Posted on 11/09/2005 10:44:17 AM PST by new yorker 77
There's a ritual, a kind of kabuki dance, to interpreting the results of the two gubernatorial elections, in Virginia and New Jersey, that are held the year after the presidential election. If one party wins both elections, its spin doctors claim that they are a verdict on the national administration—up if the national party's candidates win, down if (as in such elections going back now to 1989) the national party's candidates lose. The spin doctors of the other party quote Tip O'Neill's adage that "all politics is local" and say that the results were due to state and local issues and have no relevance to national politics.
There's some truth on both sides. State elections are, after all, about state issues—why else would we have, as we do now, Republican governors in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont (John Kerry's three best states) and a Democratic governor in Wyoming (George W. Bush's No. 1 state in 2000 and No. 2 in 2004)? And yet the trends in national politics are sometimes echoed in the results in elections for governor. Issues that work for one party in state elections sometimes work for them in federal elections as well. I don't hold with the traditional view that governors have great power to deliver votes for their party's nominees in presidential elections. But state elections do have some implications for national politics.
Democrats, after their victories in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, are arguing that these results, together with the national polls, show a repudiation of the Bush administration. Republicans are arguing that these were just local contests, with no national implications. They're both right and both wrong.
What strikes me most about the two state elections is how similar the results were to those in 2001 in the same contests. Virginia 2001: Warner (D) 52 to 47 percent. Virginia 2005: Kaine (D) 52 to 46 percent. New Jersey 2001: McGreevey (D) 56 to 42 percent. New Jersey 2005: Corzine (D) 53 to 44 percent. Republicans appear to have won, narrowly, the other two statewide offices up in Virginia this time; they won one and lost one four years ago. Republicans went into the 2005 election with 60 of the 100 seats in the House of Delegates; they emerged with 59 votes.
One thing election results can tell us a lot more about than a poll is turnout. Turnout in Virginia, with 99.67 percent of precincts reporting, was up 4 percent as against 2001 in a state where turnout increased in 2004 as compared with 2000 by 17 percent and in which population, according to census estimates, increased 5 percent in 2000-04. Turnout in New Jersey, with 97 percent of precincts reporting, was 2 percent below total 2001 turnout. Most likely the final figures will show a slight turnout increase. This in a state where presidential race turnout increased 13 percent in 2000-04 and population increased 3 percent. Caution: Sometimes turnout figures rise as more absentees are counted, etc.
From these numbers, Democrats can argue that voters in the 10th- and 12th-largest states had four years of Democratic governance and liked it enough to vote for four more. Republicans can argue that their party suffered no serious slippage and did as well when their president's job rating is hovering between 35 and 40 percent as they did when his job rating was up around 75 percent (the 2001 elections were held eight weeks after September 11). But neither party seems to have registered the gains in turnout that both parties did in 2004. John Kerry got 16 percent more popular votes than Al Gore. George W. Bush got 23 percent more popular votes than he did four years before. In Virginia, Kaine seems to have gotten 4 percent more votes than Warner, the losing Republican 2 percent more votes than the losing Republican last time. In New Jersey Corzine has on the board now 8 percent fewer votes than McGreevey. It doesn't look like he'll end up with as many. The losing Republican has 2 percent more votes than the losing Republican last time. That's in line with the shift in the presidential vote in the state from 56-to-40 percent Democratic in 2000 to 53-to-47 percent Democratic in 2004.
The national polls show a national electorate in flux. See this interesting article in the Washington Post cowritten by the reliable and unflappable Dan Balz. But the Virginia and New Jersey results show state electorates pretty much where they were in 2001. You could argue that means the Bush and Republican turnout and percentage increases of 2004 have disappeared. But that would still leave us as the 49 percent nation we were in 2000—and not a nation that is swinging as heavily to the Democrats as it did to the Republicans in 1993-94.
Virginia
The fact is that neither party had an ideal nominee in the race for governor of Virginia. Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine, the former mayor of Richmond, was too urban and personally opposed the death penalty—always a negative in Virginia. Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (he resigned the job to pursue his campaign, a tradition in Virginia) was from the far southwest corner of the state, and had a heavy mountain accent and a traditional religious persona that was a liability in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington—which moved against George W. Bush between the elections of 2000 and 2004, while the country as a whole was moving toward him.
