Late Election Roundup

It's been a year since the stunning presidential election of 2016, and I clearly recall where I was when the biggest electoral upset in American history occurred. For reasons I won't get into here, I spent that Election Night in circumstances that meant I had no access to a television set or computer. Instead, all I had was a radio, and not a very good one. It had difficulty getting stations, and the only one that was coming in at all clear was WHMP in Northampton. For their presidential election coverage, they had the analytical team of Greenfield reporter Chris Collins and leftist Attorney Bill Newman.

I didn't mind my limited media access, because I didn't expect to hear much good election news that night anyway. I recall that the first time I realized something unusual was up was when I heard that exit polls were showing that about 25% of Hispanics voted for Trump, only a few percentage points less than Mitt Romney got in 2012, meaning that despite Trump's controversial statements about some immigrants, Republican Hispanics were sticking with their party. Later it became apparent that Virginia, the home state of Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, was not the landslide win that was expected, meaning Hillary was underperforming even where she should've been winning handily. Then one by one, each of the major states Trump needed to win fell into his column.

It was really something to listen to how the radio hosts Collins and Newman responded as the electoral momentum accelerated in Trump's favor. Chris Collins seemed surprised, but mostly amused to see all the conventional wisdom of the political experts get thrown out the window. As for Atty. Newman, he grew openly despondent, speaking in increasingly apocalyptic terms, until at one point it sounded almost as if he had fallen out of his chair!

A year later, the 2017 elections were much less dramatic, certainly there was little to knock anyone out of their chair. Still, there were some things worth noting, so here's a recap of what went down:

New Jersey - Despite being the state with the largest population in play, this race was basically a snoozer, with little doubt of the outcome at any point in the campaign. In this heavily Democratic state, to no one's surprise the Democrat won handily to succeed the very unpopular retiring Republican incumbent Chris Christie, who squandered his popularity trying to appease Democrats and Republicans equally, thereby succeeding in alienating both. Christie's terrible fall is a sobering warning to all GOPers who think they can play it both ways and win.

Virginia - This race was more interesting, but not on the gubernatorial level. Here, once again, the Democratic candidate had always been considered the front runner by a comfortable margin of about 15 points. Late polls indicated the race was tightening in the home stretch, but the final nine point win by the Democrat shows that there was only a modest five or six point rightward shift, far too little to make the race competitive. The governorship was already in Democratic hands, so no net gain for the Dems, but there were interesting developments further down the ticket, with Democrats winning a bunch of seats in the state legislature, although not enough to end Republican control.

In both New Jersey and Virginia, polling data showed that Republicans vote totals were just as high as they were in those states in 2015. The difference was that in 2017 the turnout by Democrats was significantly higher. That is good news and bad for the Democrats. The good news is that the Democrats were energized to head to the polls to an unprecedented extent. The bad news is that there is little evidence that the victories were because of Republicans switching their loyalty. Unless Democrats can find a message that can do more than energize the faithful and can actually flip GOP voters, it's hard to see how their modest, widely expected wins in 2017 translate into any longterm threat to Republican dominance nationally, despite wishful thinking by a number of media partisans.

Locally, there were some races of interest:

Springfield held its first municipal election with no mayoral race at the top, resulting in an abysmal turnout, although the political culture in Springfield is so dead at this point that turnout rarely tops even ten percent under any circumstances. One bright spot was the return to the City Council of Tim Ryan, who in a previous stint of service around the turn of the century had been a welcome voice of reason during the dark Albano days. It was also good to see commonsense Councilors Kateri Walsh and Michael Fenton returned by voters. Alas, the other open seat went to leftist activist Jesse Lederman, who while council business rarely has an ideological bent, the position gives Lederman a platform from which to aspire to a higher post in the future where he can do more mischief. Voters would have been far wiser to have chosen Kelly Moriarty-Finn or even Victor Davilla instead. Unfortunately, Henry Twiggs, former aide to sleazy ex-State Rep. Ray Jordan, narrowly survived a strong challenge from reformer Robert Kelly. Political has-been James Ferrara and perennial wannabe Bob Collamore were also not successful. The races for Springfield's rubber stamp School Committee were all yawners and without a single new idea in sight.

Holyoke progressives frowned last year when Mayor Alex Morse rejected lefty darling Bernie Sanders in order to throw his support big time behind Hillary Clinton. The move led to speculation that Morse may have had aspirations of heading to Washington as part of a Clinton administration, and it didn't hurt that Hillary seemed personally taken by the young mayor. Of course, such speculations were dashed by Clinton's defeat, but with Morse's re-election to a first ever four year term, he now has a safe perch from which to wait out Trump's term. He also gained new allies on the City Council, so Morse may have less political resistance from the council than in the past, especially with the unfortunate voluntary retirement of Holyoke's star GOPer Kevin Jordain. Despite a wave of bad publicity over a drunk driving incident earlier this year, David Bartley won re-election with 58% of the vote. And why not? If heavy drinkers were banned from politics, half the seats would be empty.

There were a smattering of interesting races in other locales. In Agawam, Republican City Councilor Robert Magovern made a political comeback, but retiring Mayor Richard Cohen's ambitions to serve on the Council got slapped down by the voters with surprising force. Guess everybody's sick of him. Northampton's Mayor David Narkiewicz romped to victory over one issue candidate John Riley, who ran primarily in protest of rising water fees. Meanwhile, an open mayoral position in Easthampton was won by Nicole LaChapelle, one clueless pink hatted lady beating another in a town being torn asunder by attempts to make the town a haven for foreigners who sneak into the country, and whose high school has been taken over by political correctness enforcers due to carefully orchestrated overreactions to minor so-called "racial incidents." Too bad, Easthampton used to be known for its level headedness, especially compared to its neighbor Northampton, but alas, no more. Greenfield continued down the path of folly it has pursued in recent years by putting incompetent liberals in control of their City Council, ensuring more of the same bad policies that have been dragging that city down.

Oh wow, this is the first time I've ever seen Richie Neal in a meme!

Pine Point 1987.

Pine Point 2017.