Democrats win two more House seats
Both the Democratic and Republican Parties had reason to celebrate last week, as both came out of election night with victories.
The Republicans won the governor’s race in both Virginia and in New Jersey. Although the Virginia victory was expected, the race in New Jersey had been closer right up until the end. Many on the right viewed the two victories as a referendum on President Obama and yet exit surveys and polls found otherwise.
CNN reported that voters in the two races were focused on state issues when it came to their choice for governor. The local economies, job losses in the state, state property taxes and corruption were all important in their decisions. In Virginia 56 percent of voters said that the president was not a factor when it came to their vote, while in New Jersey 60 percent of the voters polled said that President Obama did not factor into their decisions.
In fact it is a “tradition” in Virginia that the governor’s race the year following an election of a president from either party results in the election of a governor from the other party. At least this has been the case since the late eighties, according to CNN. During the Bush-Cheney years, a Democrat lived in the Virginia governor’s mansion the whole time.
As excited as the Republicans are about these two accomplishments, they really don’t always predict how the next midterm elections will turn out. The fact that two House of Representative seats both went to Democrats last week, could be far more telling when it comes to a change in the congressional math next year.
The win by Democrat Bill Owens in New York’s 23rd district special election made five straight wins in contested specials over the last two years for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They also won in Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, as well as another in New York’s 20th district.
The other House seat won by Democrats was in California’s 10th district, where Lt. Gov. John Garamendi won over his Republican challenger by 18 points, giving yet another seat to the Democrats. Garamendi ran on his support for the Obama administration’s efforts to repair the economy and reform health care.
Both of these wins are important on the national level because they add two more Democratic seats to the House of Representatives.
The battle waged for the New York seat won by the Democrat also put national attention on the so-called split in the Republican Party and its effort to purge moderates from their midst by supporting the Conservative Party candidate. At least in this case it was far from the repudiation of the Republican Party or of President Obama than those on the far-right like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, and Fox’s Glenn Beck had hoped. Millions of dollars were spent and hundreds of volunteers were sent in, but to no avail.
Bill Owen’s victory in New York’s 23rd district is remarkable because it is the first time that a Democrat has represented that area in over 100 years. And the defeat of the Conservative Party candidate is certainly a boost to the Democrat’s ongoing ability to win congressional seats. Owen’s victory also means there are only two Republicans left in New York’s 29-seat congressional delegation.
Owens carried the three county area, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 45,000 registered voters, the Associated Press reported. Partly responsible for his victory may be that his former Republican rival Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race and then endorsed him, asking her supporters to vote for Owens.
Bill Owens appealed to voters by talking about job creation, more federal support for farmers and the huge army base at Fort Drum in the district, the Associated Press reported. Owens continued to campaign in his district, while national attention was more focused on the infighting between GOP conservatives and moderates. The Conservative Party candidate just may have been too far to the right for independent voters, which could be a sign that it takes a more moderate platform to win on the federal level. Or it could be that some voters were not impressed by a party that doesn’t have room any longer for long-time Republicans like Scozzafava.
The Democrats say that their message is still an effective one and that because of an identity crisis in the GOP, they have once again lost another congressional seat. Gaining two governor’s seats is certainly a good thing, but adding two more seats to an already huge majority in the House of Representatives as the Democrats did is what national politics on the federal level is all about anyway.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Carol Jensen is a long-time Barstow resident, graduating from Kennedy High School and Barstow College, where she was an English instructor for many years. Much of her time now is spent writing political and social commentary. She may be contacted at cajensen49@msn.com.
