Does this portend trouble in the mid terms for the republicans? In Va. Bush appeared in rally’s to support Kilgore. It didn’t seem to help.
I think they must be shaking in their boots.
Watch the doodoo come out this republican congress leading up to the mid terms.
I don’t know much about either race (save they both look like they were nasty). Were these upsets? Does this mean anything as far as Republican vs Democrat on a national level?
-XT
The Democrats were clearly expected to win the blue state of New Jersey, and Corzine did so handily (55-42 last time I checked). But the win in red state Virginia has to qualify as an upset.
Saying that NJ is a blue state so it would have a Democratic governor is a bit simple, since Christine Todd Whitman and Thomas Kean were both two-term Republican governors.
Of course, the Republicans they get to run would probably be Democrats in a red state.
Figures that I started a similar thread only minutes earlier. :smack:
The Virginia race was expected to be close, and it was. The New Jersey one was pretty ugly, and I think it was a surprise that Corzine has won by this much.
Why isn’t the title of the OP: Democrats win both Governors races? Sounds like some people really rejoice in other people’s misfortune more than they can enjoy their own potential pleasure.
If you bothered to read the entire OP you would see it’s about the republicans. Not about the democrats.
Don’t know how it will affect the 2006 election, but one of the most obvious effects on the 2008 presidential election is that Mark Warner (former VA gov) will be in a much stronger position for his presumed campaign, since his successor hasn’t been rejected by his former state.
The Virginia results can’t be looked at quite so simply.
First of all, it is true that Virginia typically votes Republican in presidential elections. However, it is also very true that we’ve elected a good number of Democrats to the governor’s mansion in recent years. We seem not to have a real problem with it.
Kaine was preceeded into office by Democratic governors Warner, Wilder, Baliles and Robb in recent years, all the time voting for Republican presidential candidates.
In 2001, for instance, Warner was elected governor over Republican Mark Earley. That didn’t seem to keep Virginians from giving Bush an eight-point margin in 2004.
So it seems like the governor’s race here ought to be viewed as its own entity, at least primarily.
The Democrats in Virginia had a good night, but not a great one. Kaine’s coattails were limited to a couple of delegate seat pickups. The Republicans took the lieutenant governor’s spot and look poised to take the AG race as well.
So not a wonderful night for Virginia Republicans, but the Democrats here look like they have an awful big job of party building ahead.
Mark Warner is the current governor.
It’s worth noting that the Star-Tribune poll acutally understated the size of the challenger’s victory in St. Paul. He got close to 70% of the vote. A resounding message to George Bush as he was the only real issue in the campiagn.
Area conservatives have trashed the Star-Tribune’s polls savagely in recent years. They called for their pollster to resign last year. They call the paper “Pravda” and claim the polls are skewed to the left. They even set up a booth at the University on a regular basis calling for a boycott of the paper. The Strib had Kerry winning in MN last year while the St. Paul paper gave Bush the lead. Conservatives aplauded the St. Paul poll even after Bush lost here. That the Strib underestimated the size of Coleman’s victory today (by about 8 points) will likely go unmentioned by conservatives.
Here’s some nice photos of Bush’s effort on behalf of Kilgore, posted at Atrios’ blog, an appearance which ended up giving a whopping mandate to Kaine (based on the criteria for judging the size of a mandate established in 2004).
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_11_06_atrios_archive.html#113150829725370797
Whatever you might say, it’s a fairly big embarrassment and a clear reason why politicians have decidedly not been seeking appearances with Bush.
(On the page, you can also scroll up for a note about the ouster of the Intelligent Designers from the Dover area school board in Pennsylvania who you had heard so much about in the news.)
(You can scroll down for a little note about Bill Frist fristing himself with this signed demand for a full inquiry into the leaking of information about the black prison centers we’ve been running. According to Trent Lott, the leaking may have in fact come from a Republican Senator, and may have involved Dick Cheney leaking the information to a group of Republican Senators. Ooopsie.)
Clearly this is not a good night for Republicans. How significant a harbinger of things to come this is remains to be seen (although it is consistent with the race in Ohio last summer between Paul Hackett and Jean Schmidt).
However, I do like the correlational analyses presented via Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly, which suggests that historical correlations between presidential approval ratings and mid-term seat losses predict Republican House seat losses somewhere between 36 and 47! :eek:
Party at Fear Itself’s house! Okay, okay. It’s way too early for any such predictions, of course. And saying this only gives the Republicans an easy bar to clear (see, we only lost 15 seats, and liberals were screaming that we would lose 50, yadda yadda spin talking point yadda). It’s still very fun, though.
Virginia? Hell, look at NY and CA… The bluest of “blue” states, and both have Republican governors. And how about another state recently in the news: Louisiana. Pretty darn “red” in the last presidential election, but we all now know that the governor, Blanco, is a Dem.
The whole red/blue dichotomy only works for presidential elections. Governor races are much more nuanced. In fact, the whole “red vs blue” meme is pretty silly to begin with. The real dichotomy is urban vs suburban/rural.
I can’t see what any governor’s race tells us about national elections unless it’s a big upset over a perceived strong member of the party in power, who made the president an integral part of his campaign.
New York State’s Republican governor is in his third term, in fact. I think the next Governor here is very likely to be a Democrat, though. Beyond that, New York City re-elected its Republican …well, kinda… Mayor in a landslide, and hasn’t had a Democrat Mayor in 12 years and counting.
I wonder when the next Republican will get elected mayor of San Francisco. 
Newsom could just do what Bloomberg did and change parties.
I’m not sure what you’d find definitive, John, but Kaine did do a pretty good come-from-behind win if you look at the numbers. And he did use GWB as a final appeal to voters, to no effect. I don’t know if that spells “bellweather”, but it has a pretty good whiff of one.
Oops, obviously I meant that Kilgore used GWB as a prop.
I seem to remember some high up dems wanting Clinton to stay away in his last term. IIRC, Gore made the biggest fuss about it.
Lame duck presidents are just that.