Kaine's big advantage was his identification with incumbent Gov. Mark Warner, elected in 2001 by a 52-to-47 percent margin and with a job approval rating in the vicinity of 70 percent despite having, against his 2001 promise, pushed a big tax increase through the Republican legislature. Warner campaigned in 2001 as a NASCAR fan and won big votes in rural Virginia. Kaine was not able to do as well there—it's Kilgore's home territory. But Kaine improved on Warner's showings in the suburbs—not just the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington but the suburbs of Richmond (Henrico and Chesterfield counties) and in the Hampton Roads region around Norfolk and Newport News. There's this national implication here. Supporting tax increases does not produce political death. If voters feel—as voters in traffic-clogged Northern Virginia and perhaps the other suburbs do—that higher taxes will produce goods that you want—fewer traffic jams—they will support you. Ross Douthat and Reiham Salam in their brilliant article in this week's Weekly Standard argue that tax cuts are not such a strong political plus since ordinary people aren't so heavily taxed anymore. (More on this article in forthcoming blogs.) Voters are willing to be taxed more to get what they want. At the same time, unaccountably, Kilgore declined to sign Americans for Tax Reform's pledge not to raise taxes—despite the fact that the Warner tax increases have stuffed the state's tax coffers—and he didn't promise to cut taxes either. So you could argue that he wasn't the ideal tax-cutting candidate. Even so, Republicans need to pay some attention to Douthat and Salam's argument that broad-based tax cuts aren't such great politics anymore as well as their argument that Republicans would do better to advocate different tax cuts now that tax rates are lower than they were.
The Virginia result also produces a loser and a winner in Democratic presidential politics. The loser is Hillary Rodham Clinton. That's because the winner is Mark Warner, who evidently has decided not to run against Sen. George Allen next year but has instead embarked on a candidate for president. There is something faux about Warner: He portrays himself as an entrepreneur who just happened to enter politics. The fact is that he is a guy who has been interested and involved in politics all his life, who won a lottery to get a cellphone license and then made a huge fortune off it, and then used the money he earned to run against Sen. John Warner in 1996 and to get himself elected governor of Virginia in 2001. (Not entirely a faux entrepreneur, I would concede: If I had won that lottery, I would probably have frittered away the business, whereas Warner had the competence to make it successful.) Warner evidently wants to run as the moderate candidate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a candidate who has shown that he can win in a state that voted for George W. Bush (and indeed every Republican presidential candidate starting with 1968). He won in 2001 and, running on his coattails, Tim Kaine won in 2005. Kaine's victory gives him a pretty strong argument against Clinton—and for that matter against the Republican nominee (could it be Allen?) in 2008. This was a big win for Mark Warner.
What else does Virginia tell us? It tells us something about turnout. And here the lesson is not particularly favorable to the Democrats or the Republicans. As noted above, turnout seems to have increased less than population and much less than presidential turnout increased from 2000 to 2004. Both parties surely worked hard to gin up turnout. But neither seems to have succeeded in producing what they wanted. Turnout in several independent cities (which are county equivalents in Virginia, i.e. not part of any county) was down or up minimally: Alexandria (+0.1%), Hampton (+2%), Newport News (+1%), Norfolk (-3%), Portsmouth (-6%), Roanoke (-7%). The major exception was Kaine's hometown of Richmond (+4%). Turnout was not up much in inner suburban counties and cities: Fairfax (+1%), Chesapeake (-0.0%), Virginia Beach (+3%). Exception: heavily Democratic Arlington (+8%), Republican-leaning Chesterfield (+10%). There were big turnout gains in fast-growing exurban Republican-leaning counties: Loudoun (+32%), Prince William (+14%), Spotsylvania (+19%), Stafford (+17%). But Kaine carried Loudoun and Prince William, which gave majorities to Bush in 2004, and Kilgore carried Spotsylvania and Stafford by unimpressive margins. (These numbers were calculated quickly, and I'd be grateful for correction of any errors.) In some of these numbers, there's evidence of swelling turnout among Bush haters (Arlington maybe) but little evidence of increasing black turnout (except maybe in Richmond); there's a bit of evidence of increasing Republican exurban turnout (Spotsylvania, Stafford) but not much. Kilgore's gains over 2001 in his home area of southwest Virginia (where Mark Warner won in 2001 and ran very well in the 1996 Senate race) were impressive in percentage terms but did not put nearly enough votes on the board to elect him.
