Just One Thing: Republicans get clobbered

Please read and subscribe to my Substack. A detailed note today, different (but similar to) the note below: Wipeout - by Ross Kaminsky - The Ross Report

Here in Colorado, the ridiculous propositions LL and MM passed easily.

In Denver, Referendum 310, regarding overturning the city's ban on flavored tobacco and vape products, passed easily meaning the ban stays in place.

Also in Denver, the ballot measures 2A-2E which comprise the "Vibrant Denver" billion-dollar bond (borrowing) package passed easily

In Aurora, it appears that leftists won every city council race and it appears that Danielle Jurinsky who has done more for that city as far as getting the federal government (and perhaps the local police as well) to focus on getting illegal alien criminal gangs out of Aurora, appears to have lost her seat, as did the other Republican (an Ethiopian immigrant.)

In school board races, in every race I've looked at so far, the union-backed candidate won. What a disaster.

Elsewhere around the country:

It was a bad night for Republicans. Whether it's a bad night for Trump will be a matter of who is framing the conversation. Democrats will say the whole night was a referendum on Trump (which is I think is true) and Republicans will argue that an odd-year election, not even a congressional midterm, means nothing.

Part of the issue seems to be that Trump (and Republicans) ran last year on cost-of-living issues. Instead, Trump is focused on almost everything else, whether foreign policy or retribution against political opponents or tariffs -- and I think a lot of Americans know that tariffs raise their costs. Trump says that grocery prices are coming down but everybody knows they're not because we see them at least once a week and usually more often than that. And, despite what Trump says, it's NOT just beef.

It seems clear that, as has always been the case in the age of Trump, MAGA voters do NOT turn out in elections in which Trump is not on the ballot. Hardly a base on which the GOP can build its hopes. I'd be very worried if I were congressional GOP leadership and probably a bit worried if I were a Republican presidential hopeful, even JD Vance (who does not have a small fraction of Trump's charisma), even though the next presidential election is three years away.

In New York City, a communist anti-Semite is the mayor-elect. Unless there is a family issue that requires me to go there, I will not visit New York while Zohran Mamdani is mayor and, frankly, I hope the city suffers a lot and learns the lesson. Or at least that other places say, "Oh, crap, we'd better not do that."

In New Jersey, the cost of living is insane. Residents are furious about the massive spike in their electricity bills due to the Democrat governor's enthusiasm for stupid "green" policies. And NJ moved FAR toward Trump in 2024 vs 2020. But even all that wasn't enough to pull the Republican over the finish line as Mikie Sherrill (a former Navy helicopter pilot) becomes that state's second female governor. (Not that her gender is important.) Indeed, the Republican seemed to underperform expectations and polls -- and his own performance 4 years ago -- which is very interesting. In fact the Democrat won by more than any recent poll suggested and the Republican did 5 points worse than he did four years ago.

In Virgina, former CIA employee Abigail Spanberger becomes that state's first female governor (same caveat as above), easily beating the black female conservative Republican candidate, Winsome Earle-Sears, who never really got traction. In this race, like in NJ, the Democratic candidate significantly outperformed pre-election polling. I also note that northern VA has lots of voters who work for the federal government or for contractors with federal contracts, all of whom are being harmed by the gov't shutdown. Virginia almost never elects a governor of the same party as the president and this result is not a surprise.

I do note that in NJ and VA, the Democratic candidates are women who served their nation and position themselves as moderates. I suspect they won't govern that way but I hope I'm pleasantly surprised. It's really only NY where the candidate ran to the far left and if I were to try to talk myself into feeling a little better about the night, it would be to say that New York is far from typical. It's a very leftist and very foreign-born electorate that really doesn't have an analog in any other American city except possibly Los Angeles. I hope that large employers abandon the city, that unemployment spikes, and that socialists get destroyed in future elections there. That said, I'm not optimistic about any of that, in part because a lot of what Mamdani wants to do requires the cooperation of the state legislature and, as leftist as it is in New York, they're usually not as insane as Mamdani who represents not just something I don't recognize in American politics but a truly anti-American wing of Democratic voters. Like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar but maybe even worse, if that's possible.

In the VA attorney general race, the execrable Jay Jones who daydreamed about the murder of a Republican colleague in the state legislature, who pondered the Republican's children dying in their mother's arms, who seemed to hope that police officers would get killed "to make the streets safer" was elected the new AG. Incredible. The fact that he won shows probably more than any other election yesterday at how EVERY election is now a referendum on Trump, on GOP vs Dem, and basically not about the candidate himself or herself.

In California, Proposition 50, Gavin Newson's dual-purpose measure to override the state constitution to allow ("temporarily") for the Democratic state legislature rather than bipartisan commissions to redraw congressional districts, won easily. By dual-purpose I mean that it both allows California to try to offset Texas's redistricting which is expected to add Republican seats, and that it boosts his esteem among potential Democratic primary voters for the 2028 presidential election for pushing back against Trump.

In Pennsylvania, three Democratic justices on the State Supreme Court won retention by roughly 60%-40% margins. I guess you could say that corralling 40% of voters to vote "no" on retaining judges is pretty good but still it ended up not really being close.

In Georgia, for the first time in 25 years, a Democrat (actually two) won an election for the state's Public Utilities Commission.

Regarding Jones, I noted this yesterday:

Mandy Connell