Green Revolution on the Golden Gate
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Mountain State Republicans Defy Stereotypes, Push Minority Candidates
October 2, 2010
SANTA FE, NM - The Republican Party in recent years has sometimes been described as the party of old white men based on the typical patterns of voter demographics through the past two decades. This partisan tendency is particularly the case when it comes to the disparity between white and nonwhite voters. While certain more specific groups such as Cubans and Vietnamese voters are known for being ardently Republican, the broader partisan divide of Hispanic, Asian, and black voters has leaned increasingly toward the Democrats and away from the GOP. This often derogatory labeling of the Republicans as the party of white men is not helped by the makeup of the party’s elected officials in recent years. While they have elected a few minority candidates such as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal who is of Indian ancestry and former Oklahoma congressman J. C. Watts who is black, such faces are much rarer on the Republican side of the aisle than the Democratic side. For the past two years, however, the party under the chairmanship of Katon Dawson has made it a focus to recruit nonwhite candidates and elevate them to a national stage. That effort has borne fruit, particularly in one area of the country that you would not expect: the Mountain West.
One particular focus of the Republican Party in its minority candidate recruitment efforts have been in finding black candidates for office, especially for gubernatorial races. The United States has only ever had two black governors in its history, and only one, Democrat Doug Wilder of Virginia, since the end of Reconstruction[1]. The Republican Party has found a strong group of four black gubernatorial candidates for 2010. There is Herman Cain in Georgia, Michael Steele in Maryland, Jennette Bradley in Ohio, and one of the more curious party nominees of this cycle, Taylor Haynes in Wyoming. Haynes is a rancher and former surgeon who owns a ranch and other property along both sides of the Wyoming-Colorado border. He was initially seen as a long shot in the crowded Republican gubernatorial primary among other candidates such as state auditor Rita Meyer and state house speaker Colin Simpson, but the extremely crowded and divided field allowed Haynes to find some traction with help from the national party. Haynes describes himself as a limited government conservative, which is fitting for the more libertarian bent of the Mountain states. Haynes’s biggest push on his campaign has been calling for the return of federally owned land in Wyoming to state control, including Yellowstone National Park. Haynes says he wants the state to be able to take advantage of “all 100 percent of our mineral wealth” and open up federal lands to mining, grazing, and drilling[2] as a way to boost state revenue and lower state taxes. The basic sentiment of Haynes’s words may have strong footing in Wyoming, but the proposition of opening up Yellowstone, one of the major income sources in the state through tourism, to mining and drilling could be one step too far for some Wyomingites as the GOP looks to take control of Cheyenne from Democrats.
Hispanic and Latino candidates have typically had more good fortune in gaining visibility and winning nominations in the Republican Party in the past few decades. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush viewed Hispanics as a potential way to draw votes away from the Democratic Party and as a naturally conservative demographic. Bush made a number of Hispanic appointments to Cabinet departments when he came to office in 2001, and in 2004 he won the highest percentage of Hispanic voters in recent memory with 44% of Hispanics voting for Bush. However, there have been few elected Hispanic Republicans outside Florida. Now though, the Mountain West appears to be providing a number of strong opportunities for the GOP to increase their share of Hispanic elected officials. In New Mexico, the Republicans have nominated Latinos for both governor and lieutenant governor. Gubernatorial nominee Susana Martinez, a Doña Ana County attorney, and lieutenant governor nominee, state representative John Sanchez, will face governor Diane Denish and lieutenant governor Hector Balderas. Another Hispanic gubernatorial Republican hopeful this year is Brian Sandoval in Nevada. Sandoval, a former state attorney general and district court judge, is running to succeed Republican governor John Ensign. Finally, the Republicans are also hoping to send a Hispanic candidate to Congress in a state that usually is not associated with a large Hispanic community. Idaho state representative Raúl Labrador is running against congressman Walt Minnick in Idaho’s 1st district. Labrador is surprisingly not favored to win the race, which is strange for an Idaho Republican. Minnick, who unseated congressman Bill Sali in an upset to become the first Democrat to represent Idaho in Congress since 1995, is now favored to win reelection despite the strongly Republican district. Minnick has made a name as a maverick in the current crop of Democrats and is one of the few prominent Democrats endorsed by the Tea Party. However, Labrador already pulled off what is considered a major upset in winning the Republican primary, so it is possible he can do it again.
In addition to black and Hispanic candidates, Republicans have also been able to recruit a couple prominent candidates from other, smaller communities in the country who could make a splash in the midterms. In Utah, for example, businessman Molonai Hola will be the Republican nominee for the state’s 2nd district against Democrat Jim Matheson. Hola immigrated from the Polynesian island nation of Tonga to the United States with his family as a young child. Starting in high school, Hola says he always had an ambition to run for political office[3]. Hola ran for mayor of Salt Lake City in 2003 and, with nearly a quarter of the primary vote, came in third behind Mayor Rocky Anderson and Frank Pinganelli. Like Labrador, Hola is Mormon. But as with his run for Salt Lake City mayor, Hola says he’s not coasting on that, especially with a district stretching from Salt Lake City to Moab to St. George in some of the less Mormon areas of the state. Hola has a tough race against five term incumbent Matheson, a Blue Dog with a dynasty behind him and proven success at running in a red district.
Finally, in neighboring Colorado, Republicans have found one of their most promising recruits for the future in a young businessman with a family name rooted in southern Colorado who is running for state treasurer. On top of that, Ali Hasan is Muslim. Hasan, the 30 year old filmmaker whose father founded the Hasan Foundation, has become one of the most notable Republicans running in the 2010 election cycle, though some of his notoriety is not always positive. Ali Hasan and the Hasan Foundation were recently at the center of a scandal and drama involving a fellow Republican candidate in Colorado, gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis. McInnis had plagiarized a number of essays he wrote for the Hasan Foundation, and both the foundation and Ali rebuked McInnis in an instance that Democrats took advantage of to point to Republican infighting. McInnis ultimately lost his congressional primary while Hasan narrowly won a tough three-way primary to become the Republican nominee for state treasurer. Hasan, the son of Pakistani immigrants, is not a political neophyte and has a history of political involvement. He started the Muslims For Bush organization in 2004 to support president Bush’s reelection, and in 2008 ran for state senate in the district spanning the northwest corner of the state. Hasan, only 27 at the time, dropped out of the race, but remained determined to forge a political career. A Pueblo native who has spent some time in California, Hasan decidedly had better luck at a statewide race than in the Western Slope. Hasan now faces Democrat Cary Kennedy in the race for Treasurer. Kennedy is running again after losing to Mike Coffman four years ago, but with Coffman running for Senator and Hasan a somewhat untested candidate, Democrats think they can take a state office that has been held by Republicans for fifteen years. No state has ever elected a Muslim to statewide office. Hasan, about as contrary to the typical idea of a Republican as you can get, is hoping to be the first.
***
Dan Maes Sinks to Single Digits in New Governor Poll
October 6, 2010
DENVER, CO - In a year where Republicans have been very hopeful about their prospects in a number of races, the governor’s race in Colorado has been a succession of disaster after disaster for the party. First the Republican primary devolved into a number of scandals for both primary candidates including a plagiarism scandal that saw animosity between eventual loser Scott McInnis and the party’s Treasurer nominee Ali Hasan. As McInnis slipped in the polls and Maes started moving ahead in the primary, Maes stepped into his own scandal when he claimed a Denver bike share program was part of a conspiratorial United Nations agenda. With neither Republican performing well against John Hickenlooper and both candidates looking bad, the Republican Party ran into another roadblock for governor when former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo jumped into the race as the Constitution Party candidate and immediately started peeling off votes from Maes. Maes has continued to slip in the polls in the two months since the primary. Even as some Republicans in other statewide races have been bolstered in their own races, Tancredo has apparently become seen as the most viable conservative candidate for governor with Maes falling more and more by the wayside.
A new poll from local pollster Magellan Strategies has now given Republicans even worse news about the race. After some commentators speculated that Maes’ floor was around 15 percent, the new poll smashes that, showing the Republican candidate plummeting to below double digits with just 9 percent! Meanwhile, Hickenlooper is leading with 43 percent but is in a statistical tie with Tancredo at 41 percent[4]. The numbers, taken at the end of September, came as the Maes campaign released new information about the Republican candidate’s employment history that have been the source of yet another predicament he has put himself in. Earlier this month, Maes made statements asserting that during the 1980s he worked undercover with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation while an officer for the Liberal, Kansas police department. Soon after, the KBI claimed that Maes never worked with them. After a back and forth game of who said what, the Maes campaign finally released his officer personnel file at the end of September. It did show that some of what Maes claimed about working with KBI agents was true, but also showed that Maes was dismissed from the Liberal police department for investigating an alleged gambling ring operated by his girlfriend’s family and informing her of the investigation[5]. Even if it did prove Maes was not lying about that part of his work history, it certainly did not paint Maes in any better light.
With Maes plunging to new depths of irrelevance in polling, the Republicans have quickly become the third party of the governor’s race. Since then, the main focus has shifted to the battle between Hickenlooper and Tancredo. Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams tried to convince Maes to drop out of the race in early September to no avail. A number of prominent Colorado Republicans, from former Senator Hank Brown to 4th district candidate Ken Buck who has seen a fair number of scandals of his own, have retracted their endorsements of Maes. Last week, 20 Colorado Republican officials issued a signed statement switching their support from Maes to Tancredo. One of them in particular was notable. Janet Rowland, a Mesa County Commissioner who gained some prominence as Bob Beauprez’s lieutenant governor candidate in the 2006 gubernatorial election, had been instrumental in garnering Tea Party support for Maes in his primary victory over McInnis. Now, she has not only switched support to Tancredo, but also has apparently changed her party registration to the Constitution Party.
With the shift of support from Maes to Tancredo, Tancredo has received a vast majority of the coverage of the conservative side of the race. However, with the new poll, Maes has fallen to a point that should concern even the pro-Tancredo Republicans, not just for the sake of the humiliation of the party but for the consequences on the state Republican organization. Colorado law specifies three categories of recognized parties in the state: qualified political organizations (QPOs), minor parties, and major parties. Each classification has different privileges and obligations they are bound by under Colorado campaign and elections law. A major party is defined as “any political party that at the last preceding gubernatorial election was represented on the official ballot either by political party candidates or by individual nominees and whose candidate at the last preceding gubernatorial election received at least 10% of the total gubernatorial votes cast.”[6] If Maes gets under 10 percent in the November election, the Colorado GOP will lose its major party status. What that means in practice is still somewhat undetermined as no party, and certainly neither of the two major parties, has lost its status as a major party in the state in living memory. However, even the prospect that the Republican Party might get themselves into this situation should be a grave concern to them. At this point though, it’s questionable if Republicans can do anything to boost Maes’ performance other than pray.
***
My Little Horse Race: Hasbro Exec In Tight Three Candidate Race For Rhode Island Governor
October 12, 2010
PROVIDENCE, RI - A year ago, the race for governor of Rhode Island was viewed as a simple contest between Democrats and Republicans. But now, with just weeks to go before the election, a dark horse candidate could be setting up to upset the election in the final stretch. That candidate is former Hasbro executive Alan Hassenfeld, who has taken up the mantle of the recently founded Moderate Party of Rhode Island as its candidate for governor. Hassenfeld, who headed the toy company famous for brands including Transformers, GI Joe, and My Little Pony, has positioned himself as a centrist and a more independent voice for the state in contrast to Democratic nominee Treasurer Frank Caprio and Republican nominee John Robitaille, a businessman and former communication adviser to current governor Don Carcieri. In a political climate where the outgoing Republican governor is leaving the state with a bad taste in its mouth, and a midterm swinging against a Democratic president, Hassenfeld may have found an opening.
The race has gained increasing national attention from both major parties over the summer as Hassenfeld’s rise in the polls have upended what had previously been a fairly safe contest. Carcieri barely held on to reelection in 2006, and his second term did little to help the GOP regain favor with voters. In particular, the brief government shutdown and furloughs last year for state employees over the state’s budget shortfall did not endear him with many in Providence. On top of that, Senator Lincoln Chafee renounced the party winning reelection as an independent, and according to party registration data, just over 12% of the state’s voters are registered Republicans. Robitaille started off working with a slim base and an increasingly unpopular party, and many pundits viewed the race as a safe gain for the Democrats. Hassenfeld’s entry into the race changed that. The Moderate Party candidate’s business background and his deep, self-funding pockets may have led some to guess he would align more with the GOP and their voter base. However, Hassenfeld pushed the need for a balanced approach between maintaining social services and keeping the state open for businesses when he spoke on the budget shortfall in Providence, and placed equal blame on the Democratic legislature and on Treasurer Caprio as he did on governor Carcieri. As Hassenfeld climbed in the polls, he began taking from both Caprio and Robitaille. With Caprio’s decline in the polls from his strong lead, the race became within reach for both the Moderate and Republican candidates and the race started to attract some big names. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney campaigned for Robitaille last month, and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is himself running for governor in New York on another third party ticket, showed up to stump for Hassenfeld during a fundraising swing through New England. The national campaign organizations for both major parties have also invested heavily in the race for their candidates.
While both Hassenfeld and Robitaille seem to be chipping away at Caprio’s campaign, a recent revelation has not done any favors to the Democratic Treasurer’s bid for office. It has been reported this week that prior to running for the Democratic nomination for governor, Caprio considered running as a Republican instead. Spokespeople for the Republican National Committee confirmed that a meeting took place in February between Caprio and Republican operatives, allegedly initiated by Caprio, regarding the Democratic Treasurer potentially switching parties and running in the GOP primary for governor[7]. Robitaille first claimed the existence of these meetings in an interview with a Providence newspaper where he accused the Caprio campaign of trying to force him to withdraw and claiming that Robitaille, not Caprio’s own failings as a candidate, which were harming the Democrats’ chances in the race. While the Robitaille campaign first brought up the meetings, it has been Hassenfeld and the Moderate Party who have taken the most advantage of this development in the campaign. “If you need any more proof that both parties are in bed with each other in Rhode Island, there it is in their own words,” said one Moderate Party campaign ad. Hassenfeld described himself as an independent voice who can cut through the partisan rhetoric hiding bipartisan corruption to give Rhode Islanders a better government. Spokespeople for Caprio’s campaign declined to comment on the rumors and said the Democrat would not engage in petty sparring and would remain focused on the real issues facing Rhode Islanders.
For his part, Caprio still remains ahead in the polls despite his decline with just over three weeks left until election day. A Brown University poll from the end of September has Caprio at 40%, well ahead of Hassenfeld at 34% and Robitaille at 31%. However, that poll does have all three candidates within the margin of error, marking the first time since very early polls included Senator Chafee that the race has been statistically tied between three candidates. A WJAR poll taken between October 2nd and 5th shows an even more contentious race with Caprio at 36%, Hassenfeld at just three points behind with 33%, and Robitaille still trailing but again within margin of error at 29%. As we enter the final stretch of the race, all three members of the horse race are now neck and neck. Who might finish ahead is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear. Rhode Island has firmly joined Maine, New York, and a few other states this year in having hotly contested three-horse races as the candidates gallop toward the finish line.
***
Three Choices, One Ending
October 25, 2010
SYRACUSE, NY - The journalists and politicos have made a lot of hay in the past year about the choice that voters face in the upcoming midterms. They'll tell you that your decision is one of the most important in your lifetime, that the Democrats and Republicans are wildly different in their platforms and the direction they want to take the country. They'll crow about how Democrats want more control over government and to expand government to give at least a pittance of welfare to working class Americans. At the same time, the media will tell you that Republicans want to destroy government and remove it from whichever parts of your life you think it is interfering in. Politicians in both parties and in the media use this push and pull to feed you a rising dramatic tension during election campaigns that bring in ratings and make you think your votes and campaign donations to their candidates are important and determine the direction the country will take over the next two years.