How does Kilgore's vote compare with Bush's? Kilgore ran behind Bush in all 11 of Virginia's congressional districts. He ran only 4 percent behind in the southwest Virginia Ninth District, his home turf, and 11 percent behind in the next-door district, the Shenendoah Valley Sixth, and the Second, which is dominated by Virginia Beach and Norfolk. In the other eight districts he ran between 6 and 9 percent behind Bush. It's not possible to compare the vote by congressional districts between 2001 and 2005, because the district lines changed in 2002. And for the moment I'm going to forgo the pleasure of comparing the results in all 95 counties and 40 independent cities.
Other results
I'll write more about the results in New Jersey, New York City, and California in the next few hours. Bottom line here: New Jersey looks a little more Republican in 2005 than it did in 2001, just as it looked somewhat more Republican in 2004 than it did in 2000. But in each case, the Democrat still won. New York City voted decisively against a left-wing Democrat and in favor of a liberal Democrat running on the Republican line who has wisely kept in place the police policies of Rudy Giuliani. Would you, however liberal you are, want to turn your police force over to an ally of Al Sharpton's? California voted down all the major propositions on the ballot, though some by a narrow margin. This is a stunning defeat for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a stunning victory for the public employee unions. More later.
I'd be really shocked if we lose many more. I think we'd need a real paradigm shift for the Democrats to take back the House of Delegates under the current map, with the rural areas and southern suburbs solidly Republican and the outer NoVa suburbs willing to vote for Republicans that don't go out to the front lines on cultural issues (like Dick Black did.)
What do you know about the 3 current independents?
My take on this, having lived in the NOVA area for 32 years, and now escaped from it, is that the place is becoming more and more a Yankee outpost, what with many, many educated people--well, at least on paper--moving in to work for the ever-expanding workforce of Sam and his many parasitic private enterprises ("Beltway Bandits").
Of course, they bring their politics with them, and those politics need not resemble those traditionally associated with Virginia.
As an illustration of what I am talking about, during my years there, I didn't hear many Southern accents, so I'm guessin' that these new Virginia residents are refugees from other than Southern conservative areas. If this trend continues, Virginia will one day be classified as outside Dixie.
There are the 2 incumbent Independents. Watkins Abbitt, Jr. (an ex-DINO and son of a longtime area former Congressman), a Conservative. And then, of course, the other being the legendary Lacey Putney, the longest serving member of the legislature, also a Conservative (who briefly served as Speaker not too long ago). The 3rd Independent that may (or may not) have won last night is liberal RINO Katherine Waddell, who is leading over incumbent Chesterfield Republican Bradley Marrs by all of 46 votes. Waddell is a Warner/Kainite.
BTTT
Not so much a paradigm shift but just death by a thousand cuts. If you move Putney & Abbitt to the GOP camp and Waddell to the 'Rats for purposes of organization, it's now down to 60-40. We can't afford to keep losing seats at this rate (and there isn't much left for us to win out in the sticks), that's already a drop of 6 seats in 4 years, and it doesn't take a rocket science to do the math and figure out at that rate, the 'Rats will retake the House by 2013 or 2015. The state party needs to heavily focus on NOVA to stop the hemmoraging before it turns into Baja Maryland for the forseeable future.
I dunno if I'd necessarily want to judge on accents. Although I was born and raised here in Nashville, Tennessee (just missing being born in NYC, where my parents fled from at the tail-end of the Lindsay regime), I never picked up the local accent and sound like I'm from Maryland (!)
