted about their defeat:
Reform Ohio Now's powerful reforms unfortunately suffered a defeat on Election Day. Some voters reportedly were confused by the complex ballot language needed to make those changes, and there were problems with some Diebold electronic voting machines. In the end, Reform Ohio Now was outspent and outadvertised by their opponents, backed by the state GOP and funded by huge contributions like the $500,000 from billionaire Carl Lindner, while many Democratic officials remained silent. On the bright side, Democracy for America's recommended candidates for the Columbus City Council were all victorious.
So it wasn't the will of the Ohio people who decided that these so-called reforms were nothing but sour grapes for the 2004 defeat of John Kerry - it was the stupid voters and the rigged voting machines! Not to mention the "huge" $500,000 contribution. Moveon doesn't mention the vast percentage of money from out of state contributors that went on the RON side (such as over $600,000 from People For the American Way.) Funny how that works. It'll be interesting to see the followthemoney.org website when the figures clear next year.
One other note about the Ohio ballot initiatives. It's now truly apparent that my old hometown of Toledo is now the moonbat capital of Ohio. With the exception of the absentee ballot issue (Issue 2, which was the only one of the four the local Toledo Blade editorialized against) Lucas County had the highest percentage of any Ohio county in support of these ballot measures.
And finally, possibly the most interesting election saga of all goes on about an hour north of Toledo, where Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick scored a come-from-behind win to be re-elected mayor. Oddly enough, the exit poll showed a clear win for challenger Freeman Hendrix. And the FBI is holding 45,000 absentee ballots as part of a voter fraud investigation - more than Kilpatrick's victory margin of about 14,000 votes.
Seems to me, as I recall from my days of following elections, that absentee votes are counted last. Makes me wonder how that margin disappeared so suddenly.
Bottom line on Election 2005 - the status quo is holding. It's not the Democrat juggernaut the partisan media would have you believe it is. All they're doing is settting up what they want to report on come Election Day 2006, as they hope for a Democrat sweep. But the Democrats have to come up with some ideas first, not simply oppose everything Bush and the GOP do out of hand.