But of course, the mainstream media would be the ones to sell you that your choice matters as they peddle the two party system. They have a vested interest in making a competitive race out of a duopoly whose only purpose, in both Democrats and Republicans, is to maintain the status quo. Despite both parties and candidates in both parties giving you a canned spiel about how they need your money and your vote to ensure your choice matters in the election, the reality is both parties are the same. But here in New York, it gets even better. Thanks to Mike Bloomberg, you can now be presented with a third option! Bloomberg's Liberal Party claims it's a real choice for voters, a new option to break the two party system. The problem with Bloomberg's approach is that his Liberals are die-hard centrists. If you're tired of the fighting between the Democrats and Republicans, the Liberals have promised to stop the fighting, but only through the tired maxim of "governing the state like a business", picking bland inoffensive policies from either side, and not actually proposing any new, radical ideas.
Even after looking at both parties' platforms, you might still say Democrats and Republicans differ enough from each other that there are still real options for voters to choose between. But if you need more proof, the state of New York is happy to oblige. Just look at the congressional election up in the 23rd district. Last year, Conservative Doug Hoffman beat out both the Democrat and the Republican in the special election. While his views may be repugnant, it represented an actual triumph of a third party on its own over the duopolist system the two major parties have put in place for decades. And how does the duopoly respond? By teaming up, of course. Thanks to fusion balloting, Hoffman now faces Dede Scozzafava, the Republican he ran against last year, only now she has been endorsed by both the Republicans and Democrats and will be on both major party ballot lines next week! The Liberals certainly would have endorsed her there too if they'd been able to get ballot access in the race. So there you have it.
So then, what should the everyday voter do next Tuesday when they go to the polls? If you listen to the Democrats and Cuomo's people on the mainstream left, they'll tell you to vote for him because governor Weld and the Republican red option wants to destroy the government and have been for the past four years. If you listen to Weld's people on the right, they'll tell you Cuomo and the Democrats' blue option would take more control of government and put more regulations on your everyday life. Then you have Bloomberg and the Liberals coming in with the third option, but that option is just to create a synthesis of government and business and put government even more in bed with the corporations than they are now. The Liberals are nothing more than the supposed novel third choice that has suddenly sprung up so that the mainstream parties and media can dismiss any complaints we might have about a lack of choice in our elections. Look, you have choice, we're giving you a third option, they'll say. But that choice doesn't matter if whomever you vote for, Democrat, Republican, or Liberal, they all lead to the same ending of inactive government that does not truly care about the well-being of its citizens. For a real choice - a vote for a party that actually proposes radical new ideas for how a country should treat its people - you need to reject the duopoly and its token third party and look at the real third party. So when you go to the polls next week, consider this. Make your choice REALLY matter. Choose a different ending. Vote Green. Vote for Howie Hawkins[8].
[1] Remember, neither Deval Patrick nor David Paterson were governors in this timeline.
[2] Actual quote from Haynes during his third run for governor in 2018. Haynes first ran for governor in OTL in 2010 as a late write-in, where he got 7.3% of the vote. Though it’s Wyoming, so 7.3% is still less than 14,000 votes.
[3] Source: https://www.deseret.com/2003/9/23/19785742/hola-is-confident-of-primary-survival.
[4] Maes did start polling under 10% in 2010 in OTL, but not until later in October. The first poll with him at this level in OTL was on October 22 with Hickenlooper at 44%, Tancredo at 43%, and Maes at 9%.
[5] Source: http://api.durangoherald.com/articl...-support-claim-chief-knew-about-investigation
[6] Quoted from the Colorado Revised Statutes, Elections section: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/info_center/laws/Title1/Title1Article1.html
[7] Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2010/09/ri-dem-reportedly-considered-gop-042171
[8] Did I write this section purely for the very tortured Mass Effect 3 ending reference? Yes, yes I did.
October 2, 2010
SANTA FE, NM - The Republican Party in recent years has sometimes been described as the party of old white men based on the typical patterns of voter demographics through the past two decades. This partisan tendency is particularly the case when it comes to the disparity between white and nonwhite voters. While certain more specific groups such as Cubans and Vietnamese voters are known for being ardently Republican, the broader partisan divide of Hispanic, Asian, and black voters has leaned increasingly toward the Democrats and away from the GOP. This often derogatory labeling of the Republicans as the party of white men is not helped by the makeup of the party’s elected officials in recent years. While they have elected a few minority candidates such as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal who is of Indian ancestry and former Oklahoma congressman J. C. Watts who is black, such faces are much rarer on the Republican side of the aisle than the Democratic side. For the past two years, however, the party under the chairmanship of Katon Dawson has made it a focus to recruit nonwhite candidates and elevate them to a national stage. That effort has borne fruit, particularly in one area of the country that you would not expect: the Mountain West.
One particular focus of the Republican Party in its minority candidate recruitment efforts have been in finding black candidates for office, especially for gubernatorial races. The United States has only ever had two black governors in its history, and only one, Democrat Doug Wilder of Virginia, since the end of Reconstruction[1]. The Republican Party has found a strong group of four black gubernatorial candidates for 2010. There is Herman Cain in Georgia, Michael Steele in Maryland, Jennette Bradley in Ohio, and one of the more curious party nominees of this cycle, Taylor Haynes in Wyoming. Haynes is a rancher and former surgeon who owns a ranch and other property along both sides of the Wyoming-Colorado border. He was initially seen as a long shot in the crowded Republican gubernatorial primary among other candidates such as state auditor Rita Meyer and state house speaker Colin Simpson, but the extremely crowded and divided field allowed Haynes to find some traction with help from the national party. Haynes describes himself as a limited government conservative, which is fitting for the more libertarian bent of the Mountain states. Haynes’s biggest push on his campaign has been calling for the return of federally owned land in Wyoming to state control, including Yellowstone National Park. Haynes says he wants the state to be able to take advantage of “all 100 percent of our mineral wealth” and open up federal lands to mining, grazing, and drilling[2] as a way to boost state revenue and lower state taxes. The basic sentiment of Haynes’s words may have strong footing in Wyoming, but the proposition of opening up Yellowstone, one of the major income sources in the state through tourism, to mining and drilling could be one step too far for some Wyomingites as the GOP looks to take control of Cheyenne from Democrats.
Hispanic and Latino candidates have typically had more good fortune in gaining visibility and winning nominations in the Republican Party in the past few decades. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush viewed Hispanics as a potential way to draw votes away from the Democratic Party and as a naturally conservative demographic. Bush made a number of Hispanic appointments to Cabinet departments when he came to office in 2001, and in 2004 he won the highest percentage of Hispanic voters in recent memory with 44% of Hispanics voting for Bush. However, there have been few elected Hispanic Republicans outside Florida. Now though, the Mountain West appears to be providing a number of strong opportunities for the GOP to increase their share of Hispanic elected officials. In New Mexico, the Republicans have nominated Latinos for both governor and lieutenant governor. Gubernatorial nominee Susana Martinez, a Doña Ana County attorney, and lieutenant governor nominee, state representative John Sanchez, will face governor Diane Denish and lieutenant governor Hector Balderas. Another Hispanic gubernatorial Republican hopeful this year is Brian Sandoval in Nevada. Sandoval, a former state attorney general and district court judge, is running to succeed Republican governor John Ensign. Finally, the Republicans are also hoping to send a Hispanic candidate to Congress in a state that usually is not associated with a large Hispanic community. Idaho state representative Raúl Labrador is running against congressman Walt Minnick in Idaho’s 1st district. Labrador is surprisingly not favored to win the race, which is strange for an Idaho Republican. Minnick, who unseated congressman Bill Sali in an upset to become the first Democrat to represent Idaho in Congress since 1995, is now favored to win reelection despite the strongly Republican district. Minnick has made a name as a maverick in the current crop of Democrats and is one of the few prominent Democrats endorsed by the Tea Party. However, Labrador already pulled off what is considered a major upset in winning the Republican primary, so it is possible he can do it again.
In addition to black and Hispanic candidates, Republicans have also been able to recruit a couple prominent candidates from other, smaller communities in the country who could make a splash in the midterms. In Utah, for example, businessman Molonai Hola will be the Republican nominee for the state’s 2nd district against Democrat Jim Matheson. Hola immigrated from the Polynesian island nation of Tonga to the United States with his family as a young child. Starting in high school, Hola says he always had an ambition to run for political office[3]. Hola ran for mayor of Salt Lake City in 2003 and, with nearly a quarter of the primary vote, came in third behind Mayor Rocky Anderson and Frank Pinganelli. Like Labrador, Hola is Mormon. But as with his run for Salt Lake City mayor, Hola says he’s not coasting on that, especially with a district stretching from Salt Lake City to Moab to St. George in some of the less Mormon areas of the state. Hola has a tough race against five term incumbent Matheson, a Blue Dog with a dynasty behind him and proven success at running in a red district.
Finally, in neighboring Colorado, Republicans have found one of their most promising recruits for the future in a young businessman with a family name rooted in southern Colorado who is running for state treasurer. On top of that, Ali Hasan is Muslim. Hasan, the 30 year old filmmaker whose father founded the Hasan Foundation, has become one of the most notable Republicans running in the 2010 election cycle, though some of his notoriety is not always positive. Ali Hasan and the Hasan Foundation were recently at the center of a scandal and drama involving a fellow Republican candidate in Colorado, gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis. McInnis had plagiarized a number of essays he wrote for the Hasan Foundation, and both the foundation and Ali rebuked McInnis in an instance that Democrats took advantage of to point to Republican infighting. McInnis ultimately lost his congressional primary while Hasan narrowly won a tough three-way primary to become the Republican nominee for state treasurer. Hasan, the son of Pakistani immigrants, is not a political neophyte and has a history of political involvement. He started the Muslims For Bush organization in 2004 to support president Bush’s reelection, and in 2008 ran for state senate in the district spanning the northwest corner of the state. Hasan, only 27 at the time, dropped out of the race, but remained determined to forge a political career. A Pueblo native who has spent some time in California, Hasan decidedly had better luck at a statewide race than in the Western Slope. Hasan now faces Democrat Cary Kennedy in the race for Treasurer. Kennedy is running again after losing to Mike Coffman four years ago, but with Coffman running for Senator and Hasan a somewhat untested candidate, Democrats think they can take a state office that has been held by Republicans for fifteen years. No state has ever elected a Muslim to statewide office. Hasan, about as contrary to the typical idea of a Republican as you can get, is hoping to be the first.
***
Dan Maes Sinks to Single Digits in New Governor Poll
October 6, 2010
DENVER, CO - In a year where Republicans have been very hopeful about their prospects in a number of races, the governor’s race in Colorado has been a succession of disaster after disaster for the party. First the Republican primary devolved into a number of scandals for both primary candidates including a plagiarism scandal that saw animosity between eventual loser Scott McInnis and the party’s Treasurer nominee Ali Hasan. As McInnis slipped in the polls and Maes started moving ahead in the primary, Maes stepped into his own scandal when he claimed a Denver bike share program was part of a conspiratorial United Nations agenda. With neither Republican performing well against John Hickenlooper and both candidates looking bad, the Republican Party ran into another roadblock for governor when former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo jumped into the race as the Constitution Party candidate and immediately started peeling off votes from Maes. Maes has continued to slip in the polls in the two months since the primary. Even as some Republicans in other statewide races have been bolstered in their own races, Tancredo has apparently become seen as the most viable conservative candidate for governor with Maes falling more and more by the wayside.
A new poll from local pollster Magellan Strategies has now given Republicans even worse news about the race. After some commentators speculated that Maes’ floor was around 15 percent, the new poll smashes that, showing the Republican candidate plummeting to below double digits with just 9 percent! Meanwhile, Hickenlooper is leading with 43 percent but is in a statistical tie with Tancredo at 41 percent[4]. The numbers, taken at the end of September, came as the Maes campaign released new information about the Republican candidate’s employment history that have been the source of yet another predicament he has put himself in. Earlier this month, Maes made statements asserting that during the 1980s he worked undercover with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation while an officer for the Liberal, Kansas police department. Soon after, the KBI claimed that Maes never worked with them. After a back and forth game of who said what, the Maes campaign finally released his officer personnel file at the end of September. It did show that some of what Maes claimed about working with KBI agents was true, but also showed that Maes was dismissed from the Liberal police department for investigating an alleged gambling ring operated by his girlfriend’s family and informing her of the investigation[5]. Even if it did prove Maes was not lying about that part of his work history, it certainly did not paint Maes in any better light.
With Maes plunging to new depths of irrelevance in polling, the Republicans have quickly become the third party of the governor’s race. Since then, the main focus has shifted to the battle between Hickenlooper and Tancredo. Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams tried to convince Maes to drop out of the race in early September to no avail. A number of prominent Colorado Republicans, from former Senator Hank Brown to 4th district candidate Ken Buck who has seen a fair number of scandals of his own, have retracted their endorsements of Maes. Last week, 20 Colorado Republican officials issued a signed statement switching their support from Maes to Tancredo. One of them in particular was notable. Janet Rowland, a Mesa County Commissioner who gained some prominence as Bob Beauprez’s lieutenant governor candidate in the 2006 gubernatorial election, had been instrumental in garnering Tea Party support for Maes in his primary victory over McInnis. Now, she has not only switched support to Tancredo, but also has apparently changed her party registration to the Constitution Party.
With the shift of support from Maes to Tancredo, Tancredo has received a vast majority of the coverage of the conservative side of the race. However, with the new poll, Maes has fallen to a point that should concern even the pro-Tancredo Republicans, not just for the sake of the humiliation of the party but for the consequences on the state Republican organization. Colorado law specifies three categories of recognized parties in the state: qualified political organizations (QPOs), minor parties, and major parties. Each classification has different privileges and obligations they are bound by under Colorado campaign and elections law. A major party is defined as “any political party that at the last preceding gubernatorial election was represented on the official ballot either by political party candidates or by individual nominees and whose candidate at the last preceding gubernatorial election received at least 10% of the total gubernatorial votes cast.”[6] If Maes gets under 10 percent in the November election, the Colorado GOP will lose its major party status. What that means in practice is still somewhat undetermined as no party, and certainly neither of the two major parties, has lost its status as a major party in the state in living memory. However, even the prospect that the Republican Party might get themselves into this situation should be a grave concern to them. At this point though, it’s questionable if Republicans can do anything to boost Maes’ performance other than pray.
***
My Little Horse Race: Hasbro Exec In Tight Three Candidate Race For Rhode Island Governor
October 12, 2010
PROVIDENCE, RI - A year ago, the race for governor of Rhode Island was viewed as a simple contest between Democrats and Republicans. But now, with just weeks to go before the election, a dark horse candidate could be setting up to upset the election in the final stretch. That candidate is former Hasbro executive Alan Hassenfeld, who has taken up the mantle of the recently founded Moderate Party of Rhode Island as its candidate for governor. Hassenfeld, who headed the toy company famous for brands including Transformers, GI Joe, and My Little Pony, has positioned himself as a centrist and a more independent voice for the state in contrast to Democratic nominee Treasurer Frank Caprio and Republican nominee John Robitaille, a businessman and former communication adviser to current governor Don Carcieri. In a political climate where the outgoing Republican governor is leaving the state with a bad taste in its mouth, and a midterm swinging against a Democratic president, Hassenfeld may have found an opening.
