Fenian_Bastard said:
Meanwhile, in the actual races, the R's beat the incumbent D mayor of Indianapolis, the hopeless Ernie (Good Luck In Prison) Fletcher went down to Democrat Brashear in Kentucky, and maybe our Old Dominion contingent can tell me how much this really means:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110601036.html?nav=hcmodule
It's not terribly surprising. Once you get past Prince William, the rest of NoVa is very Dem-heavy, so it's not surprising that the two tight races went their way. The Petersen/Devolites-Davis race was a bitter one; both sides spent a fair amount of money to get on TV in DC with attack ads.
The tide was turning against the GOP anyway, given W's unpopularity and a general displeasure with the state legislature. The abusive driver fees idea has blown up in their face, for better or worse; and when the outcry was at its loudest, they essentially punted a decision to revisit the issue - which really didn't sit well with the people who were pissed off in the first place. I believe the state legislature also failed to get the budget done last time.
So it's really not that surprising, though the national tidal wave of anti-GOP sentiment is only a part of it.
The races in Prince William got interesting in the past few months, ever since the immigration matter took hold. Saslaw says that immigration wasn't a huge topic statewide, and I'd tend to agree, but it was a huge deal in PWC. Even so, turnout was apparently rather light; I figured with all the coverage and the protests, that would get some other folks out to the polls. Guess not.
Me? I voted purely out of a sense of duty. Saslaw ran against some clown from the Green Party who never bothered to do the least bit of campaigning - a fact noted in the Post a couple of weeks ago. Brian Moran, our delegate, ran unopposed.
I'd considered Saslaw to be part of the problem in the legislature, so I wrote in myself. I don't think I did very well, though.