It's a Start

For a change, it's heartening to wake up to headlines of Dem election victories being reported as stinging Republican defeats. The wins by Jon Corzine (53-44%) in New Jersey and Tim Kaine (52-46%) in Virginia in their races for governor are certainly good news for us and bad news for BushCo, Inc. Bush's last-minute campaigning for Kilgore, Kaine's opponent, apparently didn't help him and may even have lost him some votes. Our own Gov. Richardson, head of the Dem Governor's Association, will be taking a victory lap before the media with DNC Chair Howard Dean this afternoon. As they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows.

It does give me serious pause that these races were some of the most expensive in U.S. election history, however. In New Jersey, Corzine and his opponent, Doug Forrester, spent an estimated $72 million of their own money on this election. In Virginia, Kilgore raised more than $21 million, while Dem Kaine came up with more than $18 million. An ugly precedent, despite Dems coming out on top. Is this now a nation where only candidates with massive personal wealth or those hooked into big dollar donors can win an election? That both races were characterized by extremely negative campaigning on the part of Republicans (surprise) is also a major turnoff.

Almost better than the Dem's capture of the VA and NJ statehouses was the defeat of every single one of Arnold's ballot propositions. I guess the Terminator has lost his star status with California voters, now that his true colors are showing. No victory cigars for Schwarzenegger now, and perhaps ever again.

I guess Repubs can revel weakly in the reelection of Dem turned Repub mayor Bloomberg in NYC (59-39%), who spent more than $70 million on this race. Oh, and they managed to preserve the "purity" of heterosexual civil marriage in Texas (76-24%), though they lost in their effort to get rid of legal protections for GLBT citizens in Maine (55-45%). Distinctly mixed results in their faux morality crusade.

In an unfortunate victory for business as usual, Ohio voters rejected a package of election reform measures including strict new limits on campaign contributions, a bipartisan board to oversee elections and the creation of an independent panel to redraw legislative district lines. I guess voters from both parties want to preserve their rights to mess with elections should their side be in power. Or maybe it's just that the very well funded opposition to these measures confused voters enough to stop the reform effort.

USA Today provides a handy summary of 2005 election results and info on 2006 races around the nation.

Many pundits are claiming yesterday's Dem victories are evidence that we'll do very well in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections. We'll see. That seems a long way off at the moment, but hope is alive in the Dem camp these days. It's a start.