Elections!

The country has been hearing about the Democratic victories in New Jersey and, more importantly, Virginia gubernatorial elections. I know a little about the New Jersey election because I get New York TV stations on my satellite service and say the incredibly nasty advertisements both candidates were slinging. I have no idea what anyone in that race stood for; only what they wanted the public to believe about their opponent, true or otherwise. Disgusting.

Here in Virginia there was a fair about of mud-slinging, too, mostly from the Jerry Kilgore camp, who lied and twisted the truth, and let others fabricate on his behalf, as if he learned his particular brand of politicking from Karl Rove and George Bush. Oh, that's right, he did--Kilgore was Bush's Virginia campaign manager, so we know he has no respect for the truth or his constituents. His corporate contributors, maybe, but no one else. And yet, the scary thing is that 46% of the voters actually cast their ballots for this monster. We're very fortunate to have had a smart, sensible, personable Democratic candidate in Tim Kaine. Kaine is only progressive by comparison to Kilgore, but I believe he will be a good governor for Virgnia.

The rest of the results were not so great. Leslie Byrne (running for Lt. Governor) lost by less than 2%, although the polls had shown her down by 6 to 9% just days before the election. Being from Northern Virginia, and the most liberal voice in the campaign, I hadn't been optimistic for her chances anyway. And it looks like we're in for a recount in the Attorney General--Creigh Deeds, our candidate, trails the Republican by about 1500 votes (out of a total of nearly 2 million). We also lost all our local House of Delegates races, which is unfortunate.

Since I worked on the campaign, and also worked inside a polling place on election day (I'm the Chief Officer of Election of the Augusta County Central Absentee Precinct, thank you very much), I'm hoping I can somehow convert all that I did and observed into, at the very least, a short story. Stay tuned.