(**Update:** Confused Taylor and Hayes. Thanks Mark!)
It was a fairly exciting day yesterday. Holly and I braved the rain with Hayley to go to our new polling place (our post-move voter cards arrived the day before). There were already around 550 votes cast in our polling place by the time we arrived aroun 11am, which seemed to be a good turnout. For the first time in my 13 years of voting, I voted an almost straight Democratic ticket (the exception being Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison, a Republican who I think is doing a great job). Yes, the douchebaggery coming out of all levels of the Republican party, both state and national, was the straw that broke the elephant’s back.
But while we’re here, let’s look at some interesting local and national races:
US House NC13: Brad Miller (D) vs. Vernon Robinson®
Readers know how I feel about Cap’n Crazy, but I was a little worried that enough rubes would be suckered in by his rhetoric to make it a close race. No need to worry – Miller trounces him 64-36 in a rout. Whew.
Of course, Robinson was still on Planet Nutso late in the night, tossing out this gem of a quote:
“I think we did a great job of giving voters a choice between a mainstream conservative and the most liberal Democrat in the South,” Robinson said. “Voters have made their decision, and we’re just waiting for the results to come in.”
Seriously, just shut your fucking mouth and go back to running for Mayor of Perennial Loserville against Alan Keyes. You’re a blowhard who hoped that you could get some press by making the most inflamatory statements that you could think of, but it backfired. See you in a couple years when you make your next failed run at office. Ass.
NC Supreme Court Chief Justice: Sarah Parker (D) vs. Rusty Duke®
If there’s one thing that’s scary, it’s a judicial candidate who trumpets his “conservative values” and does most of his campaigning on the church circuit. Remember, according to them, you’re not an “activist judge” if you legislate Jesus from the bench. So I didn’t hold out much hope in that voters in North Carolina could resist the siren song of “conservative judicial values”. But lo and behold, Sarah Parker pulls off the win by nearly a 2-1 margin. Awesome. In fact, Democratic judges in these technically nonpartisan races won most of their races.
Wake County School Bond
This was one we were watching closely, having now two kids that are slated for the Wake County Public School system. The enrollment is growing by leaps and bounds – I think Wake is the 20-somethingth largest school system in the nation now. More and more kids come into the system every year, and the buildings can’t hold them all. The school bond might not be perfect, but it’s at least addressing the issue of growth.
Compare that to the bond opponents, who are A) apparently all sniffing glue (see “Uncle Ruckus” and his ilk on the N&O blogs), and B) presented no alternatives to the bond whatsoever. They didn’t want the bond, they didn’t want to raise taxes to cover school growth, they didn’t want more year-round schools to make better use of the existing facilities. I guess they were hoping for magical unicorns to come down from rainbows and cause new schools to appear. Now they can take their pithy slogans like “NOvember” and cry on their signs for a while.
Virginia Senate: Jim Webb (D) vs. George Allen®
Back in my childhood home, there was a doozy of a Senate race. George Allen, thought to be a 2008 Presidential frontrunner until he got the “brain miggly” and started calling dark-skinned Virginians by obscure racial epithets, once had a comfortable lead. But slow and steady wins the race, and Jim Webb, who had both the military and conservative credentials as former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, managed to pull back into it. Even my Mom, who considers herself a Republican, said that if she’d been home instead of down here helping us with Kate, said she would have voted for Webb. As she put it, “All you saw out of Allen was how bad Webb was – he never talked about what he would do.” Plus there were the pre-voting-day dirty tricks of people calling Democratic voters and warning them that their voter information was out of date and they could be arrested if they tried to vote, or robo-calling houses 6-7 times in a row with messages that sounded like they were from the Democrat.
The race is probably headed to recount, but it looks like Webb currently has an 8000-ish vote lead, so I anticipate it will hold up and send Webb to the Senate, and possibly send the Senate to the Democrats.
US House NC11 – Heath Schuler (D) vs. Charles Taylor®
Charles Taylor was an 8-term pork king, but he famously changed his vote for the CAFTA agreement to “yes”, which didn’t sit well in his district, which has seen an incredible loss of textile jobs to Central America. Heath Schuler was best known as a good former college football player and a shitty former NFL player. But in a sign of how weak the Republicans were this year, Schuler knocked off Taylor and will be heading to Washington. The fact that he’s a pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrat also serves to blunt the (false) Republican talking point that Democrats are lefty-lefty communist liberals, every one, so that’s a good sign.
US House NC8: Larry Kissell (D) vs. Robin Hayes®
This matchup shouldn’t have even been on the radar. A political newcomer (Kissell) against an established campaigner in Hayes, in a very Republican district. If you want to see how pissed off the electorate is at the Republicans this year, look no further than this race. In what should have been a 70-30% blowout for Hayes, he’s in a statistical dead heat, holding a scant 470-vote advantage as of now. Of course, Hayes coming out against CAFTA, then selling a “yes” vote to Denny Hastert, all the while watching textile jobs in his district flee south of the border, didn’t help his case. I anticipate Hayes to retain, but the fact that anyone’s still talking about this race on Wednesday speaks volumes.
Virginia Constitution: Ban Civil Unions
Ah well, enlightenment can only go so far, as you see by this amendment passing. Passing an amendment to something that was already illegal seems silly, but you never know what those activist judges will do after a night of hitting the hookah pipe. Last time they did that, they legislated that pesky Jim Crow stuff right off the lawbooks, those bastards.
From my understanding of the amendment, it may have farther-reaching effects on heterosexual couples than just keeping them from catching “teh ghey,” but nobody really reads that far, do they?
Recap
After years of blaming the boogeymen of “liberals” and “gays” to cover for their inability to accomplish anything, the hens came home to roost for the Republicans this year. Seriously, they’ve had total control of all three branches of government for six years, can you think of anything they’ve been able to accomplish besides some token tax cuts, massive overspending, ignoring Afghanistan, and getting us bogged down in Iraq? Can you think of any other Congress that has acted like a complete rubber stamp to the Executive branch?
Year after year, the Republicans tried to distract the populace with fear of whatever the buzzword of the day was, while boning pages, taking bribes, covering up crimes, having shady dealing with lobbyists. They counted on the cowed media to ignore coverage of their misdeeds while whipping up false anger over things like Terry Schiavo. For the first time in years, the people woke up to see that their promises of “small government and honest dealings” were just lies. Now we get a Congress that won’t just roll over for the Executive, and hopefully the Democrats will be emboldened by the win to actually put forth plans of their own. They’ve got the ball now, they’ve got to do something with it.
And part of me would just love, after years of the Majority party completely shitting on the Minority party (to the point of even refusing to tell them where committee meetings were, breaking the House rules, and outright taking the gavel and going home when they didn’t like the way things were going), if they got a taste of their own medicine for a couple of years.
All in all, it was a good day to be a voter.
