Yesterday was Election Day in scattered parts of the country, and it was not a terribly successful election night in Wingnut World. Two ballot initiatives of special importance to hard-core conservative activists—Ohio’s Issue 2, an effort to overturn the state’s anti-public-union legislation, and Mississippi’s ballot item #26, an initiative to define legally protected human “personhood” as arising at the moment of conception—both went pretty solidly the wrong way from their perspective. Another less-visible initiative, in Maine, aimed at restoring same-day voter registration, which conservatives invariably oppose, passed easily, though Mississippi voters did approve a new voter ID law.
Statewide elections went as expected. Democratic KY Governor Steve Beshear was comfortably re-elected despite last minute charges by his Republican opponent that his presence at a Hindu ceremony connected to an Indian company plant opening indicated he didn’t love Jesus. In Mississippi, Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, a strong supporter of the Personhood initiative and a wingnut in good standing, nonetheless easily won the governorship over Hattiesburg mayor Johnny DuPree, the state’s first African-American gubernatorial nominee.
Downballot, Democrats easily won an Iowa special election to hold onto control of the state Senate (Republicans control the House and the governorship), but in Virginia, lost enough Senate seats to throw control of that chamber into a deadlock (there, too, GOPers control the governorship and the House), probably compelling a power-sharing arrangement.
But the big national news of the night involved the ballot initiatives in OH and MS. Repealing Gov. John Kasich’s S.B. 5, which radically limited collective bargaining rights for public employee unions, was a major national priority for labor, and also attracted a high-dollar pushback from out-of-state business and conservative groups, especially in the last few days before the vote. The margin of victory for the “No on 2” forces, 61-39, exceeded most expectations, and could affect anti-labor initiatives in other states. Given Ohio’s pivotal position in presidential elections, the vote will also be viewed by some as a trial heat for GOTV efforts in 2012, and as a reminder that the GOP’s success in 2010 was not necessarily part of a multi-cycle trend.
Mississippi’s Personhood ballot initiative also had considerable national implications, representing the most audacious goals envisioned in the anti-choice movement’s ongoing drive to undermine abortion rights at the state level. Aimed at defining human life as beginning at the moment of fertilization, Personhood initiatives are broadly understood as aimed not only at a total, no-exceptions abortion ban, but at an ultimate ban on birth control methods (the day-after pill, IUDs, and arguably oral contraceptives) that act after fertilization. A Personhood ballot initiative in Colorado failed dismally in 2010, but its proponents figured a state like Mississippi would be (if you will excuse the expression) more fertile ground, and succeeded in obtaining overwhelming support from GOP elected officials in the state, and even some Democrats. The 58-42 margin of defeat for the initiative on what was otherwise a fine day for Mississippi conservatives showed significant defections by GOP voters. In Harrison County (Biloxi), for example, a county where John McCain won 63 percent of the vote in 2008, and where voters yesterday gave a conservative voter ID initiative 64 percent, only 35 percent voted for the Personhood initiative.
While Personhood initiatives may continue to pop up, the Mississippi results will probably convince anti-choice activists to refocus on the more incremental strategy of “fetal pain” legislation and other restrictions based on the timing and nature of abortions, which are still in a constitutional limbo until court challenges are heard, along with an intensified effort to elect a Republican president in 2012.
The interest in yesterday’s elections provided a small and probably insignificant respite for presidential candidate Herman Cain, whose political condition has worsened dramatically thanks to the emergence of one of his two original sexual harassment accusers, and the appearance of a third woman who claims Cain committed what amounts to sexual assault. The Cain campaign’s poor handling of the allegations has continued, with the candidate holding a widely derided press conference yesterday to issue a series of wild conspiracy accusations, and a potentially self-destructive offer to take a polygraph exam. The saga shows no signs of ending soon, and although Cain has maintained his national and early-state first- or second-place standing in most of the scattered polling conducted after the allegations first emerged last week, there are signs it’s beginning to take a toll. Just as importantly, Cain’s erratic handling of the mess is beginning to embolden conservative opinion-leaders to break ranks and either challenge his account of his behavior, or simply write him off as too politically inept to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
Assuming Cain either weakens or crashes, the big question is whether that development will (a) cause Republicans to begin to unite around Mitt Romney as the safest choice in an exceptionally unstable field, (b) fuel a comeback by Rick Perry, from who Cain harvested the bulk of his October polling surge, or (c) lead to a late pre-Iowa surge by some other candidate with Tea Party appeal, such as Newt Gingrich or even Rick Santorum (whose monomaniacal grassroots campaign in Iowa is drawing some positive attention).
The only candidate who seems to have been gaining in the polls during Cain’s unraveling is Gingrich; a battery of new PPP polls in Mississippi, Ohio, and the Iowa state senate district holding a special election yesterday, all showed something of a Gingrich surge (he’s actually leading the field in MS).
The prospect of what he called “The Newtening” was so shocking to shrewd political analyst Jonathan Chait that he concluded: “It is probably time for me to stop making predictions of any kind about this race.” At a minimum, the pre-election candidacy crisis in Wingnut World should deter us all from betting the farm on any specific outcome.
Photo Credit: bjmccray
