Jim Geraghty thinks it was a wonderful Election Night in Virginia. Jim Hoeft agrees – mostly – while Brian Schoeneman doesn’t. So what actually happened? It helps it look beyond the Commonwealth to figure this out.
To our south, the GOP cleaned up. Matt Bevin cruised to the Kentucky Governor’s Chair – despite polls saying he was at best tied going into yesterday. Kentucky Republicans won 4 of 6 statewide races, and were about a percentage point from a clean sweep.
Mississippi was another Republican happy spot: in this case, only one Democrat (the incumbent Attorney General) resisted the GOP sweep, and it looks like the Republican majority in the MS House doubled.
Look to our north, on the other hand, and it’s a different story.
Democrats in Pennsylvania swept the statewide vote for available Supreme Court seats (three of three). Next door, in New Jersey, voters made it clear Chris Christie’s national problems don’t end at the Delaware River: in the General Assembly (NJ’s lower house), the Democrats picked up 3-5 seats (if they actually get 5, they’re one vote shy of a veto-proof majority). They also took two medium profile DA slots from Republicans in New York (Staten Island and Nassau County).
In other words, partisan regional sifting continued apace in 2015 – and that includes Virginia, a.k.a. America’s National Median State since 2008.
Within ANMS (’08), the parties largely held and solidified ground. Democrats finally have elected officials to reflect their current local advantage in Eastern Loudoun; Fairfax held firm for them; and their gerrymandering in Prince William worked very well (the GOP Senate candidates actually won about 4,000 more votes in PW). But they couldn’t break the Powhatan firewall in the 10th. Meanwhile, what was the closest Senate race in 2011 (the 17th) became one of the most lopsided for the GOP this time. In fact, the anchor of that district – my old stumping ground, Spotsylvania County – now has its first ever outright Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors (although nominees and endorsees were a majority from 1995-9 and since 2012). Spotsy voters also placed a Republican in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office (another first).
In prior years, the aforementioned 10th and the 29th Senate districts (the latter in the aforementioned PW) might have both gone differently. In 21st Century Virginia, Quantico’s Marine Base is rapidly becoming the partisan DMZ.
As for tea leaves regarding next year, it’s pretty much status quo ante – only harder (so Hoeft is right), meaning Republicans still have an uphill battle (so Schoeneman is right). Then again, so do the Democrats (so Geraghty is right, too).
Par for the course as a divided nation – and the divided ANMS (’08) – approaches Election 2016…
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