Let’s tally up all the turnovers in statewide and legislative races last night. Democratic pick-ups are in blue; Republican pick-ups in red. Italics denote a close race that appears to be going to a recount.
Kentucky: Governor/Lt. Governor (59%)
Maine: ME-HD93 (53.8%)
New House margin: 90D–59R–2I
Mississippi: Secretary of State (59%; open), Insurance Commissioner (57%; open), MS-SD02 (61%), MS-SD04 (57%), MS-SD18 (52%), MS-SD29 (57%), MS-SD43 (52%), MS-HD01 (54%), MS-HD15 (58%), MS-HD43 (47%), MS-HD71 (53%), MS-HD99 (52%), MS-HD111 (50%)
New Senate margin: 28D–24R (Chamber flip)
New House margin: 75D–47R
New Jersey: NJ-SD01 (56%), NJ-SD02 (57%), NJ-SD12 (54%), NJ-AD02, NJ-AD08, NJ-AD12, NJ-AD14.
New Senate margin: 23D–17R.
New Assembly margin: 48D–32R.
Virginia: VA-SD01 (51%), VA-SD06 (54.4%), VA-SD34 (55.1%), VA-SD39 (51%), VA-HD21 (57.5%), VA-HD34 (51.5%), VA-HD51 (51.8%), VA-HD68 (54%; Independent-to-Republican turnover), VA-HD83 (50.6%)
New Senate margin: 21D–19R (Chamber flip)
Hew House margin: 54R–44D–2I
If we missed something, please let us know in the comments.
Do we know who the Independents in the Virginia House caucus with?
…to a county map for the Mississippi gubernatorial election?
That’s pretty great, continue on that momentum to 2008! Although MS’s state-wide takeovers suck a bit.
First of all, to everyone who worked on a campaign that ended yesterday, win or lose — thank you, well done, all that good stuff.
Yesterday was a disaster for Indianapolis Democrats — and we deserved it. We lost an election we should have won. Mayor Bart Peterson lost, despite outspending his opponent something like 30-1. Our 15-14 majority on the City County Council turned into a 17-12 deficit. We have 25 council districts and four at-large members. Our three lost seats came from the at large members — they went from being 4-0 Democrat to 3-1 Republican. In the neighborhoods we picked up a seat or two, and lost a seat or two — and actually ran pretty well in traditionally Republican neighborhoods. We won a seat in very middle class and rapidly growing Pike Township in the NW corner of the city, and took back a Democratic central-city district from a fairly moderate/liberal Republican.
What happened? There certainly were issues of property taxes and crime — not to mention the ethics of Council President Monroe Gray (who was one Democrat I was not thrilled to see win re-election last night). But more than that I think we forgot of the first rules of politics — Run like you’re 15 points down, not 15 points ahead. We took this election for granted, didn’t work for it, didn’t make a positive case for keeping power (and there is a lot of good that has happened in the city recently) — and in the end, were caught flat-footed. There was nothing negative or underhanded that the Republicans did here — they just beat us.
I don’t think this destroyes the progress we’ve made in Marion County — and if anything, that our at-large city council members came as close to keeping their seats as they did given what happened to the mayor shows that this was a bump-in-the-road, hopefully. But it also shows Indianapolis is a very, very pale blue city, and all elections need to be fully contested start to finish.
We’ve got some decisions to make now, especially in terms of who leads Democrats on the council. There was a changing of the guard last night, especially among black Indianapolis Democrats, as Rozelle Boyd (who was on the council for like 30 years) and Lonell “King Ro” Connley both lost their at-large seats. These were well respected, familiar insiders who represented black majority districts for years, and then won at-large four years ago, only to lose last night. So we’ll see some new people come to the fore.
Finally, I do wish our mayor-elect Greg Ballard well. I think, or at least hope, he’s a pretty reasonable person (i.e. not a right wing loon). This is a wonderful city to live in, but also is facing a number of tremendous challenges that now are going to come across his desk.