Ohioans built a state constitutional shrine to abortion on election night. That was the bad news for conservatives this week, as some lament that abortion may be emerging as a losing issue for Republicans, if Ohio voters are any indicator.
The vote in swing state Ohio was 57% to 43%, putting abortion protections into the state constitution by ballot initiative and turning Ohio into an abortion magnet state, much like the state of Washington has become. It may also be an indicator for how Ohio voters will vote in the 2024 presidential election. In 2020, Ohio voters chose Donald Trump over Joe Biden, 53-45.
In purple, Virginia, Democrats won control of the House of Delegates and kept their power over the state’s Senate, setting up political difficulties for Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
In red Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, won reelection, while in Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, also was retained by voters.
But last night’s results are not giving any real fuel to President Joe Biden, who faces these same voters next year. Biden was not invited to campaign with a single Democrat candidate. He didn’t send out any fundraising pleas on behalf of any campaign, because his name is just not helpful to down-ballot candidates. He gave no endorsements until the very end.
Republicans scored many victories on Tuesday. For example, every other seat in Kentucky except the governor’s was won by a Republican.
In New York State, Republicans won the executive seat in Suffolk County for the first time in 20 years, and in Massachusetts, Republicans flipped some mayoral seats.
In Virginia, voters said no to Democrat state Senate candidate Susanna Gibson, who was revealed during the campaign to be an amateur porn star who performed on a site called Chaturbate. Republican David Owen won by a narrow margin in that blue district, which includes Goochland County. Some Gibson’s her political career climaxed last night, even though she had been endorsed by Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, who was, no pun intended, the 69th governor of Virginia.
Next year, Democrats are tied to the most unpopular president since Jimmy Carter, and poll after poll show that Americans believe the nation is going in the wrong direction.
In the Matanuska-Susitna Borough races, conservatives appear to have just about swept up. All hand counting of ballots was completed, with only the mailed-in absentee ballots left to count, and there are likely not enough of those to challenge the current results below:
