The first week of November brought with it mid-term elections for members of the US House of Representatives, who must run for Congress every two years, as well as polls for smaller positions throughout the country. In contrast to last year’s Presidential election, these odd election years tend to be exclusively focused on local, city and state political concerns rather than national politics.
Given thus, I must confess that I find it incredible that so much national and international media attention was focused on the state elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey. Last time I checked, no state governor or city mayor has ever taken part in the national domestic and foreign policy decisions made in Washington DC. So why are they in the news?
In Virginia, I suspect there was a least one Democrat, namely Terry McAuliffe, who was secretly smiling about the thumping of his own party’s Craig Deeds by Republican Bob McDonnell in the race for governor. McAuliffe had warned Deeds and Virginia Democrats that they would lose the race unless they made jobs and economic development the focus of their campaign.
Instead, Deeds preferred to focus on a Master’s thesis McDonnell had written 20 years ago in which he expressed rather extreme anti-gay and anti-feminist sentiments. Unfortunately for Deeds, his Republican opponent stuck to the ‘economic recovery’ script and ran away with a double-digit margin.
A similar story played out in New Jersey, where the Republican Attorney General Chris Christie narrowly beat out incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine for this statehouse executive job. Like McDonnell in Virginia, Christie focused on job creation and the need to reduce New Jersey’s high property taxes, and avoided all discussion of his positions on social conservative issues. Governor Corzine had also become very unpopular among New Jersey voters for his poor handling of the state’s budget, economic and tax problems, and his effort to reduce property taxes during the summer were regarded as too little, too late by many.
However, in contrast to Virginia – where the President stopped short of fully supporting Deeds in the run-up to the polls – Barack Obama did campaign more aggressively on behalf of the embattled Democratic governor of New Jersey. But voters in New Jersey mirrored their counterparts in Virginia in saying that the President had little effect on their choice on the ballot paper, either positively or negatively.
One thing that did stand out in both states, however, was the demographic makeup of the electorate. Voter turnout in Virginia was about half – only 39 per cent of eligible voters – in the governor’s race, versus almost 75 per cent in last year’s Presidential contest, while numbers was down by over a third in New Jersey. Younger voters who turned out in droves last year didn’t cast as many ballots this year, and minority groups that accounted for 20 per cent of the vote in last year’s Presidential race cast less than 15 per cent of the ballots in the governor’s race.
Although I think it would be foolish to read much into last week’s election results, next time round I will discuss some conclusions that both Democrats and Republicans can draw from them.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in International Relations and lectures on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU
