Victory!

Yesterday voters in Virginia and New Jersey elected Republican governors. The margin of victory in New Jersey where the Democrat, Jon Corzine, was the incumbent - and spent around 40 million dollars of his own money and had Barack Obama visiting the state several times to campaign for him - was 5%. The New Jersey race also saw the participation of an independent candidate, Chris Daggett, who pretended to be a conservative but was actually running with the financial backing of the state's Democrat party in an attempt to siphon off votes from the Republican Chris Christy.

The margin of victory in Virginia where the seat was open was 18%. The Virginia race was also marked by repeated appearances by Barack Obama campaigning for the Democrat candidate, Creigh Deeds, and by the Washington Post's endorsement of the Democrat candidate. This race meant so much to president Obama, who wanted to hold onto Virginia for his party after it went for him in last year's presidential election - voting Democrat in a national election for the first time since the early 1960's - that he even sent his own political operatives to manage the Deeds campaign.

The Virginia race is extremely important because it cast a genuinely conservative Republican, Bob McDonnell, against a liberal Democrat in a one-to-one matchup with no independent or third party candidate acting as a stalking horse for the Democrat.

In the House race in New York's 23 congressional district Democrat Bill Owens was able to defeat Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman with a plurality of the vote of 49% against Mr. Hoffman's 46% and nominal Republican Dede Scozzafava, who had endorsed the Democrat and remained in the race to act as a spoiler sabotaging the Hoffman bid, netting 6% of the vote.

It is unfortunate that there were enough blind party-loyalists in NY23 who were unable to see that their district and party and nation would be better served by not voting for the Republican candidate in this race. However this was only a special election to fill the seat until next year's midterm elections and Mr. Owens is going to join a Democrat majority which is deeply unpopular and under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi has little prospect of improving its standing with the American people.

All in all it was a good night for the nation.

Now on to 2010!