Describe your local elections this fall

[JohnnyLongtorso]

We have the General Assembly election next month in Virginia Beach. Democrats are, for once, actually contesting some of the Republican-held seats: in District 21, incumbent John Welch is being challenged by Democrat Bobby Mathieson, in District 82, the most competitive race in the city this fall, Republican Chris Stolle and Democrat Joe Bouchard are running for an open Republican-held seat, and in District 83, incumbent Bob Purkey is being challenged by Democrat Bob MacIver (who has absolutely no shot at winning, but I'll be voting for him anyway). our other three Delegates (Terrie Suit R-82, Sal Iaquinto R-84, and Bob Tata R-85) are running unopposed, as are our State Senators (Frank Wagner R-7 and Ken Stolle R-8). some other districts have precincts in Virginia Beach, but these guys represent the majority of the city.

Shockingly, both Mathieson and Bouchard ended up winning. Two Democrats representing Virginia Beach -- it's amazing!

How is that area and the cities in general act in politics: Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton Roads, Newport News? I know Norfolk is heavy in military. I assume Va Beach is Republican from your comment.

Of the seven cities in Hampton Roads:

Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, and to a lesser extent, Newport News, vote Democratic. They all have large African-American populations and are more urban, so the white voters tend to be more liberal than in the rural areas of Virginia.

Virginia Beach and Chesapeake are a lot more suburban and a lot whiter. They tend to vote Republican, although it's not impossible to win there, as shown by the two Democrats who just got elected; also, Kaine did carry both cities in 2005, albeit narrowly.

Suffolk is kind of an odd duck. In the 1970s, the City of Suffolk and the County of Nansemond merged into one entity. Basically the actual "city" area of Suffolk is a small portion of the geographical area. So you have the older parts of the city, where there is a large proportion of African Americans, contrasted with the more rural areas, where there has been a lot of development and a lot of upper-middle-class whites have been moving in. So it's basically a swing city now, with a slight Republican lean.

There is a lot of military here in Virginia Beach and in Norfolk. I don't think it necessarily affects politics too much (I'm assuming military people vote absentee for their home states), outside of the constant wheeling and dealing by the Virginia Beach City Council to keep NAS Oceana here, and the jacked-up level of patriotism ("I (heart) JET NOISE" bumper stickers abound -- believe me, you wouldn't if you had to live underneath their flight paths). The Oceana precinct in VB is actually heavily Democratic, ironically.

[StateBoiler]

("I (heart) JET NOISE" bumper stickers abound -- believe me, you wouldn't if you had to live underneath their flight paths).

I actually lived for most of my life lined up perfectly with one of the runways for MCAS Cherry Point in eastern NC. Nothing shakes a house better than a C-5 that was short on final.

Over time I got used to it and just ignored it.

[Kevinstat]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

[bergie72]

Updates for two counties in northeast Pennsylvania...

Luzerne County (where I live) -- any Republicans who had a row office (sheriff, reecorder of deeds, coroner, etc) were rejected and replaced with Democrats.  But, Repulicans generally got a higher vote count than in years past.  Luzerne uses electronic machines, and the final (unofficial) count was posted on the Luzerne County website at 10:49 pm, which included absentee voters.

Lackawanna County (just to the north) -- The electronic machines they had used were decertified, and the County reverted to paper ballots, which hadn't been used in the County for 70 years.  The sealed boxes with the paper ballots did not start arriving at the processing area until after 9pm, over an hour after the polls closed.  20 machines were used to scan and process the ballot, and by 2am this morning, 47 out of 163 precincts had been completed.  Processing continued until 5am, when they took a break and resumed processing at 9am this morning.  The last I heard, less than 50% of the ballots had been scanned and processed so far.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

Why is the split in the Maine Senate so tight compared to the House?

[Mr.Phips]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

I thought that the Maine House was already 90-59-2 after the Special election in June. 

Anyway, where I live in Greenfield Center, NY,  Republicans retained all of the offices on the town council as expected.  However, in the town just South of me, Saratoga Springs, there was a huge wave against the Democrats.  Incumbent mayor Val Keehn, who was expected to win easily lost by a 48%-44% margin, probably due to Democrat Gordon Boyd who decided to run on the independent line.  Also losing was longtime incumbent Democratic Commissioner of Public Works Tom McTygue who got smoked by a 61%-38% margin by Republican Skip Scirocco, who was rumored to be investigated by the FBI.  This also helped pull down Janet Weiche, the Democrat running to replace Independent Matt McCabe for Finance Commissioner as well as incumbent Democratic Supervisor Cheryl Kerouze. 
Not a good night for Saratoga Democrats at all.  Probably the worst in decades. 

