First Look: Election Day 2017

Happy Election Day eve!  While the elections tomorrow night will not affect the balance of power in Washington, they will have an effect on politics at the local level.  They also may serve as a referendum on the first year of the Trump Presidency.  That’s exactly what happened in 2009 when Republicans swept both gubernatorial races in left-leaning states won by President Obama in 2008.  Voters in those two states effectively gave Saint Obama a vote of no confidence.  Tomorrow night, two gubernatorial races and a special election to fill Jason Chaffetz’s old House seat in Utah will take place.  Chaffetz resigned in June after expressing disgust with “the swamp.”  A good night for Democrats requires that they sweep both gubernatorial races.  A terrible night for Republicans would ensue if the Democrats actually managed to pick up Chaffetz’s old House seat.

 

The two states holding gubernatorial elections this year, New Jersey and Virginia, tend to vote against whichever party won the White House the previous year.  Virginia broke that trend in 2013 when it elected Clinton Loyalist Terry McAuliffe the year after President Obama’s re-election.  It may break that trend again if it decides to vote for Republican Candidate Ed Gillespie this year.  Fairfax County in the northern part of the state remains the biggest obstacle preventing Republicans from winning statewide elections; Gillespie would have won his closer-than-expected Senate bid against incumbent Senator Mark Warner in 2014 if not for Fairfax County.  Check it out, I’ve created a table to help explain:

Race	Statewide Margin	Margin in Fairfax County	Statewide Margin w/o Fairfax County
2014 Senate: Warner (D) vs. Gillespie (R)	Warner +17,727	Warner +53,561	Gillespie +35,834
2013 Governor: McAuliffe (D) vs. Cuccinelli (R)	McAuliffe +56,435	McAuliffe +68,065	Cuccinelli +11,630

Source: Dave Leip’s Presidential Atlas                      

 

In New Jersey, it looks almost certain that Democrat Phil Murphy will win the gubernatorial election; as incumbent Governor Chris Christie currently has record low approval ratings in the teens.  Winning a gubernatorial election in the Garden State shouldn’t come as that much of a challenge for Democrats as President Trump lost New Jersey by a double digit margin to Crooked Hillary.  As Senator Bob Menendez could face expulsion from the Senate pending the outcome of his corruption trial, an upset victory by Republican Kim Guadagno would allow her to appoint a replacement for the remainder of Menendez’s term, which expires next year.  Such a scenario would present an absolute nightmare for the Democrats.      

 

As of right now, the Virginia Gubernatorial Election between Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam looks like the most competitive race of the year. The winner of this contest will replace the term-limited Governor McAuliffe.  Virginia is the only state in the Union that prohibits its Governors from serving two consecutive terms.  The race hit a new low last week when the Latino Victory Fund released an ad depicting a man with a Confederate flag on his truck, an Ed Gillespie sticker on his bumper and a “Don’t tread on me” sticker on his license plate attempting to run over minority children.  Even the Washington Post editorial board condemned the ad.  The polls had previously shown Northam with a consistent lead over Gillespie but the race tightened for a little bit since the release of that ad, which later got pulled after a radical Islamic terrorist rammed into people with a truck in New York City.  Hannity always says that every two to four years the Democrats try to paint the Republicans as racists.  I guess they couldn’t resist doing that in an off-year election as well.  It looks the Democrats have decided to abandon their plan to promote their “economic message” as part of the “better deal” in favor of using the identity politics playbook.  I sure hope it blows up in their faces tomorrow night. 

 

Several mayoral elections will also take place tomorrow night.  Check out this link for a complete list.  No mayoral election will receive as much attention as New York City’s.  The Big Apple, which has a population larger than 38 US states, has an opportunity to unseat Mayor Bill De Blasio; whose tenure as mayor has seen an increase in homelessness and a roll back of the “stop and frisk” policy implemented during Rudy Guliani’s mayoral tenure in an effort to appease the PC police. De Blasio has had a rocky relationship with the actual police; who have turned their backs on him at the funerals of slain police officers.  The NYPD’s contempt for De Blasio stems from his support for Black Lives Matter, which often engages in anti-police rhetoric and comments the Mayor directed towards his biracial son that seems to suggest that police officers have a bias against black people.  You would think the feminists would campaign harder on behalf of his Republican opponent Nicole Malliotakis, who could become New York City’s first female mayor.  But then I remembered the feminists only campaign for left-wing women.  They view conservative women as traitors to their gender. 

 

Unfortunately, it does not look like Al Roker’s “long-range forecast” of a one-term DeBlasio administration will pan out.  Roker made that forecast after De Blasio decided not to close New York City schools ahead of a major snowstorm shortly after taking office.  While De Blasio will probably not match his 2013 vote share of 73 percent, the presence of several third-party candidates in the race will likely split the anti-De Blasio vote; paving the way for his second term.  I bet many New Yorkers wish that The City That Never Sleeps had the same term limits that Virginia has.  They might have to suffer through another eight years of De Blasio since the New York City Council changed the term limits laws allowing mayors to serve three terms.    

 

The last major election of 2017 will take place in Alabama on December 12; the date of the Special Senate Election runoff where Republican Roy Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones.  The winner will finish out the remainder of Jeff Sessions’ senate term; set to expire in 2020.   The Democrats hope to make that their Scott Brown moment; where they pick up a Senate seat in a state than consistently favors the other party. After tomorrow, the Democrats will more likely than not find themselves 0 for 5 in special elections.  I guess #The Resistance didn’t turn out as successful as they had hoped.  The losing streak could continue into early 2018; when two more special House elections will take place.

 

The 2017 elections also mark the end of the first quarter of the first term of the Trump Presidency.  The end of the first quarter of the Trump Presidency coincides with the end of the first half of the 115^th Congress.  President Trump gets high marks for his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, gutting of Obama-era regulations and his commitment to making America safe.  The 115^th Congress has earned very low marks for failing to confirm many of the President’s cabinet nominees as well as their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare after promising to do so for nearly a decade.  For the record, the Senate deserves much of the blame for the inaction on Capitol Hill.  Congress can reverse its misfortune and raise its approval ratings by passing tax reform, implementing the RAISE Act, and speeding up the confirmation of the President’s cabinet nominees.     

 

In less than 48 hours, the 2017 elections will go into the history books.  Soon, I can retire the 2017 Political Calendar and start working on a 2018 Political Calendar.  Election Day 2018 is just one year from today.