The race has gained increasing national attention from both major parties over the summer as Hassenfeld’s rise in the polls have upended what had previously been a fairly safe contest. Carcieri barely held on to reelection in 2006, and his second term did little to help the GOP regain favor with voters. In particular, the brief government shutdown and furloughs last year for state employees over the state’s budget shortfall did not endear him with many in Providence. On top of that, Senator Lincoln Chafee renounced the party winning reelection as an independent, and according to party registration data, just over 12% of the state’s voters are registered Republicans. Robitaille started off working with a slim base and an increasingly unpopular party, and many pundits viewed the race as a safe gain for the Democrats. Hassenfeld’s entry into the race changed that. The Moderate Party candidate’s business background and his deep, self-funding pockets may have led some to guess he would align more with the GOP and their voter base. However, Hassenfeld pushed the need for a balanced approach between maintaining social services and keeping the state open for businesses when he spoke on the budget shortfall in Providence, and placed equal blame on the Democratic legislature and on Treasurer Caprio as he did on governor Carcieri. As Hassenfeld climbed in the polls, he began taking from both Caprio and Robitaille. With Caprio’s decline in the polls from his strong lead, the race became within reach for both the Moderate and Republican candidates and the race started to attract some big names. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney campaigned for Robitaille last month, and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is himself running for governor in New York on another third party ticket, showed up to stump for Hassenfeld during a fundraising swing through New England. The national campaign organizations for both major parties have also invested heavily in the race for their candidates.
While both Hassenfeld and Robitaille seem to be chipping away at Caprio’s campaign, a recent revelation has not done any favors to the Democratic Treasurer’s bid for office. It has been reported this week that prior to running for the Democratic nomination for governor, Caprio considered running as a Republican instead. Spokespeople for the Republican National Committee confirmed that a meeting took place in February between Caprio and Republican operatives, allegedly initiated by Caprio, regarding the Democratic Treasurer potentially switching parties and running in the GOP primary for governor[7]. Robitaille first claimed the existence of these meetings in an interview with a Providence newspaper where he accused the Caprio campaign of trying to force him to withdraw and claiming that Robitaille, not Caprio’s own failings as a candidate, which were harming the Democrats’ chances in the race. While the Robitaille campaign first brought up the meetings, it has been Hassenfeld and the Moderate Party who have taken the most advantage of this development in the campaign. “If you need any more proof that both parties are in bed with each other in Rhode Island, there it is in their own words,” said one Moderate Party campaign ad. Hassenfeld described himself as an independent voice who can cut through the partisan rhetoric hiding bipartisan corruption to give Rhode Islanders a better government. Spokespeople for Caprio’s campaign declined to comment on the rumors and said the Democrat would not engage in petty sparring and would remain focused on the real issues facing Rhode Islanders.
For his part, Caprio still remains ahead in the polls despite his decline with just over three weeks left until election day. A Brown University poll from the end of September has Caprio at 40%, well ahead of Hassenfeld at 34% and Robitaille at 31%. However, that poll does have all three candidates within the margin of error, marking the first time since very early polls included Senator Chafee that the race has been statistically tied between three candidates. A WJAR poll taken between October 2nd and 5th shows an even more contentious race with Caprio at 36%, Hassenfeld at just three points behind with 33%, and Robitaille still trailing but again within margin of error at 29%. As we enter the final stretch of the race, all three members of the horse race are now neck and neck. Who might finish ahead is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear. Rhode Island has firmly joined Maine, New York, and a few other states this year in having hotly contested three-horse races as the candidates gallop toward the finish line.
***
Three Choices, One Ending
October 25, 2010
SYRACUSE, NY - The journalists and politicos have made a lot of hay in the past year about the choice that voters face in the upcoming midterms. They'll tell you that your decision is one of the most important in your lifetime, that the Democrats and Republicans are wildly different in their platforms and the direction they want to take the country. They'll crow about how Democrats want more control over government and to expand government to give at least a pittance of welfare to working class Americans. At the same time, the media will tell you that Republicans want to destroy government and remove it from whichever parts of your life you think it is interfering in. Politicians in both parties and in the media use this push and pull to feed you a rising dramatic tension during election campaigns that bring in ratings and make you think your votes and campaign donations to their candidates are important and determine the direction the country will take over the next two years.
But of course, the mainstream media would be the ones to sell you that your choice matters as they peddle the two party system. They have a vested interest in making a competitive race out of a duopoly whose only purpose, in both Democrats and Republicans, is to maintain the status quo. Despite both parties and candidates in both parties giving you a canned spiel about how they need your money and your vote to ensure your choice matters in the election, the reality is both parties are the same. But here in New York, it gets even better. Thanks to Mike Bloomberg, you can now be presented with a third option! Bloomberg's Liberal Party claims it's a real choice for voters, a new option to break the two party system. The problem with Bloomberg's approach is that his Liberals are die-hard centrists. If you're tired of the fighting between the Democrats and Republicans, the Liberals have promised to stop the fighting, but only through the tired maxim of "governing the state like a business", picking bland inoffensive policies from either side, and not actually proposing any new, radical ideas.
Even after looking at both parties' platforms, you might still say Democrats and Republicans differ enough from each other that there are still real options for voters to choose between. But if you need more proof, the state of New York is happy to oblige. Just look at the congressional election up in the 23rd district. Last year, Conservative Doug Hoffman beat out both the Democrat and the Republican in the special election. While his views may be repugnant, it represented an actual triumph of a third party on its own over the duopolist system the two major parties have put in place for decades. And how does the duopoly respond? By teaming up, of course. Thanks to fusion balloting, Hoffman now faces Dede Scozzafava, the Republican he ran against last year, only now she has been endorsed by both the Republicans and Democrats and will be on both major party ballot lines next week! The Liberals certainly would have endorsed her there too if they'd been able to get ballot access in the race. So there you have it.
So then, what should the everyday voter do next Tuesday when they go to the polls? If you listen to the Democrats and Cuomo's people on the mainstream left, they'll tell you to vote for him because governor Weld and the Republican red option wants to destroy the government and have been for the past four years. If you listen to Weld's people on the right, they'll tell you Cuomo and the Democrats' blue option would take more control of government and put more regulations on your everyday life. Then you have Bloomberg and the Liberals coming in with the third option, but that option is just to create a synthesis of government and business and put government even more in bed with the corporations than they are now. The Liberals are nothing more than the supposed novel third choice that has suddenly sprung up so that the mainstream parties and media can dismiss any complaints we might have about a lack of choice in our elections. Look, you have choice, we're giving you a third option, they'll say. But that choice doesn't matter if whomever you vote for, Democrat, Republican, or Liberal, they all lead to the same ending of inactive government that does not truly care about the well-being of its citizens. For a real choice - a vote for a party that actually proposes radical new ideas for how a country should treat its people - you need to reject the duopoly and its token third party and look at the real third party. So when you go to the polls next week, consider this. Make your choice REALLY matter. Choose a different ending. Vote Green. Vote for Howie Hawkins[8].
[1] Remember, neither Deval Patrick nor David Paterson were governors in this timeline.
[2] Actual quote from Haynes during his third run for governor in 2018. Haynes first ran for governor in OTL in 2010 as a late write-in, where he got 7.3% of the vote. Though it’s Wyoming, so 7.3% is still less than 14,000 votes.
[3] Source: https://www.deseret.com/2003/9/23/19785742/hola-is-confident-of-primary-survival.
[4] Maes did start polling under 10% in 2010 in OTL, but not until later in October. The first poll with him at this level in OTL was on October 22 with Hickenlooper at 44%, Tancredo at 43%, and Maes at 9%.
[5] Source: http://api.durangoherald.com/articl...-support-claim-chief-knew-about-investigation
[6] Quoted from the Colorado Revised Statutes, Elections section: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/info_center/laws/Title1/Title1Article1.html
[7] Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2010/09/ri-dem-reportedly-considered-gop-042171
[8] Did I write this section purely for the very tortured Mass Effect 3 ending reference? Yes, yes I did.
If this guy wins, I look forward to TTL news reporters continuing their hot streak of truly groan-worthy headline jokes.
Every time there’s a debate about the budget: Governor Tells Legislature to Pony Up Funds
Whenever he shifts agenda items: Governor Declares New Mane Focus
I've been having a lot of fun coming up with the headlines for the Rhode Island race.
Finally finished reading through this and really enjoyed it! The gradual & granular focus works very well and I’m excited for how the 2010 season turns out!
So the main election section ended up being so long that I've decided to make it its own update. Not sure if the rest of what would've been this month's update will come later this month or if I'll push it to next month since I'm thinking about doing a bit of a break early next year to do more planning and get work done on other things, but we'll see. Either way, I definitely have plenty of possible wikiboxes to help fill whatever hiatus happens.
Republicans Take House, But Losses In Senate and Governor Races Blunt Red Wave
November 3, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC - The results are in on the election and, as expected, Republicans have made big gains in the House of Representatives. Democrats in the overall count lost 64 seats in the House, making this the largest swing of House seats between parties since the 1938 comeback by the Republican Party during FDR’s second term. That Democrats would lose seats in the House was largely a known outcome, but until the last weeks before the election few expected President Clinton’s party to lose this many, let alone see Republicans take control of the chamber. The outcome confirms the red wave that some political calculators had predicted as a backlash against the Clinton public healthcare option. However, while the House results exceeded many pundits’ expectations in terms of Republican gains, the Senate and gubernatorial elections at the top of state ballots was more in line with most expectations. Republicans still scored significant victories in both the Senate and governors’ races, but so did Democrats. The trade in seats in those elections has given Democrats some wins to point to and blunted some of the sting of the Republicans taking the House.
The Senate saw perhaps the Republicans’ weakest performance of the night winning only a net gain of three Senate seats. They did capture six seats from the Democrats including a few important victories. The two most significant flips for the GOP were in Arkansas and Massachusetts. Arkansas was the Clintons’ home turf and Republicans have struggled to even recruit candidates in the state in recent years for statewide offices. In 2008’s Senate election, for instance, Senator Mark Pryor faced no Republican opposition and the only candidate running against him came from the Green Party. However, Democrats fumbled early in the state this year as Senator Blanche Lincoln lost a combative primary to lieutenant governor Bill Halter. The narrowly contested primary and its fallout showed an underlying weakness in Arkansas Democrats this year, and John Boozman took advantage of it. Despite a decent showing by Constitution Party candidate Jim Holt, Boozman still won with a slim two percent margin over Halter to become just the second Republican Senator from Arkansas since Reconstruction. Halter's support for the public option that helped him defeat Lincoln in the primary likely is also what cost him against Boozman. And like Arkansas, the Republican special election win in Massachusetts is also symbolic of the backlash against the Clinton administration’s healthcare law. With state senator Scott Brown’s major upset win over attorney general Martha Coakley, Republicans now occupy the Senate seat held by universal healthcare champion Ted Kennedy until his death. Brown’s triumph came as part of a general Republican swing of the Bay State where governor Romney’s number two Kerry Healey successfully won the race to succeed him, and where Republicans made two gains in the House, ending one-party Democratic congressional representation in the state. The other Republican gains unseated a number of Democratic incumbents: the longstanding Chris Dodd in Connecticut, Byron Dorgan in North Dakota, and two appointed Senators. In Colorado Mike Coffman defeated Michael Bennet, and in Indiana Marlin Stutzman defeated Baron Hill. The Connecticut race where Linda McMahon unseated five term Senator Dodd was helped largely by the presence of Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy. Nader for his part received a very impressive 19% of the vote in the election, the most for any Green candidate in a Senate race. However, Nader certainly took a large majority of his vote from Dodd, and as a result McMahon won by a double digit margin.
While Republicans made several gains in the Senate races, Democrats were still able to gain a few seats of their own. They were almost certain to gain at least one seat thanks to the New York special election. Due to New York’s Democratic lean in the Senate, Senator Buerkle was already considered a long shot to win election to finish out the term. Some late campaign drama sparked more interest in the race with both Caroline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running leading to speculation of family troubles within the Kennedy clan. However, despite some fears that RFK Jr. would spoil the election for his cousin, Caroline Kennedy won with a substantial lead over Buerkle and RFK Jr. only came out of the campaign with about 6% of the vote. The other two Democratic Senate gains meanwhile were more of a surprise and moments of relief for the Clinton administration. In South Dakota, the seat once held by Vice President Daschle was not looking good for the Democrats until a surprise upset in the Republican primary saw appointed incumbent Dave Knudson defeated by Tea Party-backed state senator Gordon Howie. The entry of independent Larry Pressler into the race as a more moderate alternative to Howie shook the race up further, and Democrat Ron Volesky ended up triumphing over Howie and Pressler in what became a three-way race by the end. Volesky, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, will now become only the fifth Native American Senator in US history, and the second to represent South Dakota in either chamber of Congress after Ben Reifel. The last gain for Democrats in the Senate was likely aided not by a third party or a favorable state partisan lean, but by the relative strength of President Clinton in the South. While the Democrats lost Arkansas, they gained Kentucky. Democratic lieutenant governor Dan Mongiardo defeated Louisville businessman Phil Moffett, another Tea Party recruitment within the GOP this year after Senator Jim Bunning bowed out of reelection following sinking polling numbers and a potentially tough primary. Moffett performed better than polls estimated Bunning would have, but Mongiardo’s association with popular Kentucky governor Steve Beshear and Clinton’s pull in the Southern states helped Mongiardo gain the seat even in a tough midterm. Another notable race in the South that was close but not so fortunate for Democrats was North Carolina, where former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards attempted to win back his old Senate seat. Edwards narrowly emerged as the Democratic nominee over congressman Bob Etheridge but ultimately lost to Senator Richard Burr by just 3%.
Unlike the Senate races, the gubernatorial elections this year on paper look much worse for Democrats. Republicans were very effective in reversing the gains Democrats made in the state executives during the Bush administration, taking back Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Tennessee, Ohio, and Michigan. They also won several other important victories. In California and Massachusetts, Republicans were able to hold the two blue state governorships against strong Democratic challengers, largely thanks to the presence of third parties in both races. In California, Darrell Issa confirmed that Republicans would continue on in Sacramento after Arnold Schwarzenegger after narrowly defeating Senator Diane Feinstein and Green candidate Gil Cedillo. Cedillo, a state senator who defected from the Democrats last year, won a significant share of the vote, just over 10%. Cedillo’s former affiliation with Democrats and his advocacy on immigrant issues seems to have compounded the general chipping away at the Democratic voter base by the Greens and led Feinstein to come up short again in another attempt for governor. Massachusetts, meanwhile, was less of a surprise. Lieutenant governor Kerry Healey already had a strong association with Romney’s capable run of the state and was able to capitalize on it. A late endorsement of Healey by independent candidate Christy Mihos as Mihos dropped out of the race further boosted Healey. There also has been a strong Republican trend in Massachusetts specifically when picking its governors. While its legislative and Senate elections, tonight's outcome for Scott Brown excepted, have tended overwhelmingly Democratic, Massachusetts has not elected a Democratic governor since Michael Dukakis. Republicans also elected former NBA player Chris Dudley in Oregon defeating incumbent governor John Kitzhaber and will hold Oregon’s governorship for the first time in nearly 25 years. Lastly, in Texas Kay Bailey Hutchison beat out independent governor Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Democrat Judith Zaffirini in a race that earlier this year appeared to be shaping up to another three candidate race but saw a late break for Hutchison. In total, Republicans made 9 gains in the governor races this year.
