From the ArcaMax Publishing, Michael Barone Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/michaelbarone/s-642823-514296
As the final votes were being counted, it was possible to draw some
lessons from Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia and the
close, three-way governor's race in New Jersey, never mind that White
House press secretary Robert Gibbs has taken to saying that the
elections don't mean much.
The odd-year elections -- held in the first year of a presidency --
have been meaningful over the last two decades. In 1993, New Jersey
voters rejected tax-raising Democratic Gov. James Florio, despite the
best efforts of Bill Clinton's consultant James Carville -- a
harbinger of the losses congressional Democrats suffered the next year
after they raised taxes and supported, unavailingly, massive health
care proposals.
In Virginia that year, Republican George Allen was elected on a
platform of abolishing parole and opposing gun control. Those quickly
became national consensus policies and remain so today.
In 2001, just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, George W. Bush's
Republicans suffered defeats in Virginia and New Jersey. In Virginia,
Mark Warner showed that a Democrat conversant with country music and
stock car racing could make inroads in rural areas that had little use
for Bill Clinton or Al Gore. Democrats gained their congressional
majorities in 2006 by winning such areas.
In New Jersey, Democrat Jim McGreevey showed the enduring power of the
gains that Clinton and Gore had made in suburbs hostile to cultural
conservatives. These areas rejected Bush even when he was winning
re-election in 2004.
This year the issues in the governor elections in Virginia and New
Jersey are reasonably congruent with those raised by the programs of
the Obama administration and congressional Democratic leaders.
Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds in Virginia and Democratic incumbent
Jon Corzine in New Jersey have refused to rule out tax increases even
as congressional Democrats press health care bills loaded with them.
Their Republican opponents have both opposed tax increases.
In Virginia, McDonnell has done considerably more than that. He has
advanced substantive, detailed positions on transportation, jobs and
education -- issues that affect voters' everyday lives. He has also
weighed in against national Democrats' health care, card check and
cap-and-trade bills, while Deeds has dodged them -- a clear sign those
stands are unpopular in a state that voted 53 percent for Barack
Obama.
Every Virginia poll taken since mid-October showed McDonnell with a
double-digit lead, and he and his Republican ticket mates swept to
solid victories. Those who dismiss such results as irrelevant to
national politics might want to have a chat with Florio.
New Jersey this year is more complicated. About 60 percent of voters
disapprove of Corzine's performance in a state with some of the
highest taxes and public employee pensions in the country. But Corzine
has used his personal wealth to drag Republican Chris Christie's
numbers down, and independent candidate Chris Daggett could take
enough votes for Corzine to squeak through.
But a Corzine plurality win could scarcely be taken as an endorsement
of Democratic policies in a state that Obama carried with 57 percent
of the vote.
There will be some lessons in the results for Republicans, as well.
One of the big surprises of this year has been the spontaneous
outpouring of spirited opposition to the Democrats' big government
programs and the disappearance of the enthusiasm that propelled Obama
and Democrats to their big wins in 2008. The question is how
Republicans can harness that enthusiasm.
McDonnell did that in Virginia with a classic campaign. Early on, he
staked out clear and detailed positions on issues important to voters
and refused to be distracted by Washington Post news stories designed
to depict him as an intolerant troglodyte. He showed the sense of
command voters want in an executive.
Christie, with less experience in electoral politics, did not present
such a detailed platform, which left him vulnerable to vote-poaching
by Daggett and to the cynical attacks of the Corzine campaign. He's
vulnerable as well to demographics: As he noted in his last ad, New
Jersey's high taxes have been driving conservative voters out of the
state.
Yes, both of these governor races involve issues specific to
particular states and candidates with particular strengths and
weaknesses. But the odd-year elections of 2009, like those of 1993 and
2001, still provide clues to where the nation's voters are headed, and
it's a different direction than they took in the presidential election
last year.
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Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington
Examiner. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by
other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.