Looking at yesterday’s off-year election returns, it appears that the Schumer shutdown is just what the Democrat doctor ordered. For Republicans, the results depict 7 rooms of gloom, to borrow the title of the old Four Tops song. There is no silver lining.
Wherever an apparently competitive race took place, Democrats won. They won big. Everywhere, on every issue, including Gavin Newsom’s a/k/a Republican reduction redistricting plan in California (Proposition 50). Message: Newsom is the Dem to beat in 2028.
Even though his allegiance lies with the Democratic Socialists of America, New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is the new face of the Democratic Party. He is a wildly anti-Semitic Marxist true believer, but pay no never mind. The with-it Dems have surrendered to him. He represents the party’s tell-tale heart. Run Lola run!
Even Jay Jones handily won his race for Virginia Attorney General — 53.1 percent to 46.5 percent. Jones is the man who who vividly wished death on his political opponent and family. He represents the party’s id. Not a single Democrat denounced Jones. They identify with him. He just got caught. Now he’ll wield the badge of law enforcement along with his fevered dreams of murder. Defeated incumbent Jason Miyares deserved better.
In Virginia’s gubernatorial election, the vacuous Abigail Spanberger won big over Winsome Earle-Sears. “Big” equals just over 15 points. We will miss outgoing incumbent Glenn Youngkin. I hope he remains active on the scene in Virginia and in Republican politics.
I thought a star was born when the winsom Winsome was elected lieutenant governor in Virginia’s 2021 off-year election. She should find a fitting place in the Trump administration or elsewhere. She is a good spokesman for the principles of the Republican Party.
In New Jersey Mikie Sherrill won big over Jack Ciatterelli. In this case, “big” equals 13 points. Dreams of a Ciatterelli victory went down in a toxic New Jersey waste dump.
Minneapolis’s mayoral race featured another DSA member, the ideologically fetid Omar Fateh. Fateh ran to the left of incumbent Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey. I visited a friend in a nursing home on Minneapolis’s Cedar Lake yesterday. The nursing home hosted a busy polling place. I helped my friend vote in the election. The ballot listed 15 candidates for mayor in small print. It was not easy to find Frey on the list.
My friend voted for Frey. If I lived in Minneapolis, I would have voted for Frey. As it turns out, Frey handily beat Fateh by 10 points, 42 percent to 32 percent. However, there is a wrinkle. Minneapolis has adopted ranked-choice voting. Voters were asked to rank up to three different candidates. No candidate received enough first-choice votes to be elected.
Round-by-round tabulation for this race will begin today. The three candidates most competitive with Frey agreed to support each other in the ranked-choice voting. They adopted an anyone-but-him strategy. Fateh could win with 32 percent “first-choice votes,” as they call them. This all makes perfect sense to Star Tribune columnist Eric Roper.
Helping my friend make his way through the Minneapolis ballot yesterday gave me a lot to think about. At the moment I can only say, as Power Line readers may have inferred over the years, Minneapolis is fruitopia and the Star Tribune is an aggravating cause.