However, Democrats for their part also were able to flip 4 governors this year. Neil Abercrombie defeated Duke Aiona to bring Hawaii back into the Democratic column after eight years. In the highly covered, frankly European style[1] election for governor in New York, attorney general Andrew Cuomo unseated governor Bill Weld and prevented former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg from moving up to the state level as head of his revived Liberal Party. While Cuomo won, it is still worth mentioning New York’s full slate of candidates as not only did the top three candidates made a dent in the vote share. Both Howie Hawkins with the Greens and Betsy McCaughey with the Conservatives polled well, each pulling around 8% of the vote. Bloomberg did not quite reach 20% of the final vote, but Cuomo ended up winning with less than a third of the overall tally, and Weld was leading for parts of election night. The other two gains for Democrats are, like with the Senate, seemingly thanks to Clinton and Democratic inertia in the South. Florida state CFO Alex Sink defeated healthcare executive Rick Scott for governor of that state to succeed Republican Charlie Crist. In South Carolina, a third party cross-endorsement with another race may have secured Democrats their victory in that state. After the Democratic nomination for Senate was won by a complete unknown in Alvin Greene, many party officials in the state distanced themselves from the controversial, cash-strapped candidate. While Greene steadily dropped in the polls, Democratic gubernatorial candidate state senator Vincent Shaheen rose in the polls in the open race against Republican state representative Nikki Haley. Shaheen arranged a cross-endorsement with the Green Party Senate candidate, Tom Clements, where Shaheen endorsed Clements for Senate while Clements endorsed Shaheen for governor. A few Democratic officials followed Shaheen, and it appears to have boosted turnout for both candidates. Clements still lost the Senate race heavily but did manage to finish in second ahead of Greene. The biggest beneficiary though was Shaheen, who narrowly defeated Haley to become the next governor of South Carolina.
While Republicans gained 9 state governorships and Democrats gained 4, there were also a few states that rejected both major parties. Governor Strayhorn may have lost reelection in Texas, but there will still be new governors taking up her mantle of working outside the party system. Alaska and Maine, two states which have been far from shy about giving votes to minor party or independent candidates in recent decades, both elected independent governors this year. Alaska elected Ray Metcalfe, a former Republican state representative who founded the Republican Moderate Party and last received 6% in the 1998 gubernatorial election, in an upset over both major parties, with the Alaska Independence Party even receiving a significant share of the vote as well. In Maine, another four way race between Republican Paul LePage, Democrat Libby Mitchell, independent Elliot Cutler, and Green John Eder ended with not just Cutler narrowly besting LePage for the governorship. Eder, who has successfully been elected to the Maine legislature since 2002, received more votes than Mitchell and pushed the Democrat all the way into fourth place. Rhode Island also defied both major parties and elected business executive Alan Hassenfeld of the Moderate Party over both other candidates in a narrow three-way contest.
Although Democrats were able to blunt the Republican gain in the Senate and gubernatorial elections, they were unable to do so in the House. Starting from a very favorable 264 Representatives, Democrats lost a staggering 64 seats once all the returns came in. That loss for House Democrats not only flipped the chamber to Republicans, but it has also saddled Nancy Pelosi with the worst loss in a House election for either major party since the 1938 Republican comeback during FDR’s second term[2]. Even amid those losses, however, Democrats did make scant gains. Democrats were bound to make at least one gain this year, as New Orleans representative Joseph Cao ran for Senate and left the heavily Democratic seat open. That seat has now been won by Karen Carter Peterson. In Washington, Suzan DelBene unseated Dave Reichert in the 8th district in suburban Seattle and eastern King and Pierce counties. Reichert’s reelections since 2004 had been very close, and his seat had been a priority target for Democrats for years. Those could have been the only gains Democrats saw this year, but two more Republican seats flipped thanks to spoiler runs by third parties. In Florida, Lori Edwards defeated Dennis Ross in the Tampa metropolitan area district with just 44% of the vote. While retiring congressman Adam Putnam had won comfortably in previous years, the right wing vote was significantly divided this year thanks to the creation of the Florida Tea Party and their candidate in this district, Randy Wilkinson. Wilkinson, a Polk County Commissioner, left the GOP for the Tea Party in April in order to run for the congressional seat, and came away with a surprising 15% of the vote. That took enough votes away from Ross to hand the seat to Edwards and the Democrats[3]. Meanwhile in Montana, a continuing feud between former state speaker Scott Sales and the state GOP has enabled the Democrats to take the state’s at-large district. State representative Sales lost the state speaker’s position to a more moderate legislator two years ago, and last year he switched his party registration to the Constitution Party. This year he announced he was running for congress with the Constitution Party against incumbent Republican Denny Rehberg, Democrat John Morrison, and Libertarian candidate Mark Fellows. Both Sales and Fellows polled well in the Treasure State and both likely cut into Rehberg’s vote share. Morrison, who was Montana's state auditor from 2001 to 2009, also benefited from a strong retention rate among Democratic voters in Montana from the 2008 election, while the combined vote for Rehberg and Sales were a third less than Rehberg’s total votes in 2008. With these circumstances, plus the campaign assistance by governor Schweitzer, Morrison was able to slip past Rehberg in the vote count and recapture a state that has not had a Democratic representative since 1997.
Four gains, however, is nothing compared to the red wave that swept much of the country in the House elections. The peculiar situation of the Democratic win in Montana is made more evident by the Republican wins in two of its neighbors. Republicans picked up Wyoming’s seat, where two term Democratic congressman Gary Trauner ran for governor rather than run an assuredly difficult reelection bid, and North Dakota saw Rick Berg unseat congressman Earl Pomeroy. Democrats lost seats in every region of the country. However, the biggest hit to the party might have been in the Northeast, with a particular blow struck in Clinton’s senatorial state of New York. House Democrats had won an extraordinary number of seats in the Northeast two years ago, holding all but three House seats in New York and only missing out on one seat in all of New England. This year though, Republicans returned to the region with a vengeance. Bolstered by Republican incumbent governors in both New York and Massachusetts, Republicans gained a total of 24 seats in the Northeast, over a third of their total gains. The GOP ended the Democrats’ 14 year sweep of Massachusetts. Richard Tisei unseated John Tierney in the Essex County 6th district and Jeff Perry unseated Bill Keating in the southeast 10th district. They also completely flipped New Hampshire’s delegation and in New Jersey reduced Democrats to just the NYC and Philadelphia suburban districts.
The New York gains are probably what the House GOP is celebrating most though. In total, Republicans gained eight seats in the state including some tough ones. In the 4th district, eight term congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy was defeated by Nassau County legislator Fran Becker. In the 22nd district, George Phillips defeated nine term congressman Maurice Hinchey. The party also won back key seats, including some with the stronger third party presence seen in many elections across the country this year. Of particular note are two Upstate districts. Kirsten Gillibrand, who won the 20th district for Democrats in 2006, faced a close loss which many have blamed on Green candidate Matt Funiciello, a bakery owner from Glen Falls. In the 23rd district, lone Conservative Party congressman Doug Hoffman lost to a combined Democratic-Republican nomination of Dede Scozzafavva. While Scozzafavva was nominated by both major parties, her win has been chalked up as a Republican gain since she has said she remains a Republican.
Outside of the Northeast, the GOP also ousted several longtime Democratic incumbents. In Georgia’s southwest 2nd district, Sanford Bishop, who has been in Congress since 1993, lost to state representative Mike Keown. Tennessee's Bart Gordon has been in Congress since 1985 but was defeated by Diane Black. Ike Skelton has been in Congress since 1977, but lost his western Missouri district to Vicky Hartzler. Jim Oberstar, the longest serving member of Congress from Minnesota at 35 years in the House, was finally unseated by Chip Cravaack. Across the country, Republicans took a hammer to the Democrats in the House this year in a way they were unable to accomplish in the governor and Senate elections, even accounting for Democrats’ stronger starting position in the House. In losing the House given the circumstances of the rest of this year’s elections, Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have quite a few questions ahead of her as she guides her party back into the wilderness of a minority once again. Meanwhile, Senate majority leader Harry Reid comes off his freshman term at the helm looking much better despite the losses in that chamber as Democrats remain firmly in control. Even still, the Clinton administration has decisively lost its filibuster-proof majority that helped pass the landmark healthcare reform and economic recovery bills that have defined her first two years as president.
[1] "Multiparty elections? What are we, Britain?"
[2] This is actually one seat worse than OTL's 63 seat swing in 2010. However, because Democrats are starting from a better position, they end up with 7 more seats than OTL.
[3] In OTL, Ross was elected 48-41 over Edwards with Wilkinson getting 11% of the vote.
Republicans Take House, But Losses In Senate and Governor Races Blunt Red Wave
November 3, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC - The results are in on the election and, as expected, Republicans have made big gains in the House of Representatives. Democrats in the overall count lost 64 seats in the House, making this the largest swing of House seats between parties since the 1938 comeback by the Republican Party during FDR’s second term. That Democrats would lose seats in the House was largely a known outcome, but until the last weeks before the election few expected President Clinton’s party to lose this many, let alone see Republicans take control of the chamber. The outcome confirms the red wave that some political calculators had predicted as a backlash against the Clinton public healthcare option. However, while the House results exceeded many pundits’ expectations in terms of Republican gains, the Senate and gubernatorial elections at the top of state ballots was more in line with most expectations. Republicans still scored significant victories in both the Senate and governors’ races, but so did Democrats. The trade in seats in those elections has given Democrats some wins to point to and blunted some of the sting of the Republicans taking the House.
The Senate saw perhaps the Republicans’ weakest performance of the night winning only a net gain of three Senate seats. They did capture six seats from the Democrats including a few important victories. The two most significant flips for the GOP were in Arkansas and Massachusetts. Arkansas was the Clintons’ home turf and Republicans have struggled to even recruit candidates in the state in recent years for statewide offices. In 2008’s Senate election, for instance, Senator Mark Pryor faced no Republican opposition and the only candidate running against him came from the Green Party. However, Democrats fumbled early in the state this year as Senator Blanche Lincoln lost a combative primary to lieutenant governor Bill Halter. The narrowly contested primary and its fallout showed an underlying weakness in Arkansas Democrats this year, and John Boozman took advantage of it. Despite a decent showing by Constitution Party candidate Jim Holt, Boozman still won with a slim two percent margin over Halter to become just the second Republican Senator from Arkansas since Reconstruction. Halter's support for the public option that helped him defeat Lincoln in the primary likely is also what cost him against Boozman. And like Arkansas, the Republican special election win in Massachusetts is also symbolic of the backlash against the Clinton administration’s healthcare law. With state senator Scott Brown’s major upset win over attorney general Martha Coakley, Republicans now occupy the Senate seat held by universal healthcare champion Ted Kennedy until his death. Brown’s triumph came as part of a general Republican swing of the Bay State where governor Romney’s number two Kerry Healey successfully won the race to succeed him, and where Republicans made two gains in the House, ending one-party Democratic congressional representation in the state. The other Republican gains unseated a number of Democratic incumbents: the longstanding Chris Dodd in Connecticut, Byron Dorgan in North Dakota, and two appointed Senators. In Colorado Mike Coffman defeated Michael Bennet, and in Indiana Marlin Stutzman defeated Baron Hill. The Connecticut race where Linda McMahon unseated five term Senator Dodd was helped largely by the presence of Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy. Nader for his part received a very impressive 19% of the vote in the election, the most for any Green candidate in a Senate race. However, Nader certainly took a large majority of his vote from Dodd, and as a result McMahon won by a double digit margin.
While Republicans made several gains in the Senate races, Democrats were still able to gain a few seats of their own. They were almost certain to gain at least one seat thanks to the New York special election. Due to New York’s Democratic lean in the Senate, Senator Buerkle was already considered a long shot to win election to finish out the term. Some late campaign drama sparked more interest in the race with both Caroline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running leading to speculation of family troubles within the Kennedy clan. However, despite some fears that RFK Jr. would spoil the election for his cousin, Caroline Kennedy won with a substantial lead over Buerkle and RFK Jr. only came out of the campaign with about 6% of the vote. The other two Democratic Senate gains meanwhile were more of a surprise and moments of relief for the Clinton administration. In South Dakota, the seat once held by Vice President Daschle was not looking good for the Democrats until a surprise upset in the Republican primary saw appointed incumbent Dave Knudson defeated by Tea Party-backed state senator Gordon Howie. The entry of independent Larry Pressler into the race as a more moderate alternative to Howie shook the race up further, and Democrat Ron Volesky ended up triumphing over Howie and Pressler in what became a three-way race by the end. Volesky, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, will now become only the fifth Native American Senator in US history, and the second to represent South Dakota in either chamber of Congress after Ben Reifel. The last gain for Democrats in the Senate was likely aided not by a third party or a favorable state partisan lean, but by the relative strength of President Clinton in the South. While the Democrats lost Arkansas, they gained Kentucky. Democratic lieutenant governor Dan Mongiardo defeated Louisville businessman Phil Moffett, another Tea Party recruitment within the GOP this year after Senator Jim Bunning bowed out of reelection following sinking polling numbers and a potentially tough primary. Moffett performed better than polls estimated Bunning would have, but Mongiardo’s association with popular Kentucky governor Steve Beshear and Clinton’s pull in the Southern states helped Mongiardo gain the seat even in a tough midterm. Another notable race in the South that was close but not so fortunate for Democrats was North Carolina, where former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards attempted to win back his old Senate seat. Edwards narrowly emerged as the Democratic nominee over congressman Bob Etheridge but ultimately lost to Senator Richard Burr by just 3%.
Unlike the Senate races, the gubernatorial elections this year on paper look much worse for Democrats. Republicans were very effective in reversing the gains Democrats made in the state executives during the Bush administration, taking back Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Tennessee, Ohio, and Michigan. They also won several other important victories. In California and Massachusetts, Republicans were able to hold the two blue state governorships against strong Democratic challengers, largely thanks to the presence of third parties in both races. In California, Darrell Issa confirmed that Republicans would continue on in Sacramento after Arnold Schwarzenegger after narrowly defeating Senator Diane Feinstein and Green candidate Gil Cedillo. Cedillo, a state senator who defected from the Democrats last year, won a significant share of the vote, just over 10%. Cedillo’s former affiliation with Democrats and his advocacy on immigrant issues seems to have compounded the general chipping away at the Democratic voter base by the Greens and led Feinstein to come up short again in another attempt for governor. Massachusetts, meanwhile, was less of a surprise. Lieutenant governor Kerry Healey already had a strong association with Romney’s capable run of the state and was able to capitalize on it. A late endorsement of Healey by independent candidate Christy Mihos as Mihos dropped out of the race further boosted Healey. There also has been a strong Republican trend in Massachusetts specifically when picking its governors. While its legislative and Senate elections, tonight's outcome for Scott Brown excepted, have tended overwhelmingly Democratic, Massachusetts has not elected a Democratic governor since Michael Dukakis. Republicans also elected former NBA player Chris Dudley in Oregon defeating incumbent governor John Kitzhaber and will hold Oregon’s governorship for the first time in nearly 25 years. Lastly, in Texas Kay Bailey Hutchison beat out independent governor Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Democrat Judith Zaffirini in a race that earlier this year appeared to be shaping up to another three candidate race but saw a late break for Hutchison. In total, Republicans made 9 gains in the governor races this year.
