WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Voters in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City were definitely ambiguous in the choices they made Tuesday, leading political experts on both sides of the aisle to call the results "trendless."
"The traditional crowing after a couple of victories like this one doesn't exist," Peter Fenn, a first-tier Democrat political strategist said. "In a sense, it is a trendless election."
Democrats captured the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia from Republicans while in New York, the GOP scored the upset of the night by retaining control of Gracie Mansion.
The most decisive victory of the night for Democrats came in New Jersey. The party took control of the state assembly for the first time in 10 years. The likely outcome of the fight for the state senate is a 20-20 tie. Republicans attribute some of the gains to a new legislative map that worked to the benefit of the Democrats, though Schundler's poor performance certainly added seats to the turnover.
"There were so many different things to contend with. With McGreevey, almost 50 percent of the people voted for him last time. It was clear going in that the Republicans were in for a tough time going in," Republican consultant John Morgan said.
The results in Virginia were mixed. While eking out a win for governor and lieutenant governor, the Democrat nominee for attorney general was decisively thumped by Jerry Kilgore, a former member of the House of Delegates who served in the cabinet of former GOP Gov. George Allen.
The GOP also picked up seats in the lower house of the state legislature, something Democrats attribute in part to the recent redistricting.
The New York mayoral race, which showed Republican Michael Bloomberg with a lead of 2 percentage points at 10 PM Tuesday night, has many people scratching their heads.
"This is a very non-traditional off year election," Fenn said. "You had a president and, in a sense, a political apparatus on both sides of the aisle who had a hell of a time engaging after Sept. 11."
Republicans echo this sentiment.
"After Sept. 11, the four gubernatorial candidates suspended their campaigns only to start up again two to three weeks later right where they left off. There were some minor modifications (in the campaigns) but, given the fact that 87 percent of Americans said this would be 'the most tragic news event in their lifetime,' I don't think the campaigns did a good job of addressing the issues that number reflects. I don't think the four campaigns understood," Dave Winston, GOP strategist and pollster, said.
Politically, there are some internal lessons that each party can draw from the results.
Candidate recruitment remains a major issue. Fenn suggests much of the Virginia victory is the result of the star power of now Governor-elect Mark Warner.
"The (gubernatorial) victory in Virginia is especially telling because it is such a strong GOP state. It says something about the kind of candidate the Democrats put up and the kind of campaign he ran," Fenn said.
Republicans and Democrats alike also attribute much of the gain in the state house to the effort that House Speaker Vance Wilkins, R-Amherst, put into candidate recruitment, a job made easier by the number of retirements among senior Democrats that occurred in the fall.
And some Republicans, who all along viewed Earley as a weak candidate, say that a candidate like Mark Warner, who has never held public office, is especially difficult to run against because he can so easily get on offense and stay there.
Democrats, as represented by Fenn, were not disappointed with the narrowness of Warner's victory.
"Anyone who thought he was going to win by double-digits needed to have their head examined," he said. " Just the fact that Warner was able to win says that there was not any kind of a 'let's stick with the Republicans, let's stick with Bush' mentality among voters."
Some Republicans have been critical of President Bush for his failure to campaign in New Jersey and Virginia for the GOP candidates. Winston regards this as the right decision.
Bush's decision to stay out, he said: "didn't affect either race very much. In this environment, he couldn't be a partisan; he has to be the president of everyone. As much as he might have wished to campaign in Virginia and New Jersey, he simply couldn't. He has to be president of everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike."
The outcome in New York was clearly the upset of the night. Fenn points out that the rapid shift to Bloomberg over the last week was nothing short of phenomenal. An erosion of 16 points in one week, as Green experienced, is almost unheard of in politics. But Fenn has an explanation for what may be an extraordinary result.
"We weren't exactly seeing the two paragons of American statesmanship competing in this race," he said. "These two aren't LaGuardia, John Lindsey or Bob Wagner. You had a Democrat-turned-Republican so he could win a nomination with a Clinton and Gore media advisor and a Clinton pollster running against a 'Nader raider' endorsed by Clinton. It is a bizarre scenario."
It is also, he said, an endorsement of outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose "endorsement on Sept. 10 would have been greeted with mild appreciation. Coming when it did, it was like a bolt from Zeus."
Voters who felt economy was the most important issue went for Bloomberg by a substantial margin. Additionally the Hispanic vote appears to have split evenly between the two candidates, not a normal pattern for latinos in New Yrok City.
Partisans on both sides suggest there is nothing in Tuesday's results to suggest any kind of a trend.
According to Winston, the election is "not a bellwether, although you can't say it won't have some impact. You have watched every campaign's struggle with a new environment," referring to the post-Sept. 11 period, "and not particularly well. What I think you ultimately saw was an inability to adapt their campaigns to that new environment."
Fenn agrees with the assessment, saying, "The best word to describe these elections is 'idiosyncratic.'"
