ELECTON THOUGHTS

And then there is New Jersey.

I have not yet read or listen to the pundits take on the election results. 

However, it is obvious that Democracy works in most of this nation.

In Seven Blue states the Republican Party won Senate seats that had belonged to Democrats and in two states, Alaska where the final vote tally was not in and Louisiana where there will b e a runoff election, the Republican was leading.

A 9 seat change is a catastrophe. That means that in at least those states the electorate voted their opinion not the party ticket.

New Jersey is a horse of another color. A heavily industrialized urban state its party affiliations tend to be Democratic. Thus in National elections the chances of a Republican Senate candidate winning is slight. 

For a Republican to become Governor an incumbent Democrat has to be the world’s greatest “FU”. Consider who preceded Christie.

There can be little change in the Assembly  and the State Senate since the districts have been so gerrymandered over the past two decades that 90+% of the seats are “safe”. This applies also to the Congressional districts.

Almost all the NJ Counties have strong entrenched party leadership, Republican or Democrat depending on it being urbanized or suburban/rural. Union is no exception. Consider the Republican Party had only one Candidate running for the 3 Freeholder seats!

That brings me to our city elections. The results were of no surprise. I had expressed my opinions as was my right. I had hope that the large nonaffiliated electorate would finally overcome its antipathy and come out and vote. Obviously that was not to be.

The turnout was poor however in the 2^nd and 3^rd wards representing  about 30% of registered voters. There was in both wards an increase in protest votes for the Republican line holder over the number of registered Republicans in those wards.

However I had been hoping for a better turn out. It had been apparent that the Green strategy was to run a low key campaign in those wards in order not to increase interest.

Perhaps it was the realization that there could be no change in the overall makeup of the city government. We are an impatient society that does not understand that real change comes in small steps.

It is hard to explain the repudiation of the local party leadership in the BOE elections where the Campbell ticket once again prevailed by a small majority. The results here may have been due to the quality of the candidates that caused sufficient numbers to abandon the party line.  

Perhaps you can supply me with an explanation.

More tomorrow.