However, Democrats for their part also were able to flip 4 governors this year. Neil Abercrombie defeated Duke Aiona to bring Hawaii back into the Democratic column after eight years. In the highly covered, frankly European style[1] election for governor in New York, attorney general Andrew Cuomo unseated governor Bill Weld and prevented former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg from moving up to the state level as head of his revived Liberal Party. While Cuomo won, it is still worth mentioning New York’s full slate of candidates as not only did the top three candidates made a dent in the vote share. Both Howie Hawkins with the Greens and Betsy McCaughey with the Conservatives polled well, each pulling around 8% of the vote. Bloomberg did not quite reach 20% of the final vote, but Cuomo ended up winning with less than a third of the overall tally, and Weld was leading for parts of election night. The other two gains for Democrats are, like with the Senate, seemingly thanks to Clinton and Democratic inertia in the South. Florida state CFO Alex Sink defeated healthcare executive Rick Scott for governor of that state to succeed Republican Charlie Crist. In South Carolina, a third party cross-endorsement with another race may have secured Democrats their victory in that state. After the Democratic nomination for Senate was won by a complete unknown in Alvin Greene, many party officials in the state distanced themselves from the controversial, cash-strapped candidate. While Greene steadily dropped in the polls, Democratic gubernatorial candidate state senator Vincent Shaheen rose in the polls in the open race against Republican state representative Nikki Haley. Shaheen arranged a cross-endorsement with the Green Party Senate candidate, Tom Clements, where Shaheen endorsed Clements for Senate while Clements endorsed Shaheen for governor. A few Democratic officials followed Shaheen, and it appears to have boosted turnout for both candidates. Clements still lost the Senate race heavily but did manage to finish in second ahead of Greene. The biggest beneficiary though was Shaheen, who narrowly defeated Haley to become the next governor of South Carolina.
While Republicans gained 9 state governorships and Democrats gained 4, there were also a few states that rejected both major parties. Governor Strayhorn may have lost reelection in Texas, but there will still be new governors taking up her mantle of working outside the party system. Alaska and Maine, two states which have been far from shy about giving votes to minor party or independent candidates in recent decades, both elected independent governors this year. Alaska elected Ray Metcalfe, a former Republican state representative who founded the Republican Moderate Party and last received 6% in the 1998 gubernatorial election, in an upset over both major parties, with the Alaska Independence Party even receiving a significant share of the vote as well. In Maine, another four way race between Republican Paul LePage, Democrat Libby Mitchell, independent Elliot Cutler, and Green John Eder ended with not just Cutler narrowly besting LePage for the governorship. Eder, who has successfully been elected to the Maine legislature since 2002, received more votes than Mitchell and pushed the Democrat all the way into fourth place. Rhode Island also defied both major parties and elected business executive Alan Hassenfeld of the Moderate Party over both other candidates in a narrow three-way contest.
Although Democrats were able to blunt the Republican gain in the Senate and gubernatorial elections, they were unable to do so in the House. Starting from a very favorable 264 Representatives, Democrats lost a staggering 64 seats once all the returns came in. That loss for House Democrats not only flipped the chamber to Republicans, but it has also saddled Nancy Pelosi with the worst loss in a House election for either major party since the 1938 Republican comeback during FDR’s second term[2]. Even amid those losses, however, Democrats did make scant gains. Democrats were bound to make at least one gain this year, as New Orleans representative Joseph Cao ran for Senate and left the heavily Democratic seat open. That seat has now been won by Karen Carter Peterson. In Washington, Suzan DelBene unseated Dave Reichert in the 8th district in suburban Seattle and eastern King and Pierce counties. Reichert’s reelections since 2004 had been very close, and his seat had been a priority target for Democrats for years. Those could have been the only gains Democrats saw this year, but two more Republican seats flipped thanks to spoiler runs by third parties. In Florida, Lori Edwards defeated Dennis Ross in the Tampa metropolitan area district with just 44% of the vote. While retiring congressman Adam Putnam had won comfortably in previous years, the right wing vote was significantly divided this year thanks to the creation of the Florida Tea Party and their candidate in this district, Randy Wilkinson. Wilkinson, a Polk County Commissioner, left the GOP for the Tea Party in April in order to run for the congressional seat, and came away with a surprising 15% of the vote. That took enough votes away from Ross to hand the seat to Edwards and the Democrats[3]. Meanwhile in Montana, a continuing feud between former state speaker Scott Sales and the state GOP has enabled the Democrats to take the state’s at-large district. State representative Sales lost the state speaker’s position to a more moderate legislator two years ago, and last year he switched his party registration to the Constitution Party. This year he announced he was running for congress with the Constitution Party against incumbent Republican Denny Rehberg, Democrat John Morrison, and Libertarian candidate Mark Fellows. Both Sales and Fellows polled well in the Treasure State and both likely cut into Rehberg’s vote share. Morrison, who was Montana's state auditor from 2001 to 2009, also benefited from a strong retention rate among Democratic voters in Montana from the 2008 election, while the combined vote for Rehberg and Sales were a third less than Rehberg’s total votes in 2008. With these circumstances, plus the campaign assistance by governor Schweitzer, Morrison was able to slip past Rehberg in the vote count and recapture a state that has not had a Democratic representative since 1997.
Four gains, however, is nothing compared to the red wave that swept much of the country in the House elections. The peculiar situation of the Democratic win in Montana is made more evident by the Republican wins in two of its neighbors. Republicans picked up Wyoming’s seat, where two term Democratic congressman Gary Trauner ran for governor rather than run an assuredly difficult reelection bid, and North Dakota saw Rick Berg unseat congressman Earl Pomeroy. Democrats lost seats in every region of the country. However, the biggest hit to the party might have been in the Northeast, with a particular blow struck in Clinton’s senatorial state of New York. House Democrats had won an extraordinary number of seats in the Northeast two years ago, holding all but three House seats in New York and only missing out on one seat in all of New England. This year though, Republicans returned to the region with a vengeance. Bolstered by Republican incumbent governors in both New York and Massachusetts, Republicans gained a total of 24 seats in the Northeast, over a third of their total gains. The GOP ended the Democrats’ 14 year sweep of Massachusetts. Richard Tisei unseated John Tierney in the Essex County 6th district and Jeff Perry unseated Bill Keating in the southeast 10th district. They also completely flipped New Hampshire’s delegation and in New Jersey reduced Democrats to just the NYC and Philadelphia suburban districts.
The New York gains are probably what the House GOP is celebrating most though. In total, Republicans gained eight seats in the state including some tough ones. In the 4th district, eight term congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy was defeated by Nassau County legislator Fran Becker. In the 22nd district, George Phillips defeated nine term congressman Maurice Hinchey. The party also won back key seats, including some with the stronger third party presence seen in many elections across the country this year. Of particular note are two Upstate districts. Kirsten Gillibrand, who won the 20th district for Democrats in 2006, faced a close loss which many have blamed on Green candidate Matt Funiciello, a bakery owner from Glen Falls. In the 23rd district, lone Conservative Party congressman Doug Hoffman lost to a combined Democratic-Republican nomination of Dede Scozzafavva. While Scozzafavva was nominated by both major parties, her win has been chalked up as a Republican gain since she has said she remains a Republican.
Outside of the Northeast, the GOP also ousted several longtime Democratic incumbents. In Georgia’s southwest 2nd district, Sanford Bishop, who has been in Congress since 1993, lost to state representative Mike Keown. Tennessee's Bart Gordon has been in Congress since 1985 but was defeated by Diane Black. Ike Skelton has been in Congress since 1977, but lost his western Missouri district to Vicky Hartzler. Jim Oberstar, the longest serving member of Congress from Minnesota at 35 years in the House, was finally unseated by Chip Cravaack. Across the country, Republicans took a hammer to the Democrats in the House this year in a way they were unable to accomplish in the governor and Senate elections, even accounting for Democrats’ stronger starting position in the House. In losing the House given the circumstances of the rest of this year’s elections, Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have quite a few questions ahead of her as she guides her party back into the wilderness of a minority once again. Meanwhile, Senate majority leader Harry Reid comes off his freshman term at the helm looking much better despite the losses in that chamber as Democrats remain firmly in control. Even still, the Clinton administration has decisively lost its filibuster-proof majority that helped pass the landmark healthcare reform and economic recovery bills that have defined her first two years as president.
[1] "Multiparty elections? What are we, Britain?"
[2] This is actually one seat worse than OTL's 63 seat swing in 2010. However, because Democrats are starting from a better position, they end up with 7 more seats than OTL.
[3] In OTL, Ross was elected 48-41 over Edwards with Wilkinson getting 11% of the vote.
Let the maps begin! Starting off with the Senate maps. I think I remembered everything for the list of Senators but if anything seems off let me know. I did almost forget to change Hutchison in Texas.
2010 Senate Election
And the partisan makeup of the Senate in January 2011
2010 Senate Election
And the partisan makeup of the Senate in January 2011
Alabama
Richard Shelby (R)
Jeff Sessions (R)
Alaska
Tony Knowles (D)
Fran Ulmer (D)
Arizona
John McCain (R)
Jon Kyl (R)
Arkansas
John Boozman (R)
Mark Pryor (D)
California
Barbara Boxer (D)
Dianne Feinstein (D)
Colorado
Mike Coffman (R)
Mark Udall (D)
Connecticut
Linda McMahon (R)
Joe Lieberman (I)
Delaware
Tom Carper (D)
Joe Biden (D)
Florida
Marco Rubio (R)
Bill Nelson (D)
Georgia
Johnny Isakson (R)
Saxbee Chambliss (R)
Hawaii
Daniel Inouye (D)
Daniel Akaka (D)
Idaho
Mike Crapo (R)
Jim Risch (R)
Illinois
Barack Obama (D)
Dick Durbin (D)
Indiana
Marlin Stutzman (R)
Bart Peterson (D)
Iowa
Chuck Grassley (R)
Christie Vilsack (D)
Kansas
Todd Tiahrt (R)
Pat Roberts (R)
Kentucky
Daniel Mongiardo (D)
Mitch McConnell (R)
Louisiana
Joseph Cao (R)
Mary Landrieu (D)
Maine
Olympia Snowe (R)
Susan Collins (R)
Maryland
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D)
Ben Cardin (D)
Massachusetts
John Kerry (D)
Scott Brown (R)
Michigan
Debbie Stabenow (D)
Carl Levin (D)
Minnesota
Amy Klobuchar (D)
Norm Coleman (R)
Mississippi
Thad Cochran (R)
Roger Wicker (R)
Missouri
Roy Blunt (R)
Robin Carnahan (D)
Montana
Jon Tester (D)
Max Baucus (D)
Nebraska
Ben Nelson (D)
Scott Kleeb (D)
Nevada
Harry Reid (D)
John Ensign (R)
New Hampshire
Ovide LaMontagne (R)
Jeanne Shaheen (D)
New Jersey
Bob Menendez (D)
Barbara Buono (D)
New Mexico
Jeff Bingman (D)
Bill Richardson (D)
New York
Chuck Schumer (D)
Caroline Kennedy (D)
North Carolina
Richard Burr (R)
Jim Neal (D)
North Dakota
John Hoeven (R)
Kent Conrad (D)
Ohio
Ken Blackwell (R)
Sherrod Brown (D)
Oklahoma
Tom Coburn (R)
Jim Inhofe (R)
Oregon
Ron Wyden (D)
Kate Brown (D)
Pennsylvania
Joe Sestak (D)
Bob Casey Jr. (D)
Rhode Island
Lincoln Chafee (I)
Jack Reed (D)
South Carolina
Jim DeMint (R)
Lindsey Graham (R)
South Dakota
Ron Volesky (D)
Tim Johnson (D)
Tennessee
Harold Ford Jr. (D)
Lamar Alexander (R)
Texas
Tom Leppert (R)
John Cornyn (R)
Utah
Mike Lee (R)
Orrin Hatch (R)
Vermont
Patrick Leahy (D)
Bernie Sanders (I)
Virginia
George Allen (R)
Mark Warner (D)
Washington
Heather Boushey (D)
Maria Cantwell (D)
West Virginia
Joe Manchin (D)
Jay Rockefeller (D)
Wisconsin
Russ Feingold (D)
Herb Kohl (D)
Wyoming
Cynthia Lummis (R)
Mike Enzi (R)
Richard Shelby (R)
Jeff Sessions (R)
Alaska
Tony Knowles (D)
Fran Ulmer (D)
Arizona
John McCain (R)
Jon Kyl (R)
Arkansas
John Boozman (R)
Mark Pryor (D)
California
Barbara Boxer (D)
Dianne Feinstein (D)
Colorado
Mike Coffman (R)
Mark Udall (D)
Connecticut
Linda McMahon (R)
Joe Lieberman (I)
Delaware
Tom Carper (D)
Joe Biden (D)
Florida
Marco Rubio (R)
Bill Nelson (D)
Georgia
Johnny Isakson (R)
Saxbee Chambliss (R)
Hawaii
Daniel Inouye (D)
Daniel Akaka (D)
Idaho
Mike Crapo (R)
Jim Risch (R)
Illinois
Barack Obama (D)
Dick Durbin (D)
Indiana
Marlin Stutzman (R)
Bart Peterson (D)
Iowa
Chuck Grassley (R)
Christie Vilsack (D)
Kansas
Todd Tiahrt (R)
Pat Roberts (R)
Kentucky
Daniel Mongiardo (D)
Mitch McConnell (R)
Louisiana
Joseph Cao (R)
Mary Landrieu (D)
Maine
Olympia Snowe (R)
Susan Collins (R)
Maryland
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D)
Ben Cardin (D)
Massachusetts
John Kerry (D)
Scott Brown (R)
Michigan
Debbie Stabenow (D)
Carl Levin (D)
Minnesota
Amy Klobuchar (D)
Norm Coleman (R)
Mississippi
Thad Cochran (R)
Roger Wicker (R)
Missouri
Roy Blunt (R)
Robin Carnahan (D)
Montana
Jon Tester (D)
Max Baucus (D)
Nebraska
Ben Nelson (D)
Scott Kleeb (D)
Nevada
Harry Reid (D)
John Ensign (R)
New Hampshire
Ovide LaMontagne (R)
Jeanne Shaheen (D)
New Jersey
Bob Menendez (D)
Barbara Buono (D)
New Mexico
Jeff Bingman (D)
Bill Richardson (D)
New York
Chuck Schumer (D)
Caroline Kennedy (D)
North Carolina
Richard Burr (R)
Jim Neal (D)
North Dakota
John Hoeven (R)
Kent Conrad (D)
Ohio
Ken Blackwell (R)
Sherrod Brown (D)
Oklahoma
Tom Coburn (R)
Jim Inhofe (R)
Oregon
Ron Wyden (D)
Kate Brown (D)
Pennsylvania
Joe Sestak (D)
Bob Casey Jr. (D)
Rhode Island
Lincoln Chafee (I)
Jack Reed (D)
South Carolina
Jim DeMint (R)
Lindsey Graham (R)
South Dakota
Ron Volesky (D)
Tim Johnson (D)
Tennessee
Harold Ford Jr. (D)
Lamar Alexander (R)
Texas
Tom Leppert (R)
John Cornyn (R)
Utah
Mike Lee (R)
Orrin Hatch (R)
Vermont
Patrick Leahy (D)
Bernie Sanders (I)
Virginia
George Allen (R)
Mark Warner (D)
Washington
Heather Boushey (D)
Maria Cantwell (D)
West Virginia
Joe Manchin (D)
Jay Rockefeller (D)
Wisconsin
Russ Feingold (D)
Herb Kohl (D)
Wyoming
Cynthia Lummis (R)
Mike Enzi (R)
Last edited:
I live in what was the 10th District at the time and there's no way in hell Perry would've won that seat. His campaign was caught up in multiple controversies, one of which was misconduct allegations from his time as a cop, and another about promoting a sham diploma. Also, Keating wasn't the incumbent in 2010, Bill Delahunt was and he retired that cycle. Keating was elected to replace him OTL.
Yeah, I had the wrong Bill in my notes as the incumbent when I was writing it up. Who would be a better candidate to beat Keating since in OTL he only won by 4.5%? I guess Joe Malone or Bob Hedlund?
