EMPTY TEA LEAVES
John Podhoretz
NEW YORK Post Opinion
November 9, 2005
YOU'RE going to be hearing that the elections last night were a stunning victory for the Democrats and a stunning repudiation of George W. Bush. That's a major stretch, and I'm not saying that because I'm a conservative rooting for the Republicans. I mean, I am — but I'd be honest enough to acknowledge a major sign of American party realignment if there had been one.
The plain facts are these. There were three major elections, and in each case the incumbent party retained the seat in contention.
Here in New York, the mayoralty has remained in the possession of Republican Mike Bloomberg. OK, Bloomberg is a Republican only in name, but still, his reasonably friendly relationship with the administration in Washington didn't hurt him a bit.
Two governorships were up for grabs, one in Virginia and one in New Jersey. Both are now occupied by Democrats. And in yesterday's election, voters in those states decided that those Democratic governors will be succeeded by . . . Democrats.
Now, it's true that George W. Bush won Virginia by 8 percentage points in 2004, while Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore appears to have lost by 5 points. But if you think Kilgore's loss reflects Bush's weakness and a nightmare for the GOP in 2006, consider this:
Bush won Virginia by eight points in 2000, too — and the following year Democrat Mark Warner became governor with a 5-point margin of victory. The next year, in 2002, Republicans won a stunning midterm victory, taking four Senate seats and expanding their majority in the House of Representatives.
Those results suggest that the outcome of the Virginia governor's race will have nothing whatsoever to do with what happens in November 2006.
In New Jersey, the gubernatorial victory of Sen. Jon Corzine also tells us very little about whether President Bush's current troubles reflect a looming disaster for the GOP. It does tell us that voters in New Jersey are now far more reliably Democratic than at any time in memory. Even the grotesque corruption scandals that have afflicted the Democratic Party and caused the abrupt departures of a senator and a governor in recent years haven't given Garden State voters enough of a reason to hand Republican Doug Forrester a victory.
Or maybe the fault lies with Forrester and the state party that nominated him twice. After all, he was the Republican candidate for Senate who lost by 10 points after Bob Torricelli quit in 2002. Last night he lost to Corzine by 11 points. New Jersey Republicans should consider giving a different candidate a shot next time.
The lack of a nationwide trend can also be seen in the results of the ballot initiatives in Ohio and California. In Ohio, which leans Republican, Democratic activists sought to push through four ballot reform measures to address the supposed "theft" of the state's electoral votes by George W. Bush last year. All four lost by sizable margins.
California is a very Democratic state with an idiosyncratic Republican governor who won his seat under odd circumstances. Arnold Schwarzenegger also put four initiatives on the ballot intended to reform the way state government does business. Liberal Democratic interests in the state slammed the initiatives and, as I write, all four are expected to lose.
To sum up: Incumbent party victories in two states and one city. A Republican state rejected Democratic initiatives. A Democratic state rejected Republican initiatives.
Don't let the Democratic spin doctors fool you. Election Day 2005 has nothing to tell us about where the electorate is going in the wake of Bush's terrible year.
E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com
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