The Election of 2010

After all the rallies and all the campaign appearances, after all the campaign signs and billboards, after all the political commercials on radio and TV, the election of 2010 finally arrived. That's the one day the politicians take a back seat to the nation's voters. It's when the citizens of the country have their say. Trever (of the Albuquerque Journal) puts it this way:

And the voters had their say. I doubt anyone was completely happy. In this state, for example, the Republicans were happy to end the era of two-term Governor Bill Richardson by defeating his hand-picked successor and serving Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish, and by taking the office of the Secretary of State (defeating the incumbent) for the first time since 1930. But the Democrats were happy to re-elect the Attorney General, Treasurer, and Auditor.

Both sides were unhappy with the Congressional results. The Republicans knocked off the most inoffensive of the state's three first-term Democrats in Congress (Harry Teague in the second district). The more offensive incumbents, Martin Heinrich in the first district (Albuquerque) and Ben Ray Lujan in the third (the northern district) won re-election.

In general, I agree with Trever's take here, too:

But there's more. Here in New Mexico, we were going to make history no matter how the election for governor turned out. Both candidates were women, and New Mexico has never elected a woman governor. But in this election, we went further and elected the nation's first Hispanic woman governor, Susana Martinez, who until now has been the district attorney of Doña Ana county (Las Cruces area) in the southern part of the state. (Her husband, soon to be the state's First Gent, is about to retire as the county's undersheriff.)

By the way, I don't think it should be a surprise that Governor-Elect Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Governor-Elect Brian Sandoval in Nevada are both Republicans (and both defeated gringos to win their offices). Nor should it be a surprise that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and South Carolina Governor-Elect Nikki Haley, the nation's two Indian-American governors, are also Republicans. (Yes, I'm sure there are others.)

I'm beginning to see a pattern here.