I knew I was forgetting something in the new Senators list. Fixed now. The changes were Barbara Mikulski and Patty Murray retiring, now replaced by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Heather Boushey respectively.
And now the governor elections.
Gubernatorial election results, 2010
Partisan affiliation of governors, 2011
24 R, 23 D, 2 Ind., 1 Mod.
Gubernatorial election results, 2010
Partisan affiliation of governors, 2011
24 R, 23 D, 2 Ind., 1 Mod.
Alabama: Robert Bentley (R)
Alaska: Ray Metcalfe (I)
Arizona: Jan Brewer (R)
Arkansas: Mike Beebe (D)
California: Darrell Issa (R)
Colorado: John Hickenlooper (D)
Connecticut: Tom Foley (R)
Delaware: Jack Markell (D)
Florida: Alex Sink (D)
Georgia: Herman Cain (R)
Hawaii: Neil Abercrombie (D)
Idaho: Butch Otter (R)
Illinois: Rod Blagojevich (D)
Indiana: Mitch Daniels (R)
Iowa: Terry Branstad (R)
Kansas: Sam Brownback (R)
Kentucky: Steve Beshear (D)
Louisiana: Bobby Jindal (R)
Maine: Eliot Cutler (I)
Maryland: Martin O'Malley (D)
Massachusetts: Kerry Healey (R)
Michigan: Mike Cox (R)
Minnesota: Mark Hatch (D)
Mississippi: Haley Barbour (R)
Missouri: Jay Nixon (D)
Montana: Brian Schweitzer (D)
Nebraska: Dave Heineman (R)
Nevada: Brian Sandoval (R)
New Hampshire: John Lynch (D)
New Jersey: Jon Corzine (D)
New Mexico: Diane Denish (D)
New York: Andrew Cuomo (D)
Ohio: Jennette Bradley (R)
Oklahoma: Mary Fallin (R)
Oregon: Chris Dudley (R)
Pennsylvania: Allyson Schwartz (D)
Rhode Island: Alan Hassenfeld (Mod.)
South Carolina: Vincent Shaheen (D)
South Dakota: Dennis Haugaard (R)
Tennessee: Bill Haslam (R)
Texas: Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)
Vermont: Gaye Symington (D)
Virginia: Terry McAuliffe (D)
Washington: Brad Owen (D)
West Virginia: Earl Ray Tomblin (D)
Wisconsin: Tom Barrett (D)
Wyoming: Taylor Haynes (R)
Alaska: Ray Metcalfe (I)
Arizona: Jan Brewer (R)
Arkansas: Mike Beebe (D)
California: Darrell Issa (R)
Colorado: John Hickenlooper (D)
Connecticut: Tom Foley (R)
Delaware: Jack Markell (D)
Florida: Alex Sink (D)
Georgia: Herman Cain (R)
Hawaii: Neil Abercrombie (D)
Idaho: Butch Otter (R)
Illinois: Rod Blagojevich (D)
Indiana: Mitch Daniels (R)
Iowa: Terry Branstad (R)
Kansas: Sam Brownback (R)
Kentucky: Steve Beshear (D)
Louisiana: Bobby Jindal (R)
Maine: Eliot Cutler (I)
Maryland: Martin O'Malley (D)
Massachusetts: Kerry Healey (R)
Michigan: Mike Cox (R)
Minnesota: Mark Hatch (D)
Mississippi: Haley Barbour (R)
Missouri: Jay Nixon (D)
Montana: Brian Schweitzer (D)
Nebraska: Dave Heineman (R)
Nevada: Brian Sandoval (R)
New Hampshire: John Lynch (D)
New Jersey: Jon Corzine (D)
New Mexico: Diane Denish (D)
New York: Andrew Cuomo (D)
Ohio: Jennette Bradley (R)
Oklahoma: Mary Fallin (R)
Oregon: Chris Dudley (R)
Pennsylvania: Allyson Schwartz (D)
Rhode Island: Alan Hassenfeld (Mod.)
South Carolina: Vincent Shaheen (D)
South Dakota: Dennis Haugaard (R)
Tennessee: Bill Haslam (R)
Texas: Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)
Vermont: Gaye Symington (D)
Virginia: Terry McAuliffe (D)
Washington: Brad Owen (D)
West Virginia: Earl Ray Tomblin (D)
Wisconsin: Tom Barrett (D)
Wyoming: Taylor Haynes (R)
Kennedy vs. Kennedy. A race for the agesAlso, the first wikibox for 2010 just to get those started too.
And now New York's gubernatorial election. I think this is one of my favorites of the 2010 cycle.
Another Tuesday, another map. Time for the House.
And as a bonus, a House election that didn't really fit enough to mention in the text.
And as a bonus, a House election that didn't really fit enough to mention in the text.
Malone also had a scandal dating back to his time as Treasurer, so that would have weighed him down. Hedlund was just a State Senator at the time, and like Keating was from Norfolk County too so there's no advantages there. Keating just had the longest resume of any of his competitors, was well seasoned in elections, and had ties to a lot of my district. Obviously, it's your TL so you get to dictate who wins and loses, but speaking from someone who voted in that race a Keating loss just wasn't that probable regardless of who was in the WH.
Tierney losing though is aboutly possible, but the likelihood of that district swinging back to the dems after just one cycle is also very high.
Centrism Is Magic In Providence As Moderate Party Nearly Sweeps State Executive
November 3, 2010
PROVIDENCE, RI - After Senator Lincoln Chafee won reelection in Rhode Island as an independent candidate in 2006, it seems that a spark has ignited in the people of the Ocean State to move to the center and reject both Democrats and Republicans from office. The new Moderate Party, founded by software developer Ken Block but since heralded by its gubernatorial candidate, former Hasbro executive Alan Hassenfeld, has quickly risen to become a player in Rhode Island politics as the new centrist party came away with a lion’s share of the state executive offices after last night’s election. While most of the results have them squeaking by their nearest opponents, the Moderate Party has been confirmed to have won not just the race for governor, but also the Attorney General and Treasurer. In addition, the race for lieutenant governor was won by Moderate-endorsed “Cool Moose Party” candidate Robert Healey. This near sweep of the state’s executive offices leaves only the Secretary of State out of Moderate Party hands, with Hassenfeld decidedly confirmed as the state’s next governor.
Hassenfeld’s win now that nearly all the votes have been counted stands at 36.1%, compared to Caprio’s 33.6% and Robitaille’s 29.5%. The margin is not as tight as governor Carcieri’s 2006 reelection, but winning barely a third of voters still puts Hassenfeld’s mandate at one of the lowest percentages Rhode Island has elected a governor with in decades. This level of support is also similar across the board for the other offices the Moderates won. Attorney General-Elect Christopher Little was elected with under 30% of the vote, thanks to independent candidates Keven McKenna and Robert Rainville. Moderate Party founder Ken Block in fact did the best of any Moderate candidate running against both a Democrat and Republican. Block managed to top 40% against venture capitalist Gina Raimondo and Carcieri aide Kernan King. However, the largest percent going to a Moderate candidate was not in an election with both major parties on the ballot - and technically an election where the Moderates weren’t on the ballot either. In the lieutenant governor race, Robert J. Healey was endorsed by the Moderates while officially running on his own party line, the Cool Moose Party. Healey, who also ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 and 2006, founded the Cool Moose Party in 1994 and has been spearheading the party ever since. He ran for lieutenant governor this year on the peculiar position of abolishing the office, citing that it has no actual duties. Healey gained support from not only the Moderates, but also from the Republican candidate in the race. In September, Republican candidate Heidi Rogers dropped out of the race and endorsed Healey, saying he had a better chance at winning against Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts and splitting the “abolish the lieutenant governor” vote would be counterproductive[1]. Healey received 19% when he ran for the office in 2002 and 13% in 2006. This time, boosted by the lack of a Republican candidate and by the general success of the Moderates in state offices, Healey won with a near majority with over 48% against Roberts and independent candidate Robert Venturini.
Hassenfeld’s election and the other candidates’ wins are all well and good for the Moderates and is a sure sign from voters that they want a change in leadership in Rhode Island. However, this does not mean that the party can ignore the two major parties. While Moderates will have control of many state offices, they struggled to make a dent in the legislature. The only legislative win for the Moderates was also a major upset, with author Mark Binder narrowly defeating Assembly Speaker Gordon Fox[2]. Although this has been chalked up as another strong win for the Moderates, it is still just one assembly seat, and Democrats still hold a 64-10-1 majority in the state assembly and a 27-8-3 majority in the state senate[3]. The Democratic legislature, while likely pleased to not have a Republican in the governor’s mansion, could be a roadblock to Hassenfeld accomplishing the Moderate agenda for the next four years. Hassenfeld’s pro-business policies might strike a nerve with the Democratic legislature after eight years of a Republican governor and in the middle of a recession. Additionally, Hassenfeld seemed hesitant of approaching the gambling question in the debates and could cause friction with some legislators who support it and see it as a good business move for Rhode Island that Hassenfeld should be supporting. Another particular sticking point could be with Healey, since abolishing his office can only be put on the ballot through passage by both chambers of the legislature as the state does not have citizen initiatives for constitutional amendments. A few Democratic legislators have also already had harsh words for the Moderates and the idea of the legislature dealing with them, arguing that the legislature should push through its own agenda “and let the governor take it or leave it.” However, there is at least one area where both the legislature and the governor-elect do seem to agree. Both support allowing same sex marriage in Rhode Island, so that may at least be one of the few things that passes through the state next year with little difficulty.
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Greens Notch First Statewide Victory as Shoffner Unseated Amid Investigation
November 4, 2010
LITTLE ROCK, AR - As more final election results come rolling in, a surprise result has emerged out of Little Rock today. It appears that Arkansas treasurer Martha Shoffner, a Democrat, is set to lose her bid for reelection to the Green Party candidate, Rebekah Kennedy. Kennedy, a civil rights and anti-discrimination lawyer, previously ran for attorney general in 2006 winning over 5% in that race and for the 3rd congressional district against John Boozman winning over a quarter of the vote with no Democrat present. While Kennedy only won 26% against Boozman, she was the highest performing Green candidate for congress that year. Two years later, she will now become the Green Party’s first ever statewide elected official.
As with several elections in Arkansas in the past four years, many of this year’s state elections did not feature any Republican candidates and Democrats only faced minor parties as their opposition. Under such circumstances, the Green Party was bound to do well as by far the largest and most organized of the minor parties in the state. The party was further boosted by the presence of state legislator Richard Carroll, who ran this year for state auditor instead of running for reelection. However, Shoffner quickly proved the most vulnerable of the Arkansas state officials as she was embroiled in an FBI and SEC investigation earlier this year surrounding her use of state funds and campaign finances. The investigation is still ongoing and has since expanded to an investigation of Shoffner for allegations of extortion and arrangement of money transfers with a small local brokerage firm. With the allegations surfacing and the widened investigation coming late in the campaign season, Shoffner’s popularity quickly worsened and the race opened a surprise opportunity for the Green Party while other Democratic candidates in the state remained safe even if the Greens were to get an overall surge. Ultimately, it appears the embattled Shoffner has fallen to Kennedy and the Greens. With the final election count, Rebekah Kennedy is ahead of Martha Shoffner by a 52.6% to 47.4% margin. Carroll won a surprising 35% of the vote in the auditor of state race against Charlie Daniels, while at the top of the ticket Mike Beebe handily won reelection over Republican Jim Keet with Jim Lendall winning nearly 10% in his second run for governor with the Greens in four years.
Kennedy’s election as state treasurer continues the surprising rise of the Green Party in the state of Arkansas, which is far from what is becoming seen as the national party’s rising political base in California and Maine. Carroll’s election to the state legislature two years ago could be chalked up as a fluke given the extremely odd circumstances surrounding his win, but with Arkansas giving the Greens their first state executive official, the conventional wisdom regarding the party’s base may have to be revisited. However, the Green Party is still going through a lot of growing pains both in Arkansas and elsewhere in the country. While they did gain the treasurer’s office here in Little Rock, they did lose Carroll’s seat in the legislature leaving them without any seats in the legislature next year. This story is also similar to ones elsewhere in the country for the Greens with the party losing ground in state legislatures despite strong state or federal office performances. While Ralph Nader did surprisingly well against Linda McMahon and Chris Dodd in the Connecticut Senate race, state representative Pat Korte lost reelection in a tight three-way race Similarly, in Massachusetts assemblywoman Jill Stein won over 7% in her bid for governor but Democrats took back her state assembly seat. The mismatch between the Green Party’s pull in top ticket races versus state legislative contests shows the party is still on shaky ground and that for the growing party candidate quality is still a major factor in the party’s victories. Kennedy’s win against a heavily weakened Shoffner also shows they still may be relying on the errors of their opponents to win in many cases. Still, Rebekah Kennedy’s prospects seem high as the Greens’ first statewide official, and marks another milestone election victory for the fledgling party.
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Ranked Choice Brings Chaotic Finale to Oakland Mayoral Race
November 7, 2010
OAKLAND, CA - While the office of mayor of Oakland is technically nonpartisan, most of the city’s mayors have been members of a political party, and recently that party has been the Democrats. The last time Oakland elected a Republican mayor was 1973. For the past dozen years however, the city of Oakland has had two mayors who declared no affiliation with either major party. From 1999 to 2007 Oakland was led by Jerry Brown at a time when he was in the political wilderness and declined to join the Democrats until he ran for and became California’s Attorney General. Since 2007, Oakland’s mayor has been Ron Dellums, another long standing icon of East Bay and left wing California politics. Dellums had previously been a Democrat in Congress, but during his term as mayor he was unaffiliated. This year, Oakland cast its votes in the first mayoral election using the new instant runoff voting system for the office. In August, mayor Dellums announced he would not be running for reelection, which led a stampede of local politicians to throw their hats into the ring for the top spot in the city.
As Oakland is now using instant runoff voting, there was little danger of one candidate spoiling the race for another. This led to an even greater number of candidates and a greater number of high profile candidates entering the race. Even so, some candidates were warned off by their current offices also being up this year and having to choose between running for reelection and running for mayor. It has been speculated that this was the reasoning behind two councilors choosing not to run. Desley Brooks, council member for district 6 and first elected in 2002, chose to run for reelection to a third term. Aimee Allison, council member for district 2 and one of the two Oakland councilors who are members of the Green Party, had been rumored as a possible Green entry into the mayoral race but also chose to run for reelection instead. The other council member up for election this year, Jean Quan of district 4, opted to join the mayoral race rather than run for reelection. Quan was joined by three other candidates as the most likely to win the race. Fellow council member Rebecca Kaplan, the other Green in the council and in an at-large seat so not up for reelection until 2012, joined Quan as the other councilor in the race. Former Democratic state senator Don Perata also ran and was the early favorite to win the election. The final major candidate was Wilson Riles Jr. He is the son of former state superintendent Wilson Riles Sr., who was the first African American elected to statewide office in California from 1971 to 1983. Riles Jr. served on the Oakland city council from 1979 to 1992, and previously ran for mayor of Oakland three times in 1985, 1990, and 2002. The last time Riles Jr. ran for mayor in 2002, he ended up a stronger candidate than many suspected and earned 36% of the vote against Jerry Brown’s successful reelection bid.
