I don’t think I’ve ever given so much attention to an odd year election as I did this year. We have an election every year in Virginia, seemingly whether we need one or not and this year it was the house of delegates, state senate, county board of supervisors, school board and some other local stuff.
It seems kind of odd that I would be paying attention since my delegate and senator were running unopposed and I like the job that both of them have been doing. But, there were other races that I found I cared about and the results I got were a mixed bag.
It was great to see Delegates Caputo, Englin and Poisson get re-elected. And we got rid of one socially regressive senator (O’Brien) and replaced him with someone much more progressive (Barker). This was particularly gratifying because the Virginia Republican Party put out these anti-gay attack ads right at the end of the campaign.
Unfortunately it looks like Senator Cucinelli will hold on to his seat though by only the slimmest of margins. It was so close I suppose they have to do a recount but the odds of it changing probably aren’t good.
I don’t have any kids but I was happy to see Stephen Hunt get voted out of office on he school board. He used his position to launch an anti-gay attack a couple of years ago and we sure don’t need that in Fairfax County.
So, it was a mixed bag in that we didn’t win them all but we didn’t lose any ground and we made some progress.
Perhaps the most interesting race was the Devolites Davis/Petersen race. I wasn’t thrilled with either candidate and had no idea how it would come out but I expected it would be close. Turns out Petersen won easily. The only real advantage I see is that his win gives the democrats control of the senate and hopefully that will put an end to any anti-gay legislation out of Richmond, at least for 2008.
