A whole lot of red
- Republicans capitalized on massive voter discontent yesterday, electing 60, possibly 65, Republicans to the House of Representatives, the most seats they’ve won in a midterm since the 1930s. Locally Buck McKeon won 63-37 and will enjoy his new Chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee (his opposite in that post, Ike Skelton of Missouri, actually lost his reelection bid). John Boehner cried and told the Tea Party he promises he won’t let them down. LA TIMES
- The same is not true of the Senate, where the Democrats not only managed to hold on to their majority, but win some races they were expected to lose. Tea Party Target #1, Harry Reid, won by 5 points over Sharron Angle, while Michael Bennett, Democrat of Colorado, was holding on to a 5,000+ vote lead over Ken Buck as of this morning. Carly Fiorina went down hard to Babs Boxer, but hasn’t conceded yet. In Alaska, Lisa Murkowski was proving to be a strong write-in contender over Tea Party & Sarah Palin-backed Joe Miller. Christine O’Donnell was soundly defeated. Overall, the GOP gained an additional six seats with wins by Marco Rubio in Florida and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin over Russ Feigngold. NY TIMES
- In California, the picture was much more blue. Jerry Brown won a comfortable race for Governor, despite eMeg spending about 8 times what he did. Gavin Newsom picked up Lt. Gov, and Tony Strickland, a Senator representing part of the SCV, was thoroughly dismantled for the second time by John Chiang in the race for Controller. George Runner won comfortably over his opponent for Board of Equalization, one of the few GOP bright spots in the state. Cameron Smyth won as well. CA SECRETARY OF STATE
- Propositions: It was a bad trip for Yes on 19 voters as that prop went down to defeat. Prop 23, funded by Texan oil companies and the infamous Koch brothers, was quickly dispatched by California voters. Voters killed a new vehicle license fee, but approved a Congressional redistricting system as well as a a majority rules for budgets. LA TIMES
- In local races, Kevin Korenthal lost badly to incumbent Ed Colley for CLWA Board. Korenthal ran a spirited campaign but in the end he went down by nearly 40+ points. He told The Signal that “The Tea Party found him,” and said his campaign was one of the most successful local grassroots campaigns. SIGNAL
- Meanwhile, at SkyBlue Mesa elementary school, two SCV Tea Party members tried to distribute campaign literature near the polling place, violating election law. When a poll worker confronted them, the Tea Party members yelled at her like “I was a kid.” SIGNAL
- The election lead to more web traffic than any other event in recent history, according to Akamai and Mashable, which tracks these sort of things. In fact, California traffic took down the Secretary of State website, even after the SOS office brought extra computing power from cloud based web services. SOS TWITTER
- Every single one of the Signal’s picks for Statewide office, save for George Runner, failed. We’ll have to wait and see what the vote was like in Santa Clarita; I hope to get that information within a week or so.
- Local Tea Party chief says last night’s GOP victory is just one step in a decades long campaign to undo Roosevelt’s New Deal and to restore America to an earlier time, more bucolic time. TEA PARTY SCV
- Speaking of earlier times, Slate.com has a comparison of Newt Gingrich’s comments after the election in November 1994 with John Boehner’s comments after last night’s victories. Boehner: ”While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it’s the president who sets the agenda for our government.”The president? You’ve just been handed 60 House seats by voters disgusted with the president, and you’re deferring to him?” asks SLATE
- A bad night for Sarah Palin and Mama Grizzlies overall TPM, DAILY BEAST
- And David Frum, former Bush Jr. speechwriter, says yesterday’s vote proves his point: “Which is why I believe at this hour of Tea Party triumphalism that the mission of this site has become more urgent than ever. A party of Palinite resentment and Rand Paul conspiracism cannot win and should not win. More than ever we need a culturally modern Republicanism to represent the whole nation – that governs in the interests of the many, not the few – that can solve social problems at a cost within the nation’s means.” FRUM FORUM
- So what do the American people want? John Dickerson catalogs our cognitive dissonance: “In exit polls, 37 percent said the highest priority of Congress should be “spending to create jobs.” The nearly equal priority was reducing the budget deficit, which 37 percent said was their No. 1 goal.” SLATE
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