GOP sweeps gov races, Palin loses

04 November 2009 |permalink | email article

Republican gubernatorial candidates scored major wins in Virginia and New Jersey Tuesday night. Former Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell and New Jersey prosecutor Chris Christie claimed the governor’s offices in both states.

Exit polls in both states showed a huge majority of voters said they were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy, with percentages similar to Election Day in 2008. While President Obama campaigned by losers Creigh Deeds in Virginia, and Jon Corzine in New Jersey exit polls indicated that he was a non-factor in the outcomes. But independents in both states backed away from him.

But network exit polls indicate the results are a major wakeup call not only for the White House and Democrats, but nervous incumbents in both parties going into the 2010 election cycle. It’s still “the economy, stupid!”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele declared that “these significant victories speak to the fantastic campaigns run by Republicans across the Commonwealth and the voters’ clear rejection of liberal tax and spend policies that Washington Democrats are trying to force on Americans.”

But not so fast. In New York’s 23rd Congressional District which has been held by the Republicans dating back to the Civil War era, Democrat Bill Owens defeated walk-on Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in a huge defeat for the radical GOP right and its emergent Palin wing.

New York independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s very close call shows the peril of running for a third term, and the fact that City Controller William Thompson Jr., a Democrat, might have won if Obama, a pal of the mayor, had backed him. Is money still the decider in politics? Bloomberg and Corzine spent about $300 million dollars, and the outcomes speak for themselves.

California Politics

With Lt. Gov. John Garamendi winning a special congressional election in the Democrat-leaning 10th Congressional District, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has the power to appoint Garamendi’s replacement. The Sacramento Bee reported that state Sen. Abel Maldonado, a moderate Republican from Santa Maria who provided the crucial budget vote in February, may have an edge...Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown told a breakfast gathering of hundreds of Democrats in San Francisco that he was in “no rush” to announce his candidacy for governor, adding this cryptic message: “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

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