[StateBoiler]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

Is John Eder one of those 2 indys?

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

Is John Eder one of those 2 indys?

Nope, Eder lost to a Democrat in 2006.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Looks like the education levy passed overwhelmingly, with 60%. Good, otherwise I would've felt guilty for not voting. On the other hand I would've also felt guilty voting for it as I won't be living here anymore once it goes into effect.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If anyone cares about the St. Paul City Council (largest elections in Minnesota)

Ward 1: Incumbent Debbie Montgomery loses big time, 58-42. Don't know why, maybe should check out StarTrib archives.
Ward 2: Incumbent Dave Thune wins, not a landslide but fairly comfortably. 53-47
Ward 3: Incumbent Pat Harris in a landslide. over 86%. Yawn.
Ward 4: Incumbent Jay Benanav did not run for reelection. Despite this the winner, Russ Stark, took the seat in a landslide, 81-19.
Ward 5: Incumbent Lee Helgen pulls through, 52-48
Ward 6: Incumbent Dan Bostrom pulls off a decent 54-46 win.
Ward 7: Incumbent Kathy Hantry in a landslide, 71-29

Nothing overtly interesting, despite some odd results in places.

[Jake]

We will elect County Commissioners and County Row Offices. State judges also.

The two incumbent two term Republicans (Mead and Litwin) are running as a ticket after defeating four other Republicans in the primary (first contested primary in some time). One of the other Republicans (Keiser) is planning a write-in campaign. The two Democrats running are the incumbent one termer (Bartron) and an Irish guy who I know from Church (Cronin). It's likely that Cronin will be elected as the Democrat. I would usually say there would be two Republicans elected, but Keiser is running as the anti-incumbent and the Mead and Litwin only pulled ~20% each in the primary, compared to Keiser at ~17%. There is certainly some discontent with both of them.

Row Offices shouldn't be competitive at all (ie Republican victories throughout).

Fairly boring elections. Keiser punted the idea of an independent bid under pressure from local GOP leaders who were worried about two Democrats winning election. The incumbents all ended up winning however.

Mead (GOP) (i) - 48.3% of voters
Litwin (GOP) (i) - 46.7%
Bartron (Dem) (i) - 45.5%
Cronin (Dem) - 36.9%
Under votes - 20.8%

Two interesting notes. 1. The sheer total of under votes. I don't have historical figures, but 20% of voters chose only one or no candidate, which has to be high for the only high profile race on the ballot. 2. Democrats won 46% of valid votes, while Republicans won 54%. This in a 60-40 Bush county. The incumbent sheriff (GOP) won 64% and in the auditor's race the incumbent GOP'ers won 62%.

Ho-hum mostly. There was controversy over the incumbent sheriff forcing people the remove campaign signs for his opponent for violating borough codes of some twisted interpretation.

And I've decided to run for Borough Council in two years, just because there is never anyone on the ballot and it'd be interesting to see how local government operates.

[AndrewTX]

Our republican Mayor won with re-election with 58% of the vote, and I lost my council seat by 200 votes. Oh well, time to find a Commission to serve on.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Mayor Joe Curtatone won re-election here by something along the lines of 81%.  I'd assume him to be headed to congress when the seat opens up here.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Here's something kind of amusing (although certainly not positive)

We also had school board elections. For some reason (I don't know why), there was separate ones, a "special election" and the main one. For the main election, you had 4 votes, and the top 4 vote getters of 6 candidates won. I won't post those results because they're non-partisan and even I don't know about the people running. But the special election was a straight-up two-way non-partisan one. And how did it turn out?

ESTELA MORENO    729   14.40   
DAVE SUNDERMAN    4316   85.28   
WRITE-IN**    16   0.32

Ah, what's in a name...

[Kevinstat]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

I thought that the Maine House was already 90-59-2 after the Special election in June.

What probably got you confused is that although 88 Democrats, 61 Republicans and 2 Independents were eventually determined to have been elected to the Maine House in the November 7, 2006 General Election, one of the Republicans, an incumbent, had trailed on the election night count and although he led after the recount (and with the number of disputed votes not enough to affect the outcome), the Democrat refused to concede as the number of votes in that race was greater (by significantly more than the Republican's margin) than the number of voters from that district who had voted (the district consisted of part of the town of Standish a few towns to the west of Portland, and some voters in the smaller portion of Standish in the other House district may have been given ballots for the wrong district - that isn't unheard of in Maine, with several precincts, often one-precinct municipalities, being divided among state House districts, which is one of the reasons I think the size of the House should be reduced).