It's amazing to realize that at this point, it's Maryland rather than VA that doesn't have a freak sitting in the Governor's mansion. Whether we can keep Ehrlich is another story... :-(
A very good article. It was, more or less, a status-quo election. The outcomes of the two Governors' races were almost identical to the outcomes four years ago. Given how poorly Bush was polling, it could have been considerably worse. I'm not declaring victory by any means. But this is a speed bump, not a brick wall.
It was not a status quo election in my view, and those who think it was, are deluding themselves.
Maybe, but the votes in Chesterfield and Henrico tell the story. Those counties are not in the anti Bush belt.
Aside from what I pointed out with the erosion of the GOP in NOVA and a candidate who ran an incredibly stupid and tone-deaf campaign in the last few months, what else would you call it ? I'd still tend to lean towards calling it a modified status-quo election with a positive affirmation for the incumbent. It is similar to the situation when then-Gov. Chuck Robb passed the office to Jerry Baliles in '85.
Virgina normally changes party control of the governship. The GOP erosion was just aweful. There is no reason NJ would be in love with Corzine. The Arnold initiatives were moderate and reasonable. The ads against it used the Bush name often. This election reflected the loss of Bush popularity by about 10%. It was a no confidence vote. Bush needs to get more specific and energized about the end game in Iraq, and he needs to do it now. Americans are not going to tolerate a 20 day a week body count, or whatever it is, indefinitely, because the Sunnis and Shias can't get along. They just won't.
Excuse me? The reason we are there is not because the sunnis and shia don't get along. It is because al-qaida namely zarqawi and his bunch are trying to control Iraq as a terror safe haven. If Americans insist on cutting and running in the face of al-qaida in Iraq, and I don't care what spin they put on it, there will be hell to pay.
If they want a President to cut and run, I would rather see George Bush walk away from the Presidency, and Dick Cheney from the Vice Presidency, and hire their own private body guards of a sizable force for them and their families and go to ground to survive, while the world implodes, than to stay the leaders of such a stupid country.
And that's about all I have to say.
"Maybe, but the votes in Chesterfield and Henrico tell the story. Those counties are not in the anti Bush belt."
Let's reflect on that for a moment. I was looking over the votes of Kaine's bailiwick and looked at the breakdown of votes for the past 3 elections ('01 Gov/'04 Pres/'05 Gov) as follows (I also included Richmond City, as you know, a separate political entity from the 2 counties that surround it):
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY
'04 Pres
49,346 36.88% D-Kerry 83,745 62.58% R-Bush
'01 Gov
33,810 41.95% D-Warner 46,160 57.27% R-Earley
'05 Gov
40,124 45.09% D-Kaine 48,102 54.05% R-Kilgore
It's clear in Chesterfield, the most Republican of the 3, that Republican turnout was jaw-droppingly low. Shockingly, in '01, Kilgore won Chesterfield by a 70-29% margin and won 10,000 more votes than Earley and 19,000 more than Kaine. There was no excuse for Kilgore to receive less than 60% of the vote here (and as a result, it appears we lost a safe House seat by only about 50 votes).
Next up was Henrico:
HENRICO COUNTY
'04 Pres
60,864 45.62% D 71,809 53.82% R
'01 Gov
42,089 51.39% D 39,215 47.88% R
'05 Gov
48,289 53.45% D 40,608 44.95% R
This is more Dem than Chesterfield, but even at that, Kilgore still carried this county by a 62-38% margin in '01, winning 50,000 votes. However, there was heavy ticket-splitting as Kaine beat Jay Katzen by a 56-43% margin, receiving 46,000 votes (so this where a hometown factor was more at play). The best Kilgore could've hoped for was an even-split, but bled off very badly here.
I'm throwing in Richmond City just for contrast, despite clearly being a heavily Dem area...
RICHMOND CITY
'04 Pres
52,167 70.19% D 21,637 29.11% R
'01 Gov
35,558 73.26% D 12,432 25.61% R
'05 Gov
38,357 75.89% D 11,383 22.52% R
Even in '01, Kilgore managed to get an unusually high (for a Republican) 36% of the vote and 17,000 votes, and should've still received at or around 30% again. I always tend to find it unusual, if not outright suspicious, when there is a sharp spike upwards in voting numbers in districts where there is population decline (and there are around 5,000 fewer residents since '01, if not more), so were it not for hometown support, that substantial increase for Kaine would be very suspicious.
