It’s an off year, but there’s actually quite a lot going on tomorrow. Locally, of course, we’ve got municipal races all over the state. The big stories are the Boston mayoral and at-large city council races, but there are some terrific smaller mayoral, city council, and school committee races to keep an eye on. As just one example, the race to replace the outgoing Mayor of Newton is a very good one: long-time liberal stalwart state rep Ruth Balser is running against former Clinton and Kerry staffer and Iraq war vet Setti Warren. An embarrassment of riches, really — maybe Newton should stop hogging all the good candidates! đŸ˜‰
In other states, the stakes are high. Important Governor’s races are happening in VA and NJ. VA looks to be a lost cause for the Dems at this point; NJ, however, after looking for months like it would be nearly impossible for incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine to win reelection, has recently turned into a genuine dead heat. It has been 24 years since the party holding the White House was able to take either the NJ or VA Governor’s office (NJ Republican Tom Kean’s win in 1985 was the last time), so a comeback win for Corzine in NJ would be huge for the Dems.
And then, of course, there’s the bizarre saga of the NY-23 congressional seat. As you may know, this seat (vacated when Republican incumbent John McHugh accepted President Obama’s offer to become Secretary of the Army) has been reliably Republican for quite some time. But McHugh’s resignation triggered a bizarre series of events in which a Republican state legislator, Dede Scozzafava, enraged the GOP’s teabagger wing by not being sufficiently out of touch with the mainstream of America, thereby creating a groundswell of support for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. (As you may know, because of its unusual adherence to fusion voting, some third parties hold considerable sway in NY.) Recently, it became clear that Scozzafava’s GOP support was fading in favor of Hoffman, whereupon she abruptly withdrew from the race, and the next day endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens, even though Scozzafava herself is a lifelong Republican. Her statement declared that “Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh’s lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress” and that “in Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship.” Recent polling shows that Hoffman has opened up a small lead over Owens, but anything could happen in this fast-moving and very peculiar race.
Finally, there are important gay rights ballot questions in several states. We’ll be watching nearby Maine especially carefully; other states with important questions include WA and MI (in the city of Kalamazoo). We posted this rundown of these questions last week; follow the link for more info.
I’ll be on AM 1510 tomorrow night from 8 to 10 pm with Jeff Santos to talk about the results locally and nationally, and I’ll probably do some liveblogging from the station as results come in. Tune in on radio or live-stream, and follow BMG, for all your election night 2009 needs!
Will have ears/eyes devoted to live local coverage (WCAP and – gasp! – the Lowell Sun online) instead. ;-P
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p>Then we’ll see if Lowell is going to reelect a guy who’s under FBI and DA investigation…or if they will decide the old politics won’t be the new politics. And if we’ll be using choice voting systems in future local elections. Yes on One!
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p>I think it will be an interesting night just in Lowell…the rest of the world will have to wait. đŸ˜‰
This exciting little imbroglio establishes that the “teabagger wing of the Republican Party” is, in fact, the Party itself. That may be one reason Obama appears to have abandoned so many progressive causes. With no one to fear on the right, why should he bow to the left.
If he has nobody to fear on the right, isn’t that exactly when he can get away with drifting left?
That logic doesn’t seem to apply to the Massachusetts Democratic Party…