The Democrat eventually conceded, and the Republican incumbent was in office by the third business day or so of the Legislature in January, but not until after the December inaugaration session when that Democrat, and another Democrat whose Republican incumbent opponent eventually conceded (the number of ballots with that race on them in Presque Isle which is partly in that district was less than the number of voters who from that section of Presque Isle who had voted), were provisionally sworn in and seated (by virtue of having been the apparent winner from the election night count, according to state law).  So at the beginning of the Legislature there were 89 Democrats, 60 Republicans and 2 Unenrolled (Independent) provisional or non-provisional Representatives in the Maine House.  The tally was 88-61-2 from early January to GOP Rep. Abby Holman's death in early April, however, and Democrat Deane Jones's win in the special election to replace her brought the tally (back, in a sense) to 89-60-2.

[Kevinstat]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

Why is the split in the Maine Senate so tight compared to the House?

I need to be headed to bed (my last post took me longer than it should have), but see my post in the States where Republicans picked up legislature seats in 2006 thread from late July and early August.  In the House elections last year, the kind of factors that helped a Republican win my state Senate seat worked in reverse.  One incumbent House Republican in Augusta refused to meet with the editorial board of the local newspaper the Kennebec Journal, which had endorsed her leading opponent in 2005 in a city council election where she lost her seat, calling her anti-business.  Whatever her justification for not meeting the editors, it wasn't very tactful (the KJ heaped on her for that, and the Representative's mother wrote a letter to the editor basically attacking the KJ for picking on her daughter, who must have been in her 30s at least), and the Democrats ran a popular school committee member and won 61% to 39%.  In another state House district in Augusta, an open seat which had been held by a Republican from 1994 until 2002 and which the GOP targetted (with the wife of one of the higher-ups in the state party), a vocal social (and fiscal, but his focus was on social issues) conservative who handily lost the primary to the insider's wife failed to rally behind the winner, and the Democratic incumbent didn't withdraw until after the primaries and may have essentially tagged out (he had had his nose bloodied the year before in a city council race himself) and his replacement on the Democratic "ticket" (Maine got rid of the "big box" in the early '70s) may have actually benefitted his party's chances.  One Republican incumbent was sued by one of his constituents (a woman and her husband, actually, I believe), for statements he made about her in an op-ed or a letter to the editor in responce to a letter or op-ed of hers.  And a fair number of Republican candidates had to be replaced after the primary (many of those might have been placeholders), and while on a conservative web site I frequent some of the replacements were talked up but the results tell a different story.  Republicans have generally been more competitive at state Senate races (the Democrats didn't capture the Senate after the abborational 1964 Goldwater debacle until 1982, 8 years after they won the state House, and the Democrats elected a minority of Senators in 1994 (when Republicans won an 18-16-1 majority) and 2000 (when the Senate was 17-17-1 until the Democrats gained a seat in an early 2002 special election) while they have never done so in the house since 1974 (although they have dipped under half a few times due to partisan defections - never 76 Republicans though).  That may cause Republicans to put more effort in Senate races.  The smaller House districts may also help Democrats in that policy positions (Mainers aren't exactly happy with the high tax burden) can play second fiddle to a record of service in the community (although that shouldn't excuse Republicans for not fielding more candidates who are competative in that regard).

That's my take anyway.  I wasn't so brief here after all.

[Jake]

Other local elections were brutal to Republicans.

In Luzerne County, Democrats swept every row office, defeating the Republican incumbent sheriff and another officer (forget which). They also won both commissioners seats heavily, won the Wilkes-Barre mayoral election easily, and swept the seats on the Wilkes-Barre City Council (which was elected by districts for the first time). All in all, not a good day. Normal doom and gloom for the losing party in the papers today.

In Lackawanna County, the incumbent majority GOP commissioners (elected as a majority in 2003 for the first GOP majority in decades) were defeated rather heavily. Democrats both got almost identical totals (41,176 and 41,155) and Republicans got almost identical totals (18121 and 18051). Just a full on drubbing - 69% to 31%. Course, they both are under investigation and running in a 56-42 Bush-Kerry county, but the victory was as big as Casey's. Row offices went all Democrat as well.

Just checked, Luzerne GOP lost Recorder of Deeds as well.