In any event, it does clearly show that Kaine overall outperformed his initial showing in '01 and Kilgore dramatically underperformed (especially considering his huge '01 win, the highest vote-getter in the state). By all accounts, and the numbers, Kilgore could've declared himself the Governor-elect 4 years ago. I really don't think there is anyone else to blame here other than Kilgore and a very lousy campaign. I'd neither blame Dubya (whose approval ratings aren't nearly as low in VA, or elsewhere, as the media claims) or Sen. George Allen.
But, still, in Kaine winning the Governorship, the Dems now have the problem that without carrying over Creigh Deeds or Leslie Byrne to the two top jobs, they have no heir apparent, and it remains almost a given that (unless a similar fratricidal situation occurs as did in '01) either McDonnell or Bolling will be the next Governor (and at this point, there probably should've been a gentleman's agreement that whomever received more votes in this round, that being Lt Gov-elect Bill Bolling, that they should have a clear shot at the Governorship and the other gentleman should either stay put for another term or run for Lt Gov). The only possible wild-card entry would be if Mark Warner opted for a comeback to the job in '09 (assuming he isn't seriously damaged by a Presidential run). If Leslie Byrne decides to make a run for it, we can already put it back in our column.
"Virgina normally changes party control of the governship. The GOP erosion was just aweful."
That's not entirely the case (the erosion part is). Since no Republican won the Governorship from 1882 (and that was a Readjuster candidate) until 1969, you can only gauge it against the modern period. However, that first Republican in '69 was Linwood Holton, who was an ultra-RINO who ran well to the left of William Battle, the Dem nominee (himself a moderate, despite Holton's attempts to paint him as a Harry Byrd disciple).
Holton might've been the last "Republican" to win that seat for some time had certain events not transpired during his term. The Lieutenant-Governor, Sarge Reynolds, whom many Dems believed would become President, died of a brain tumor at the age of 34 barely a year and a half into his term (Reynolds has now become almost a mythical creature in VA Dem circles, much like Dick Obenshain has for the Republicans).
With Reynolds out of the picture, this provided an impetus for radical leftist Dem Henry Howell to win a special election for Lieutenant-Governor (Kaine being the most liberal candidate since to succeed). At the same time, and to the chagrin of Holton, Conservative Dem Mills Godwin switched parties (Godwin defeated Holton in '65 for the Governorship) and declared that he wanted his old job back, and succeeded in doing just that in '73 (despite, not because of Holton). It helped Mills because the kook Howell was his opponent (and the Watergate saga was already beginning to take its toll on GOP candidates at this point).
4 years later, many believed that Andrew Pickens, the Attorney-General, would reclaim the office for the Dems, but Howell, still angry by his narrow loss in '73, upended Pickens, and the GOP Lieutenant Governor, John Dalton, crushed Howell in a landslide.
Many forget that as long ago as 1981, it looked like the Dem party (despite their unrepresentative numbers in the legislature) was finished at the statewide and federal level. John Warner had beaten Andrew Pickens after Dick Obenshain died (and had little time to prepare) in '78 and the Republicans were hot to claim the other seat with Harry Byrd, Sr. about to retire. The Republicans held 9 out of the 10 Congressional seats, something they haven't been able to match since. But by then, we had reached our weakest link when it came to our candidates. Lt Gov Chuck Robb smashed the 12-year GOP reign by a solid margin over the ineffectual Atty Gen Marshall Coleman (who would later go on to "aid" a Senator Robb in winning a 2nd term in '94).
Much with Warner, and almost laughable to realize now, was that Robb left office massively popular and managed to carry bland Atty Gen Jerry Baliles into the Governorship by an 11% margin even with Reagan enjoying high popularity.
