Election Results
A pretty big night for the Democrats - they've captured the governor's seats in both races this year. Tim Kaine has defeated Jerry Kilgore in Virginia (although the lieutenant governor and attorney general will be Republicans) by approx. 52%-46%, and Democrat Jon Corzine is beating Republican Doug Forrester in New Jersey by about nine percentage points. Hotline On Call has been doing quite a good job monitoring the results as they've come in.
Some of the other initiatives on the ballot today: voters in Texas approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage by a wide (but not surprising) margin, while Mainers seemed likely to reject a move to repeal an anti-discrimination law.
In Ohio, reform initiatives are sailing to resounding defeat, possible a bellwether of things to come when California reports in later tonight. Unfortunately, in both places, the reform efforts including redistricting have become very partisan, which for obvious reasons turns people off from supporting them.
Republican Mike Bloomberg sailed to an easy victory to a second term as mayor of NYC, and Boston's Tom Menino will keep his City Hall office for another term as well.
posted by JBD @ 10:37 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
A good weblog has turned out. So to hold
Jeremy: I'd like your comments on the dismal performance of Russell Potts in the VA governor's race (2%). You had high hopes for him. Is his failure indicative of the failure of centrism as a meaningful political alternative?
Cakreiz: I did indeed have high hopes, which have been slowly fading in recent months. I think this was a failure of the messenger, not the message; Potts just didn't catch on with the voters as a serious candidate. I'm not at all convinced that centrism itself was rejected by the voters.
Thanks for the response. I've never quite understood why the two party system is so preemptive, but it certainly appears to be. Apparently the Dem and Rep labels have product-like associations that centrism lacks. It's extremely unlikely that an independent centrist party will ever be hatched.
The thing about Potts (and I voted for him) is, as Jeremy said, he just didn't catch on. A lot of this has to do with the nature of Virginia politics right now, especially in the VA GOP. When he first announced his run, the leaders of the state party did everything they could to discredit him. And then they were able to get him out of the debates and that's all his campaign seemed to be focused on for months. I got multiple e-mails regarding the debates from his campaign and a few regarding actual policy. And he had some good ideas policy wise, he just couldn't get that message out. I'm pretty sure that the Republicans will want to, in some way, blame him for causing Kilgore to loose, but even if all of Potts' votes had gone to Kilgore, Kilgore still would have lost.
Just looking at that map of the results from Hotline On Call, I must say I'm surprised. My city is in the 50-60% voting for Kaine range. That is very unexpected from my heavily Republican city.
Just a note: Kinky Freidman is polling at about 20% in the Texas governors race right now. Sure, we're a year out from the election, but this is a Centrist that seems to have legs.
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