Legislative (day) afterthoughts
I think we'll all be digesting what the outcome of the General Assembly elections mean for a while. But here are a few nuggets as the smoke clears:
- Democratic House Speaker Jim Black's troubles were his own. While it's remarkable he only leads his race by seven votes, it doesn’t look like his problems bled over to any other state House races.
- Current accounting says Democrats will hold at least 67 of the Houses' 120 seats. Democrats look to control 31 of the 50 senate seats next year. In both cases, they’ve build on their majorities.
- Just because Democrats have cushy majorities, don't expect everything to be all peachy. There are different flavors of Democrats, from pro-business conservatives on down to save-the-whale liberals. Caucus meetings might get more raucous, not less so.
- Following from the last point, just because the Republicans hold a smaller minority, they aren't irrelevant. If the GOP could tolerate working across the isle with some conservative dems (and visa versa), you could wind up seeing some interesting votes.
- For sheer character and amusement value, Alamance County Republican Sen. Hugh Websters' defeat is a great loss to the Senate. The man is a very funny, smart guy, even if he was on the losing end of a lot of 49-1 votes.
- It will be very interesting in two years to see if Democrats can hold onto Republican leaning districts that they picked up Tuesday. There are some mountain counties one doesn't expect to buck the GOP swimming in the Democratic wave.
Comments (2)
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Hugh Webster, lost for one reason, he stood up for the people. When he stood up for the people on eminent domain that was the last straw for liberals like your paper that belive not only does all their money belong to Tax Hike Mike, but land they have worked for years, belong to eminent domain Mike and his rich friends. Why do you not write a good story on how our leaders refused to pass a property rights measure, and refused to let us vote on it. It is the worst of all 50 states. Has you liberal paper even published one LTE on this subject?
Posted on November 9, 2006 5:42 AM
Doug:
I can't speak to letters to the editor. You'd have to ask Allen Johnson or Doug Clark about those.
As for Hugh, a few things caught up with him. Voter registration in his district runs nearly 50 percent Demcoratic, with Republicans making up 34 percent. He has managed to stay in office for six terms because he's persoanlly popular. However, the frustration with national Republicans that was evidenced in this election filtered down to the local races.
I also think Hugh was hurt somewhat by the 13th Congressional District campaign. As hard as Vernon worked to turn out voters, Miller's folks worked equally hard or harder. All those Dems coming to the polls to back Miller didn't ticket split lower down.
I would think that the message of personal property rights that you're talking about with the eminent domain question would have served him well among voters and can't imagine anyone would have had an effective campaign message challenging him on the topic.
Posted on November 9, 2006 10:38 AM