The Oakland ranked choice measure allows voters to rank their first, second, and third options on the ballot with an instant runoff elimination of candidates similar to that used in San Francisco. With the race primarily between Perata, Quan, Riles, and Kaplan, and Perata by far the most well funded candidate of the four, the campaign often had the feeling of the other candidates running an Anyone But Perata message. This became most notable around the issues of police funding and affordable housing. On crime issues, Perata had the backing of the police, firefighter, and prison guard unions, and the former state senator has been a major voice of opposition to the downsizing of the Oakland police department earlier this year as the city council debated officer pensions. In recent months, the council laid off a tenth of the city’s police force due to a pinch on the city budget, and tax measures to raise money to prevent further cuts were also on last week’s ballot. Quan, Riles, and Kaplan all have also supported the city’s community policing programs, which Perata opposes and has proposed ending along with cutting the city’s ethics commission to restore full staffing to the Oakland police department. Regarding affordable housing meanwhile, all candidates can talk the talk on the issue and say the city needs more. However, they differ in how to go about it. Quan has stuck the closest to Jerry Brown’s ambitious plan, calling for a completion of his 10k plan to bring 10,000 housing units to Oakland, and calling for a second phase to bring even more. Perata talked up his fights for affordable housing at the state level, which both pitted him against and aligned him with governor Schwarzenegger at different times in his term in the state senate. Kaplan and Riles both called for specifically targeting housing at vulnerable minority groups and economic growth, both as a way to enable groups to better afford housing and as providing a path to further reduce crime and solve the policing issue. Riles went the furthest of the four, calling for programs such as municipal and community credit unions to help bring more money to poorer neighborhoods as well as targeting particularly African American parts of the city for low income housing and even city-funded reparations as a way of directing money into those neighborhoods.
In the first few rounds of the runoff, Perata held a significant lead over Quan in second place, with Riles and Kaplan steadily bringing up third and fourth. However, as the race wound down to the top four, Perata’s lead shrank and all three other candidates inched closer. Quan held a firm grip on the second place spot for most of the race, but when Kaplan was eliminated, over 85% of her votes went to Riles and pushed him ahead of Quan for second place and the spot in the final round. Ultimately the mayoral election did end up an everyone versus Perata race, and Perata lost. On his fourth attempt at running for mayor of Oakland and 25 years after his first run, Wilson Riles Jr. has finally succeeded in being elected mayor of Oakland, defeating Don Perata by less than a percent. Riles Jr. will succeed Ron Dellums as mayor at the beginning of next year.
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Greens Finish Where They Started In Legislature, But Play Kingmaker For Others
November 10, 2010
SACRAMENTO - Going into this year’s elections, things had been looking up for the Green Party, especially in California. They recruited a number of strong candidates for congress and state offices nationwide. Further down the ballot, the Greens hoped to continue the historic gains they had made in 2008 in state legislatures. After winning legislative seats in states across the country, and in a presidential year no less, the party was confident that in a midterm year with fewer but more committed voters, the Green tide would continue to rise. Moments during 2010 helped to fuel that belief and hope, from the reaction to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to growing protests against an expansion to the Keystone oil pipeline. In the end, Green candidates indeed did remarkably well in a number of state and congressional races, including pulling off the first ever Green win in a statewide race for Arkansas treasurer. However, in the state legislatures the fortunes for the Green Party were not so favorable. In Arkansas, Colorado, and Connecticut, the Greens lost the lone legislative seat they held in each state. In California, the party was luckier in that two of their three state senate seats were not up for election this year. Still, the Greens were most optimistic about making gains in both the assembly and senate in Bay Area districts. And while they did score a win with Wilson Riles Jr. being elected mayor of Oakland and gained one assembly seat, the Green Party also lost Angela Davis's current district, leaving them again with just a single seat in the state assembly.
The two seats the Greens lost and gained were some of the most anticipated contests for the party in this year’s elections. Even before assemblywoman Davis announced that she would not run for reelection in the 19th district, the San Mateo and Santa Cruz County district was a top target for the Democrats to retake the seat they unexpectedly lost two years ago. The Green candidate to replace Davis, Miguel Araujo, was a promising choice. A long time activist and advocate for Hispanic issues, Araujo was a friend of former California Green Party chair Peter Camejo and was seen as a good fit for an area with a growing Hispanic population. Araujo faced Democratic San Mateo County supervisor Mark Church and Republican Alberto Waisman. Araujo polled well coming in second in the district, but lost to Church in a close race between all three candidates. While they lost just outside of San Francisco though, the Greens made an important gain in San Francisco itself. The city has become viewed by many pundits and politicians as the primary national stronghold of the Green Party, but even in San Francisco the Greens have had difficulty breaking through in certain political offices. The assembly has been particularly tough, with the 12th district’s strong incumbency loyalty for Leland Yee and now Fiona Ma, and a reluctance by the Greens to challenge Chris Daly in the 13th district as Daly has been one of the most supportive Democrats of Matt Gonzalez and Green issues overall in the city. This year the party did opt to challenge Daly and ran as their candidate Todd Chretien, a member of the International Socialist Organization and a prominent organizer anti-war and anti-death penalty activism in the Bay Area. Chretien began to gain notoriety in San Francisco after authoring the 2005 ballot measure Proposition I, a symbolic measure opposing military recruitment in high schools that passed that year with 60% of San Francisco voting in favor. In a demonstration of the consolidation the Green Party has accomplished in San Francisco since Gonzalez was first elected mayor seven years ago, Chretien succeeded in unseating Daly in the 13th district. One cause that has been cited for Daly’s loss is his support for last year’s budget resolution, which was initially opposed by the Green Party and by Davis in the assembly. Araujo’s loss and Chretien’s win leaves the Green Party still with just a lone member of the state assembly, but the San Francisco seat seems like it will give a safer cushion for the Greens than before.
While some are happy to take the result as a more assured presence in the assembly and a strong showing by their candidates around the state, many Greens in California have still expressed disappointment with the results in the state legislature and how close many candidates came while falling short. Araujo’s loss to Church by less than 3 points while receiving over 34 percent of the vote stung and was not the only close loss that night for the Greens. In the East Bay, two Green candidates were fairly close to winning their assembly districts. The 14th district with Berkeley and Richmond seemed prime ground for a Green pickup, and Berkeley city councilor Jesse Townley won 37.2 percent of the vote. However, assemblywoman Nancy Skinner won nearly 45 percent of the vote to win reelection. In Oakland’s 16th district, the candidates for assembly were boosted by the tight race for Oakland mayor and Greens hoped the presence of both Rebecca Kaplan and Wilson Riles Jr. in the ranked choice mayoral election would help Don Macleay in the assembly race. While Riles ended up winning the mayoral race, Macleay only won nearly a third of the vote and came just 5.3 percent short of unseating Sandré Swanson. Macleay’s margin of defeat was also less than the vote share received by the Libertarians. While the Libertarians may not have spoiled the 16th district for the Greens, another party, the Ecology Party founded by former Green Mike Feinstein, likely did spoil a few races. In the 10th state senate district, Audie Bock was mounting her political comeback and making a good run against incumbent Democrat Ellen Corbett. However, the presence of an Ecology Party candidate pulling votes from Bock cost her enough votes that Corbett finished ahead of Bock and was reelected. In the 6th assembly district too, the presence of an Ecology Party candidate likely cost the Greens the election, but in the Marin County district, it was an even more agonizing result. Green Party candidate Lew Tremaine of Fairfax finished in third place, and Democratic assemblyman Jared Huffman finished in second behind Republican Sashi McEntee. However, the margin between all three main candidates was razor thin, and the Ecology Party received more votes than the margin between McEntee in first and Tremaine in third.
Accusations have quickly started to swirl around the 6th assembly district result, with the result of a Republican being elected to a state level office in hard left Marin County naturally stirring up debate over who is the spoiler in that election for whom. Democrats blame the Green Party, while the Greens blame the Democrats and some bitter party organizers have blamed the Ecology Party and Mike Feinstein for splitting the environmentalist and Green aligned vote in the district. In doing so, the Greens in particular seem to be pushing back against the common spoiler narrative that has surrounded them for so long, and have hampered their efforts at growing in some regions. However, there are a few state assembly elections where the Greens did likely play spoiler for Democrats. The 15th district, which sprawls from southern Sacramento to Walnut Creek, was won by Republican H. Abram Wilson as Green candidate Jeremy Cloward, while not doing nearly as well as some of his fellow Greens, pulled enough votes away from Joan Buchanan to flip the narrowly contested seat. The 53rd district saw Republican Nathan Mintz defeat Democrat Betsy Butler for the seat being vacated by Ted Lieu in his move to the state senate. Mintz won over 45 percent of the vote in the tight race for the Torrance district to Butler’s 43 percent, while Green candidate Lisa Ann Green received nearly 8 percent of the vote. In the 1st district, home to growing rural Green strongholds in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, former Point Arena mayor Raven Earlygrow won a surprising 21 percent of the vote but cost Democrat assemblyman Wesley Chesbro enough votes to put Republican Karen Brooks over the top with just over 40 percent. The somewhat unexpected solidification of the Green vote in Humboldt and Mendocino counties also nearly cost the Democrats a state senate seat, as Noreen Evans barely held on to the 2nd senate district against Lawrence Wiesner while Arcata mayor Harmony Groves won nearly 19 percent of the vote.
Of course, the greatest allegations of Green spoilage has come from the election results for statewide offices. At the top of the ticket, Republican congressman Darrell Issa was elected governor over Senator Diane Feinstein with Green candidate state senator Gil Cedillo running well ahead of the difference between the two. In the contest for Attorney General, Green attorney and consumer advocate Peter Allen received more votes than the margin between the Republican winner, Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley, and the Democrat, San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris[4]. Despite the partisan complaints from California Democrats, Cedillo’s strong showing of less than half a percent shy of double digits in the gubernatorial election should be a boon to the Green Party, as it marks the highest performance by a Green Party candidate for governor of California ever. Cedillo, a former Democrat who switched parties while in the legislature, has performed better than Barbara Becnel’s and even both of Peter Camejo’s runs for governor. Even so, one would have expected Cedillo and other Green statewide ticket performances to yield at least some gains downballot. A lot of Green Party members are bound to come away from the 2010 election results with mixed feelings and with plenty of questions to ask about where they fell short.
[1] This actually happened in OTL. The Republican candidate for RI Lt. Gov. dropped out to endorse Healey since both campaigned on abolishing the position. In OTL Healey ended up getting 39.2%.
[2] Binder did pretty well against Fox in 2012 with Fox only winning 3,590 to 2,595, and this was after the 38 Studios scandal, but Fox also had controversies before then including during his selection as Speaker, so this isn’t too out there.
[3] The 3 in the senate are all independents. Ed O’Neill was already elected before this. Kevin O’Neill and Catherine Graziano ran in OTL and ran close races, so they both win here.
[4] Fun fact, Harris only won this election by 0.8% in OTL.
November 3, 2010
PROVIDENCE, RI - After Senator Lincoln Chafee won reelection in Rhode Island as an independent candidate in 2006, it seems that a spark has ignited in the people of the Ocean State to move to the center and reject both Democrats and Republicans from office. The new Moderate Party, founded by software developer Ken Block but since heralded by its gubernatorial candidate, former Hasbro executive Alan Hassenfeld, has quickly risen to become a player in Rhode Island politics as the new centrist party came away with a lion’s share of the state executive offices after last night’s election. While most of the results have them squeaking by their nearest opponents, the Moderate Party has been confirmed to have won not just the race for governor, but also the Attorney General and Treasurer. In addition, the race for lieutenant governor was won by Moderate-endorsed “Cool Moose Party” candidate Robert Healey. This near sweep of the state’s executive offices leaves only the Secretary of State out of Moderate Party hands, with Hassenfeld decidedly confirmed as the state’s next governor.
Hassenfeld’s win now that nearly all the votes have been counted stands at 36.1%, compared to Caprio’s 33.6% and Robitaille’s 29.5%. The margin is not as tight as governor Carcieri’s 2006 reelection, but winning barely a third of voters still puts Hassenfeld’s mandate at one of the lowest percentages Rhode Island has elected a governor with in decades. This level of support is also similar across the board for the other offices the Moderates won. Attorney General-Elect Christopher Little was elected with under 30% of the vote, thanks to independent candidates Keven McKenna and Robert Rainville. Moderate Party founder Ken Block in fact did the best of any Moderate candidate running against both a Democrat and Republican. Block managed to top 40% against venture capitalist Gina Raimondo and Carcieri aide Kernan King. However, the largest percent going to a Moderate candidate was not in an election with both major parties on the ballot - and technically an election where the Moderates weren’t on the ballot either. In the lieutenant governor race, Robert J. Healey was endorsed by the Moderates while officially running on his own party line, the Cool Moose Party. Healey, who also ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 and 2006, founded the Cool Moose Party in 1994 and has been spearheading the party ever since. He ran for lieutenant governor this year on the peculiar position of abolishing the office, citing that it has no actual duties. Healey gained support from not only the Moderates, but also from the Republican candidate in the race. In September, Republican candidate Heidi Rogers dropped out of the race and endorsed Healey, saying he had a better chance at winning against Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts and splitting the “abolish the lieutenant governor” vote would be counterproductive[1]. Healey received 19% when he ran for the office in 2002 and 13% in 2006. This time, boosted by the lack of a Republican candidate and by the general success of the Moderates in state offices, Healey won with a near majority with over 48% against Roberts and independent candidate Robert Venturini.
Hassenfeld’s election and the other candidates’ wins are all well and good for the Moderates and is a sure sign from voters that they want a change in leadership in Rhode Island. However, this does not mean that the party can ignore the two major parties. While Moderates will have control of many state offices, they struggled to make a dent in the legislature. The only legislative win for the Moderates was also a major upset, with author Mark Binder narrowly defeating Assembly Speaker Gordon Fox[2]. Although this has been chalked up as another strong win for the Moderates, it is still just one assembly seat, and Democrats still hold a 64-10-1 majority in the state assembly and a 27-8-3 majority in the state senate[3]. The Democratic legislature, while likely pleased to not have a Republican in the governor’s mansion, could be a roadblock to Hassenfeld accomplishing the Moderate agenda for the next four years. Hassenfeld’s pro-business policies might strike a nerve with the Democratic legislature after eight years of a Republican governor and in the middle of a recession. Additionally, Hassenfeld seemed hesitant of approaching the gambling question in the debates and could cause friction with some legislators who support it and see it as a good business move for Rhode Island that Hassenfeld should be supporting. Another particular sticking point could be with Healey, since abolishing his office can only be put on the ballot through passage by both chambers of the legislature as the state does not have citizen initiatives for constitutional amendments. A few Democratic legislators have also already had harsh words for the Moderates and the idea of the legislature dealing with them, arguing that the legislature should push through its own agenda “and let the governor take it or leave it.” However, there is at least one area where both the legislature and the governor-elect do seem to agree. Both support allowing same sex marriage in Rhode Island, so that may at least be one of the few things that passes through the state next year with little difficulty.
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Greens Notch First Statewide Victory as Shoffner Unseated Amid Investigation
November 4, 2010
LITTLE ROCK, AR - As more final election results come rolling in, a surprise result has emerged out of Little Rock today. It appears that Arkansas treasurer Martha Shoffner, a Democrat, is set to lose her bid for reelection to the Green Party candidate, Rebekah Kennedy. Kennedy, a civil rights and anti-discrimination lawyer, previously ran for attorney general in 2006 winning over 5% in that race and for the 3rd congressional district against John Boozman winning over a quarter of the vote with no Democrat present. While Kennedy only won 26% against Boozman, she was the highest performing Green candidate for congress that year. Two years later, she will now become the Green Party’s first ever statewide elected official.
