I agree that this is nothing to get excited about, but you are way off on the “this close” comments. Spending money doesn’t simply translate into more votes, otherwise we’d all spend a billion dollars each election. There’s a limit.
We held the seat with about the same vote margin as the last election, with a guy that was NOT the incumbent. That’s a good sign that the republicans are back to being republicans.
The spending helps get name recognition for your candidate, but both sides spent enough for that. Turnout was OK, and the republicans were willing to show up as much as the democrats (leading to the reasonable margin of victory).
A couple of years ago the special election to fill Goss’ seat was extremely close — that was a harbinger of doom which came to pass in 2006. Maybe this shows that, with democrats in charge, people are forgetting the corruption of the Taft administration.
You mean that most recent Taft who tried to run Ohio, not those of a century ago, right? (Least I hope that’s what you mean).