Then came '89... By all accounts, after 8 years out, we should've taken back the Governorship. However the 3 lackluster leading Republican candidates, which boiled down to retread Marshall Coleman attempting a comeback, Stan Parris, the last Republican to represent the people's republic of Alexandria (and not the most ideal statewide candidate), and lastly, gutless wonder, ex-Sen. Paul Trible who cut and run rather than stand his ground to face Chuck Robb the previous year. Coleman won the nod and still managed to lose to Doug Wilder.
By 1990, people forget that the GOP had greatly fallen from its perch of prominance. Where it had had 9 House seats going into 1982, it now stood at 4. Going into 1993, most in both parties conceded that Dem Atty Gen Mary Sue Terry was the next Governor. A then little-known half-term ex-Congressman named George Allen then appeared on the horizon. (I call him half-term, since he managed to win a special election after the ailing French Slaughter retired midterm) and the Dem legislature quickly gerrymandered the seat into oblivion, leaving Allen without a seat to run for.
Allen, of course, shocked all the pundits, and upended the baffled Terry to finally smash the Dems 12-year hold (just as Robb had done that many years before). As we all know, thanks to his popularity, Allen managed to carry Atty Gen Jim Gilmore into office to succeed him (again, just like Robb did with Jerry Baliles).
Now, this is where the interruption began... As you stated about VA, changes party control, but after 12-year cycles, and the fratricide that occurred between Jim Hager and Mark Earley was responsible for that. The Dems avoided a similar situation in '89 when Mary Sue Terry and Wilder could've sandbagged each other, but Terry chose to wait her turn, and they did so again in '93 when Don Beyer waited his turn (despite being an office above Terry).
Sadly, had an agreement been reached between Hager and Earley, both gentlemen could've held the office and Warner would've been shut out again as he was when he ran for the Senate. So, in conclusion, I reject almost entirely that Bush was partly responsible. By that definition, if Presidential popularity had been any indicator, Henry Howell should've won the Governorship in '73, Andrew Miller in '77, Marshall Coleman in '81, Wyatt Durette in '85, Coleman again in '89, and Earley in '01. Since 1969, there has probably been only one election that the President had an unusually negative effect, and that was in '73 and in '93 (and even in '73, we still won).
Dragging NJ into the equation also is a bit of a stretch, since NJ no longer is a mainstream state (it hasn't been in a dozen years). Their state GOP is in shambles and is ruled by a country-club mob that views anyone to the right of Pelosi as being a non-starter and openly work to sabotage right-of-center candidates. This, in fact, has been going on now for 30 years. As a result, the state is undergoing Massachusettsification. Bush has absolutely no bearing on the state of the party there, they're in a world of their own.
And lastly, as for CA, and you know I'm no fan of Ah-nold, but even with strong support of McClintock, the normal mainstream voters are having a difficult time outvoting the cultural and ethical Stalinists that infest the coastline. As I told someone earlier tonight, their failure on the teachers measure showed rank stupidity and tolerance for incompetence, their failure on the union dues shows their tolerance for criminality, and lastly, the vote against parental notification showed their tolerance and preference for unadulterated evil. It's not fair to paint the entire electorate of CA that way, but until the reasonable populace of the interior separates itself from the coast, they still remain a part of the evil. Dubya lastly never had much impact there, since the state has been out of the mainstream, like NJ, since at least after 1996.
I need to get more sleep. Thanks for the correction.
Great posting, with informative historical references.
Ironically, New Jersey may very well do the GOP a favor next year by electing a Republican to the U.S. Senate next year. A liberal Republican, granted, but still a vote for Constitutionalist judges.
Well, the people of Virginia voted for tax increases and I hope they get them real good.
I personally don't think that Ehrlich's agenda can survive what with that pit of vipers otherwise known as the Maryland Legislature trying to thwart his every move.
I've always been amazed about why person A will acquire the accent of the place he or she moves to and person B won't.
I concede that a speech accent doesn't necessarily indicate a political stance, and I suppose I overstated the matter. Sorry.
Kaine won because Kilgore ran an extremely NEGATIVE campaign right out of the gate...he did not set an agenda and or contrast himself from Kaine, instead his media message was ominous and nasty IMO this cost him...don't read alot in this about the GOP in VA as it looks like the LT Gov is GOP and too the AG...
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