Bucks
Election Results
Dear Friends,
Good morning. Wasn’t it Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1980’s, who said, “All elections are local.”? That seems to be the common denominator, for elections in Bucks, Montgomery, Lehigh, and Northampton Counties…plus Maine, New Jersey, New York and Virginia last week
Let’s begin with Bucks County.
In spite of the 15,000-voter registration advantage which the Democrats enjoy, the five row offices remained in Republican hands by very safe margins, ranging from 16,000 to 20,000 votes. How could that be?
Some of it could be a false read about what was behind the party switches during the last eight years. Pennsylvania primaries do not permit cross over voting for most offices. So if you were a Republican and wanted to help Democrat Ed Rendell or Bob Casey during the governor’s race in 2002, you couldn’t vote in the Democratic Primary…unless you changed your registration from Republican to Democratic.
That’s precisely what Mighty Betsy and I did.
And again, last year, Republican Presidential candidates did not please MB nor me. As registered Republicans, we could not vote in the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, unless we changed our party affiliation. In addition, Republicans abandoned their party in droves because of the unpopularity of President George. W. Bush.
The point that I’m making is that the Democratic voter registration lead may be a mirage and not a lead at all.
The second thought is that in “off year” elections, the turnout is predictably terrible. In recent previous municipal elections, less than 30 percent voted. That gives Republicans a decided advantage because there are a disproportionate number of older voters who are more likely to go to the polls. That was the case in Montgomery, Lehigh, and Northampton Counties as well.
I might add that nearly half of the Bucks County population is not registered at all. Only 430,000 of the approximately 800,000 population were registered. And just 100,000 bothered to vote last week.
Turning to the New Jersey governor’s election, why did Governor Jon Corzine get turned out of office? Incumbents seldom lose. Wouldn’t you think that the third party candidate, Christopher Daggett, would draw off Republican voters from the Republican candidate, Christopher Christie?
Not so.
Apparently, New Jersey voters were so unhappy with crushing property taxes (the highest in the nation) that they voted for “change,” the very notion, which propelled Barack Obama into the White House last year. Any tax…especially new taxes…created an infuriating flash point this year.
Consider what happened in Monroe County where taxpayers were asked to approve a bond issue to build a Northampton Community College campus near Stroudsburg. Would taxpayers support a modest tax of $30 per year? No…voters turned the proposal down by 62 percent. Exit polls showed that voters were not anti college…they were anti tax.
In Virginia, the “In” party lost the Governor’s race too. Republican Robert McDonnell won because Virginians were dissatisfied with the eight years that the Democrats held the state house. It probably didn’t help that R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate, was unfamiliar with the transportation needs in Virginia’s suburban northern counties. Virginia proved that all elections are local.
But it wasn’t just Democrats that were taking hits. The GOP lost a House of Representative seat in Upstate New York that had been in party hands since the Civil War. “[It was] Ideological warfare between conservative activists and party establishment figures [leaders],” the Inquirer explained (Nov. 5). “Conservatives pushed the GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava, a liberal assemblywoman, out of the race and rallied around Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.”
Scozzafava was a pro gay and pro-choice Republican who favored the federal stimulus. That combination makes the far right go ballistic across America and it certainly did in the Empire State.
But Scozzafava didn’t get angry, she got even. She urged her supporters to jump ship and vote for the Democrat, Bill Owens, who won.
Was it Shakespeare who said, “Hell half no fury like a woman scorned?” Not according to my Yahoo search on the Internet. The phrase actually came from a play called the “Mourning Bride” (1697) by William Congreve. The complete quote is “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned/ Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
But I stray.
The far right proved how far off the reservation they’d strayed. The conservatives of Upstate New York told the world that they’d rather have no loaf than a half of a loaf. Do Conservatives across America have similar thoughts?
In Maine, conservatives celebrated voters’ rejection of a law that would have allowed gay couples to wed. Losing by a 53 to 47 percent margin, Maine failed to become the sixth state to allow gay couples to marry. The Catholic Church plus notable celebrities like, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin carried the day.
Today, gay rights supporters are unhappy with President Obama because he did not weigh in on the subject. They expected the President to help their cause and he didn’t. They also question Obama’s reluctance to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military.
So, after the dust settled, what did we learn about the election? First, in Bucks County, the Democratic Party will have to work harder to register real Democrats, rather than encouraging Republicans to switch their registration. Those Republicans who reregistered Democrat probably voted for the GOP, just as they had in previous countywide elections. They obviously can’t be trusted!
Second, the National Republican Party is making a mistake if it believes that the Republican wins in New Jersey and Virginia is a repudiation of President Obama. Former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman probably had it right when she opined that Obama was not a factor in this election.
What happened was the “change factor.” Voters voted for change in 2006, 2008, and they did in 2009 too. And as for those wing nuts in Maine who believe that “No loaf is better than a half a loaf,” and demanding ideological purity, that attitude may spell the end of the Republican Party.
Then again, the New York Times editorial (Nov. 5) probably said it best. “There were broad messages for both parties: Voters remain fearful about the economy. Independent voters are a force to be reckoned with. And everyone wants results [right now].”
But, as I’ve said before, the GOP may be mirroring the Whig Party of 1856.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith