Our fine Commonwealth of Virginia was one of two states in which the governorship was being contested in today’s elections… and the Democratic candidate won! Great news! Especially since his GOP opponent had specially brought Bush into the state yesterday to try to give his campaign a last-minute boost.
Heh-heh-heh!
The winner is Tim Kaine, who’s currently the Lieutenant-Governor, and before that was Mayor of Richmond. Kaine is probably a little more progressive than the present (also Dem) governor, Mark Warner, who campaigned hard for him. The outcome is good for a number of reasons. Better to have a Democratic governor than yet another of the stream of incompetent GOP governors who preceded Mark Warner. (There’s a one-term limit on the governorship here.) Also it showed that Bush has bad electoral karma here, while Mark Warner’s seems to be good…
In New Jersey, the only other state where there was a gubernatorial race, the Dems also won… And Schwarzenegger did pretty poorly with his special “Initiatives” over in Califormia.
Here in Virginia, our Lieutenant-Governor candidate, Leslie Byrne, also won. Maybe it’s time we had a woman governor here!
- Update Wed. 10:2 a.m.: from the latest WaPo listing it seems that Byrne got defeated 51-49% while the race for state Attorney-General is still too close to call. The Dem candidate for that one is our local State Senator here, Creigh deeds.
I made the eight-minute walk along to our local polling station this afternoon. What a pleasant experience. My friend Liz Kutchai was staffing the Dems’ table near the door. She gave me some advice about the one electoral issue I wasn’t sure about. (Whether one should support or oppose the proposal for an elected school board in the city.) As we stood there, our Sherriff– an African-American woman called Cornelia Johnson– came up looking very spiffy in her brown uniform. Cornelia was up for re-election today, but stood unopposed. Mitch Van Yahres, who has just stepped down after many years as our delegate in the Virginia House of Delegates, was also there.
The Virginia legislature sits on a strange schedule: something like four weeks one year and six weeks the next year — that is, holding the longer sessions the year they consider the budget. The sessions are held in January and February. I think the idea is that people can be both farmers and legislators… But most of them nowadays are lawyers.
This Saturday we’re having the annual conference of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty here in town. Mitch has always been a stalwart opponent of the death penalty– but in a definite minority on the issue, in Richmond.
It’s a funny old situation here in this state. The Republicans have a pretty strong lock on both houses of the state legislature, but now we’ll be having the second Democratic governor in a row. Party politics in this country really is a strange beast, which I’m still struggling to understand…
Still struggling to understand party politics in the US? Join the club! This something I grapple with regularly at FruitsandVotes.com, as well as in my own teaching and reserch.
But, basically, given separate executive and legislative elections and single-seat district elections for legislators, voters who want change can’t be sure that if they oust their district’s legislator that other voters in other districts will do the same. But voters in the whole state (or country) get to vote in one common executive election. Thus, presidents/governors change party hands more often than do legislative bodies.
That Virginians voted for a Democrat for governor in a race in which the incumbent was not on the ballot is a good sign. They like the change they voted for back when they first elected Warner. But they also like all the local goodies that their (Republican) legislators bring home.
dear Helena:
it really wasn’t a win for the Dems but a win for those who oppose Bush & Co.
it’s not as if the Dems deserve to win – this has not been an opposition party but a party that quietly “seconded” nearly every major Bush fiasco
i glad that Bush “lost” in NJ and VA
maybe, the Dems will realize that key job of an opposition party is to “oppose”
Virginia? New Jersey? Didn’t Bush’s party win by a landslide in Democratic New York notwithstanding tv adds by the Democrat tying his opponent to Bush? Aren’t we being a bit selective here as to which off-year campaigns are local and which have national implications?
I was really confused about politics for a lot of years. I even voted for Goldwater and Nixon. My confusion disappeared when I realized Republicans are liars. Always!