Breaking down midterm results
REPUBLICAN VOTERS ELECT CANDIDATE FACING CORRUPTION CHARGES, WHILE DEMOCRATIC SUPPORTERS SEND A WAVE OF WOMEN TO WASHINGTON
IT’S A HISTORIC WIN — NOT JUST FOR THE
LGBT COMMUNITY BUT FOR THE STATE OF
COLORADO. — ANNISE PARKER, ON THE
ELECTION OF THE FIRST OPENLY GAY GOVERNOR
On Monday, the Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof was laid to rest in a lipstick-red casket strewn with roses. A floral arrangement approximating the silhouettes of two mating rabbits marked his grave.
The next day, he was elected to the Nevada State Assembly.
Hof, the owner of several legal brothels including the Love Ranch and the Moonlite BunnyRanch, died in his sleep at the age of 72 on Oct. 16, four months after winning the Republican primary for his district. On Tuesday, unofficial results from the Nevada Secretary of State showed him beating Democrat Lesia Romanov with 63 per cent of the vote.
His victory, however unusual, was not unexpected. The sprawling district is reliably conservative, and under state law, candidates who are elected posthumously are replaced by another member of their party. After Hof ’s death, his campaign manager, Chuck Muth, urged supporters to vote for him anyway, writing that a victory would send a message to “the Carson City ‘establishment’ that tried to destroy him politically.” Electing Hof would also prevent a reliably Republican seat from falling into Democratic hands, he added.
BIG NIGHT FOR WOMEN
Their victories were the fruit of two years of activism. Women stepped up to run for office and to support those who did.
Pennsylvania, which had no women in its congressional delegation, elected four of them. In New Jersey, where three seats flipped to the Democrats, the only woman, Mikie Sherrill, won her race by the largest margin, in a district that Trump won in 2016. In Iowa, a state that Trump won, Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne wrested seats from Republicans.
Former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin defeated Republican Rep. Mike Bishop, denying him a third House term representing their southeastern Michigan district and flipping the seat to the Democrats.
Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria flipped Republican seats in Virginia, where women mobilized in 2017 to elect female challengers to the state legislature. Lauren Underwood toppled a Republican incumbent outside of Chicago by appealing to women’s concerns about Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Angie Craig beat a Republican incumbent in a suburban Minnesota district.
In Massachusetts, Ayanna Pressley became the first woman of colour in her state’s congressional delegation. Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Ilhan Omar in Minnesota will became the first Muslim women in Congress. Deb Haaland prevailed in New Mexico, becoming the first Native American women elected to Congress. In Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, became the state’s first woman elected to the Senate.
WHERE GOP, DEMS WON
Democratic gains in the
House came in densely populated, educated and diverse enclaves around the country, around major liberal cities like New York and Philadelphia and also red-state population centres like Houston and Oklahoma City. The Republican Party’s traditional base in these districts collapsed, with college-educated white voters joining with growing minority communities to support Democrats.
Republican victories in the Senate came mainly in the conservative strongholds where Trump’s popularity has remained steady or grown since 2016. With rural voters moving rightward and the Democratic Party moving left, Senate Democrats like Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Donnelly of Indiana found it impossible to reassemble the political coalitions that elected them in the past.
INDICTED INCUMBENT
California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter has won a sixth term despite facing federal corruption charges.
Hunter beat first-time Democratic candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar on Wednesday in a deeply red San Diego-area district.
The GOP incumbent has 54 per cent of 123,000 votes cast, giving him an eightpoint lead over Campa-Najjar.
Few incumbents in U.S. history have been re-elected while indicted and the race was considered a fresh test of partisanship during the era of Trump.
Hunter and his wife have pleaded not guilty to allegations of illegally spending more than $250,000 in campaign money for personal expenses — from family trips to tequila shots.
VOTING RIGHTS
Florida added 1.4 million
possible voters to the rolls when it passed Amendment 4, which says most felons will automatically have their voting rights restored when they complete their sentences and probation.
“This was not a political vote. It was a vote of love,” said Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, the non-profit group that spearheaded to put the amendment change on the ballot.
Convicted sex offenders and those convicted of murder are exempt. The measure needed 60 per cent of the vote Tuesday to pass; it received 64 per cent.
COLORADO GOVERNOR
Colorado, dubbed the “hate
state” due to a controversial 1992 anti-gay law that sparked international backlash, has elected its first openly gay governor.
Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat who was elected to Congress in 2008, beat Republican Walker Stapleton by six points.
“It’s a historic win — not just for the LGBT community but for the state of Colorado,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the Victory Fund, a non-profit supporting LGBT politicians, told the Denver Post.
Born in Colorado but raised in California, Polis’s mother and father founded a greeting card company that later sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Denver Post. One of the wealthiest members of the House, with a reported estimated wealth of $387 million, Polis earned a reputation in Washington as a tech-savvy public education advocate.
MICHIGAN POT VOTE
Michigan is the first Midwestern state to legalize recreational marijuana, with voters Tuesday passing a ballot measure that will allow people 21 or older to buy and use the drug. Including Michigan, 10 states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana; North Dakota voters decided this week that recreational pot wasn’t for them.
RECOUNT IN FLORIDA
The Senate race in Florida is headed for a recount, according to Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent who is in danger of losing his seat. His Republican challenger, Gov. Rick Scott, was leading Wednesday by 0.4 percentage points, or 34,537 votes. (In a statement, Scott called Nelson’s recount request “sad.”)
The Senate race in Arizona has yet to be called. Kyrsten Sinema, a former Green Party activist who reinvented herself as a centrist Democrat, was trailing the Republican Martha McSally by 15,908 votes.
In Georgia, the governor’s race has not been called. On Wednesday morning, Republican Brian Kemp had a lead of 1.9 percentage points, or 75,386 votes, over the Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is seeking to become the first African-American governor in U.S. history. That puts him just slightly over the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a runoff, an outcome that Abrams has said may be a possibility once absentee votes are counted.