2009 Election Recap

There were three pivotal races being decided last night: VA governor, NJ governor, and a special election in NY-23.

In both governor races, Republicans ousted Democratic administrations. I don't think the outcome of either of these races says anything about how the citizens of those states feel about the president. In Virginia, Creigh Deeds ran an awful campaign, Virginia has a famous history of electing the opposite party of the president who is currently in office, and Bob McDonnell did not run against the president. In fact, many of his commercials by the end of the campaign ran on the same message of change. He ran a very positive campaign and voters turned out for that. Virginia is a toss-up state, in any election, and this one showed that once again.

In New Jersey, politics is its own dirty animal. Corzine was tremendously unpopular and even in a mostly blue state, Democratic voters voted for the other guy. Also here, Christie ran on the message of change. Exit polls in both states showed that folks didn't vote to send a message to Obama, but that their reasons were local.

NY-23 is slightly different. This is one race which can potentially tell a story for 2010. In short, you had a three-way race until the weekend, when the Republican candidate dropped out. What happened? The right-wing conservative nut faction of the Republican party thought it a good idea to import their own candidate, because they weren't happy with some of the views of Dede Scozzafava, the candidate who was chosen by the district to be Republican nominee. Now, if you know anything about NY Republicans, you know that the majority of them are not right-wing conservative. But in this race, in this district that hasn't gone Democrat since the 1800s, conservative Republicans took it upon themselves to make a statement and push moderates out of their party. But the tactic backfired on them and the Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate, won.

Now this can be painted in many ways. My personal view is that all moderates- Democrat and Republican- should be feel threatened by what the conservative right did in NY-23. They imported their own guy who didn't live in the district and worse yet, didn't know a thing about local issues. Make no mistake about it-- the Republican party is fighting for it's future here and it's not going to be pretty.

So if you want to look at any outcome of last night's election as a bellwether for what the fight will be like going into 2010, look no further than NY-23. The big fights will be moderate vs. extreme, for both parties. But it's certainly more pronounced, and can potentially be more ugly, for the Republican party.