As with several elections in Arkansas in the past four years, many of this year’s state elections did not feature any Republican candidates and Democrats only faced minor parties as their opposition. Under such circumstances, the Green Party was bound to do well as by far the largest and most organized of the minor parties in the state. The party was further boosted by the presence of state legislator Richard Carroll, who ran this year for state auditor instead of running for reelection. However, Shoffner quickly proved the most vulnerable of the Arkansas state officials as she was embroiled in an FBI and SEC investigation earlier this year surrounding her use of state funds and campaign finances. The investigation is still ongoing and has since expanded to an investigation of Shoffner for allegations of extortion and arrangement of money transfers with a small local brokerage firm. With the allegations surfacing and the widened investigation coming late in the campaign season, Shoffner’s popularity quickly worsened and the race opened a surprise opportunity for the Green Party while other Democratic candidates in the state remained safe even if the Greens were to get an overall surge. Ultimately, it appears the embattled Shoffner has fallen to Kennedy and the Greens. With the final election count, Rebekah Kennedy is ahead of Martha Shoffner by a 52.6% to 47.4% margin. Carroll won a surprising 35% of the vote in the auditor of state race against Charlie Daniels, while at the top of the ticket Mike Beebe handily won reelection over Republican Jim Keet with Jim Lendall winning nearly 10% in his second run for governor with the Greens in four years.
Kennedy’s election as state treasurer continues the surprising rise of the Green Party in the state of Arkansas, which is far from what is becoming seen as the national party’s rising political base in California and Maine. Carroll’s election to the state legislature two years ago could be chalked up as a fluke given the extremely odd circumstances surrounding his win, but with Arkansas giving the Greens their first state executive official, the conventional wisdom regarding the party’s base may have to be revisited. However, the Green Party is still going through a lot of growing pains both in Arkansas and elsewhere in the country. While they did gain the treasurer’s office here in Little Rock, they did lose Carroll’s seat in the legislature leaving them without any seats in the legislature next year. This story is also similar to ones elsewhere in the country for the Greens with the party losing ground in state legislatures despite strong state or federal office performances. While Ralph Nader did surprisingly well against Linda McMahon and Chris Dodd in the Connecticut Senate race, state representative Pat Korte lost reelection in a tight three-way race Similarly, in Massachusetts assemblywoman Jill Stein won over 7% in her bid for governor but Democrats took back her state assembly seat. The mismatch between the Green Party’s pull in top ticket races versus state legislative contests shows the party is still on shaky ground and that for the growing party candidate quality is still a major factor in the party’s victories. Kennedy’s win against a heavily weakened Shoffner also shows they still may be relying on the errors of their opponents to win in many cases. Still, Rebekah Kennedy’s prospects seem high as the Greens’ first statewide official, and marks another milestone election victory for the fledgling party.
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Ranked Choice Brings Chaotic Finale to Oakland Mayoral Race
November 7, 2010
OAKLAND, CA - While the office of mayor of Oakland is technically nonpartisan, most of the city’s mayors have been members of a political party, and recently that party has been the Democrats. The last time Oakland elected a Republican mayor was 1973. For the past dozen years however, the city of Oakland has had two mayors who declared no affiliation with either major party. From 1999 to 2007 Oakland was led by Jerry Brown at a time when he was in the political wilderness and declined to join the Democrats until he ran for and became California’s Attorney General. Since 2007, Oakland’s mayor has been Ron Dellums, another long standing icon of East Bay and left wing California politics. Dellums had previously been a Democrat in Congress, but during his term as mayor he was unaffiliated. This year, Oakland cast its votes in the first mayoral election using the new instant runoff voting system for the office. In August, mayor Dellums announced he would not be running for reelection, which led a stampede of local politicians to throw their hats into the ring for the top spot in the city.
As Oakland is now using instant runoff voting, there was little danger of one candidate spoiling the race for another. This led to an even greater number of candidates and a greater number of high profile candidates entering the race. Even so, some candidates were warned off by their current offices also being up this year and having to choose between running for reelection and running for mayor. It has been speculated that this was the reasoning behind two councilors choosing not to run. Desley Brooks, council member for district 6 and first elected in 2002, chose to run for reelection to a third term. Aimee Allison, council member for district 2 and one of the two Oakland councilors who are members of the Green Party, had been rumored as a possible Green entry into the mayoral race but also chose to run for reelection instead. The other council member up for election this year, Jean Quan of district 4, opted to join the mayoral race rather than run for reelection. Quan was joined by three other candidates as the most likely to win the race. Fellow council member Rebecca Kaplan, the other Green in the council and in an at-large seat so not up for reelection until 2012, joined Quan as the other councilor in the race. Former Democratic state senator Don Perata also ran and was the early favorite to win the election. The final major candidate was Wilson Riles Jr. He is the son of former state superintendent Wilson Riles Sr., who was the first African American elected to statewide office in California from 1971 to 1983. Riles Jr. served on the Oakland city council from 1979 to 1992, and previously ran for mayor of Oakland three times in 1985, 1990, and 2002. The last time Riles Jr. ran for mayor in 2002, he ended up a stronger candidate than many suspected and earned 36% of the vote against Jerry Brown’s successful reelection bid.
The Oakland ranked choice measure allows voters to rank their first, second, and third options on the ballot with an instant runoff elimination of candidates similar to that used in San Francisco. With the race primarily between Perata, Quan, Riles, and Kaplan, and Perata by far the most well funded candidate of the four, the campaign often had the feeling of the other candidates running an Anyone But Perata message. This became most notable around the issues of police funding and affordable housing. On crime issues, Perata had the backing of the police, firefighter, and prison guard unions, and the former state senator has been a major voice of opposition to the downsizing of the Oakland police department earlier this year as the city council debated officer pensions. In recent months, the council laid off a tenth of the city’s police force due to a pinch on the city budget, and tax measures to raise money to prevent further cuts were also on last week’s ballot. Quan, Riles, and Kaplan all have also supported the city’s community policing programs, which Perata opposes and has proposed ending along with cutting the city’s ethics commission to restore full staffing to the Oakland police department. Regarding affordable housing meanwhile, all candidates can talk the talk on the issue and say the city needs more. However, they differ in how to go about it. Quan has stuck the closest to Jerry Brown’s ambitious plan, calling for a completion of his 10k plan to bring 10,000 housing units to Oakland, and calling for a second phase to bring even more. Perata talked up his fights for affordable housing at the state level, which both pitted him against and aligned him with governor Schwarzenegger at different times in his term in the state senate. Kaplan and Riles both called for specifically targeting housing at vulnerable minority groups and economic growth, both as a way to enable groups to better afford housing and as providing a path to further reduce crime and solve the policing issue. Riles went the furthest of the four, calling for programs such as municipal and community credit unions to help bring more money to poorer neighborhoods as well as targeting particularly African American parts of the city for low income housing and even city-funded reparations as a way of directing money into those neighborhoods.
In the first few rounds of the runoff, Perata held a significant lead over Quan in second place, with Riles and Kaplan steadily bringing up third and fourth. However, as the race wound down to the top four, Perata’s lead shrank and all three other candidates inched closer. Quan held a firm grip on the second place spot for most of the race, but when Kaplan was eliminated, over 85% of her votes went to Riles and pushed him ahead of Quan for second place and the spot in the final round. Ultimately the mayoral election did end up an everyone versus Perata race, and Perata lost. On his fourth attempt at running for mayor of Oakland and 25 years after his first run, Wilson Riles Jr. has finally succeeded in being elected mayor of Oakland, defeating Don Perata by less than a percent. Riles Jr. will succeed Ron Dellums as mayor at the beginning of next year.
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Greens Finish Where They Started In Legislature, But Play Kingmaker For Others
November 10, 2010
SACRAMENTO - Going into this year’s elections, things had been looking up for the Green Party, especially in California. They recruited a number of strong candidates for congress and state offices nationwide. Further down the ballot, the Greens hoped to continue the historic gains they had made in 2008 in state legislatures. After winning legislative seats in states across the country, and in a presidential year no less, the party was confident that in a midterm year with fewer but more committed voters, the Green tide would continue to rise. Moments during 2010 helped to fuel that belief and hope, from the reaction to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to growing protests against an expansion to the Keystone oil pipeline. In the end, Green candidates indeed did remarkably well in a number of state and congressional races, including pulling off the first ever Green win in a statewide race for Arkansas treasurer. However, in the state legislatures the fortunes for the Green Party were not so favorable. In Arkansas, Colorado, and Connecticut, the Greens lost the lone legislative seat they held in each state. In California, the party was luckier in that two of their three state senate seats were not up for election this year. Still, the Greens were most optimistic about making gains in both the assembly and senate in Bay Area districts. And while they did score a win with Wilson Riles Jr. being elected mayor of Oakland and gained one assembly seat, the Green Party also lost Angela Davis's current district, leaving them again with just a single seat in the state assembly.
The two seats the Greens lost and gained were some of the most anticipated contests for the party in this year’s elections. Even before assemblywoman Davis announced that she would not run for reelection in the 19th district, the San Mateo and Santa Cruz County district was a top target for the Democrats to retake the seat they unexpectedly lost two years ago. The Green candidate to replace Davis, Miguel Araujo, was a promising choice. A long time activist and advocate for Hispanic issues, Araujo was a friend of former California Green Party chair Peter Camejo and was seen as a good fit for an area with a growing Hispanic population. Araujo faced Democratic San Mateo County supervisor Mark Church and Republican Alberto Waisman. Araujo polled well coming in second in the district, but lost to Church in a close race between all three candidates. While they lost just outside of San Francisco though, the Greens made an important gain in San Francisco itself. The city has become viewed by many pundits and politicians as the primary national stronghold of the Green Party, but even in San Francisco the Greens have had difficulty breaking through in certain political offices. The assembly has been particularly tough, with the 12th district’s strong incumbency loyalty for Leland Yee and now Fiona Ma, and a reluctance by the Greens to challenge Chris Daly in the 13th district as Daly has been one of the most supportive Democrats of Matt Gonzalez and Green issues overall in the city. This year the party did opt to challenge Daly and ran as their candidate Todd Chretien, a member of the International Socialist Organization and a prominent organizer anti-war and anti-death penalty activism in the Bay Area. Chretien began to gain notoriety in San Francisco after authoring the 2005 ballot measure Proposition I, a symbolic measure opposing military recruitment in high schools that passed that year with 60% of San Francisco voting in favor. In a demonstration of the consolidation the Green Party has accomplished in San Francisco since Gonzalez was first elected mayor seven years ago, Chretien succeeded in unseating Daly in the 13th district. One cause that has been cited for Daly’s loss is his support for last year’s budget resolution, which was initially opposed by the Green Party and by Davis in the assembly. Araujo’s loss and Chretien’s win leaves the Green Party still with just a lone member of the state assembly, but the San Francisco seat seems like it will give a safer cushion for the Greens than before.
While some are happy to take the result as a more assured presence in the assembly and a strong showing by their candidates around the state, many Greens in California have still expressed disappointment with the results in the state legislature and how close many candidates came while falling short. Araujo’s loss to Church by less than 3 points while receiving over 34 percent of the vote stung and was not the only close loss that night for the Greens. In the East Bay, two Green candidates were fairly close to winning their assembly districts. The 14th district with Berkeley and Richmond seemed prime ground for a Green pickup, and Berkeley city councilor Jesse Townley won 37.2 percent of the vote. However, assemblywoman Nancy Skinner won nearly 45 percent of the vote to win reelection. In Oakland’s 16th district, the candidates for assembly were boosted by the tight race for Oakland mayor and Greens hoped the presence of both Rebecca Kaplan and Wilson Riles Jr. in the ranked choice mayoral election would help Don Macleay in the assembly race. While Riles ended up winning the mayoral race, Macleay only won nearly a third of the vote and came just 5.3 percent short of unseating Sandré Swanson. Macleay’s margin of defeat was also less than the vote share received by the Libertarians. While the Libertarians may not have spoiled the 16th district for the Greens, another party, the Ecology Party founded by former Green Mike Feinstein, likely did spoil a few races. In the 10th state senate district, Audie Bock was mounting her political comeback and making a good run against incumbent Democrat Ellen Corbett. However, the presence of an Ecology Party candidate pulling votes from Bock cost her enough votes that Corbett finished ahead of Bock and was reelected. In the 6th assembly district too, the presence of an Ecology Party candidate likely cost the Greens the election, but in the Marin County district, it was an even more agonizing result. Green Party candidate Lew Tremaine of Fairfax finished in third place, and Democratic assemblyman Jared Huffman finished in second behind Republican Sashi McEntee. However, the margin between all three main candidates was razor thin, and the Ecology Party received more votes than the margin between McEntee in first and Tremaine in third.
Accusations have quickly started to swirl around the 6th assembly district result, with the result of a Republican being elected to a state level office in hard left Marin County naturally stirring up debate over who is the spoiler in that election for whom. Democrats blame the Green Party, while the Greens blame the Democrats and some bitter party organizers have blamed the Ecology Party and Mike Feinstein for splitting the environmentalist and Green aligned vote in the district. In doing so, the Greens in particular seem to be pushing back against the common spoiler narrative that has surrounded them for so long, and have hampered their efforts at growing in some regions. However, there are a few state assembly elections where the Greens did likely play spoiler for Democrats. The 15th district, which sprawls from southern Sacramento to Walnut Creek, was won by Republican H. Abram Wilson as Green candidate Jeremy Cloward, while not doing nearly as well as some of his fellow Greens, pulled enough votes away from Joan Buchanan to flip the narrowly contested seat. The 53rd district saw Republican Nathan Mintz defeat Democrat Betsy Butler for the seat being vacated by Ted Lieu in his move to the state senate. Mintz won over 45 percent of the vote in the tight race for the Torrance district to Butler’s 43 percent, while Green candidate Lisa Ann Green received nearly 8 percent of the vote. In the 1st district, home to growing rural Green strongholds in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, former Point Arena mayor Raven Earlygrow won a surprising 21 percent of the vote but cost Democrat assemblyman Wesley Chesbro enough votes to put Republican Karen Brooks over the top with just over 40 percent. The somewhat unexpected solidification of the Green vote in Humboldt and Mendocino counties also nearly cost the Democrats a state senate seat, as Noreen Evans barely held on to the 2nd senate district against Lawrence Wiesner while Arcata mayor Harmony Groves won nearly 19 percent of the vote.
Of course, the greatest allegations of Green spoilage has come from the election results for statewide offices. At the top of the ticket, Republican congressman Darrell Issa was elected governor over Senator Diane Feinstein with Green candidate state senator Gil Cedillo running well ahead of the difference between the two. In the contest for Attorney General, Green attorney and consumer advocate Peter Allen received more votes than the margin between the Republican winner, Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley, and the Democrat, San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris[4]. Despite the partisan complaints from California Democrats, Cedillo’s strong showing of less than half a percent shy of double digits in the gubernatorial election should be a boon to the Green Party, as it marks the highest performance by a Green Party candidate for governor of California ever. Cedillo, a former Democrat who switched parties while in the legislature, has performed better than Barbara Becnel’s and even both of Peter Camejo’s runs for governor. Even so, one would have expected Cedillo and other Green statewide ticket performances to yield at least some gains downballot. A lot of Green Party members are bound to come away from the 2010 election results with mixed feelings and with plenty of questions to ask about where they fell short.
[1] This actually happened in OTL. The Republican candidate for RI Lt. Gov. dropped out to endorse Healey since both campaigned on abolishing the position. In OTL Healey ended up getting 39.2%.
[2] Binder did pretty well against Fox in 2012 with Fox only winning 3,590 to 2,595, and this was after the 38 Studios scandal, but Fox also had controversies before then including during his selection as Speaker, so this isn’t too out there.
[3] The 3 in the senate are all independents. Ed O’Neill was already elected before this. Kevin O’Neill and Catherine Graziano ran in OTL and ran close races, so they both win here.
[4] Fun fact, Harris only won this election by 0.8% in OTL.
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