2019 Elections: Dems Continue Winning Streak Since Trump

More detail on the election results in each of these states follows:

Louisiana

Louisiana's mid-November gubernatorial run-off disappointed Donald Trump and the state's GOP loyalists as incumbent pro-gun Democrat John Bel Edwards defeated Republican businessman Eddie Rispone by almost 3% of the vote. Mr. Edwards was the first Democratic Governor in Louisiana to win re-election since the late 1900's and his win kept one of the few Deep South statewide offices in Democratic hands.

(Gov. Edwards image from Getty)

In what now is a solidly Republican state, the GOP had good reason to think they could knock off Governor Edwards, who had cruised to a surprise victory in 2015 due in large part to his Republican opponent's entanglement in a Washington sex scandal. In addition, Donald Trump campaigned hard for Mr. Rispone in a state that had voted for Mr. Trump by a 20% margin in 2016. But, as is usual with Mr. Trump, he resorted to using typically inaccurate Trump rhetoric to encourage the GOP's nonsensical talking point that Governor Edwards was a "radical liberal".

In fact, over the past four years, Governor Edwards has proven himself a moderate, a pragmatist, and a champion of the average Citizen, having expanded Medicaid, increased funding for public education, achieved bi-partisan criminal justice sentencing reform, and brought fiscal responsibility back to a state whose finances had been decimated under the leadership of Bobby Jindal and the Republican legislature. He has governed the state in a bi-partisan manner, even naming some Republicans to serve within his administration.

See our article, "Favorite Pro-Gun Democrats: John Bel Edwards", for more details on Governor Edwards background, policy positions, and accomplishments. Another of our articles, "Fiscal Mismanagement: A Tale of Republican Governors", includes a section on Mr. Jindal's disastrous eight-year reign as Louisiana's Governor.

Virginia

After severely (and at times, illegally) gerrymandering the Commonwealth's legislative and Congressional districts following the 2010 census, Republicans had been able to easily maintain control of the General Assembly for most of the decade. (See our article, "Voters Should Choose Their Politicians, Not Vice-Versa...Just Ask Lincoln", for more background on gerrymandering and the extent to which the GOP engaged in it across the country after 2010.)

Signs of change appeared in 2017, though. In what was seen as a repudiation of Donald Trump's Republican Party, the Democrats won over 50% of the statewide vote and, had it not been for those gerrymandered district boundaries, the Dems would have (and should have) taken at least one house in the Assembly.

(image from new york times)

This year, following a court order to re-draw some of the illegally-drawn statehouse districts, Democrats again won ~53% of the vote statewide. But this time they were successful in winning not just one, but both houses of the legislature.

In the 100-seat House of Delegates, the Dems flipped six seats, giving them control of the House by a 55 to 45 margin. With two pickups In the Senate, the Democrats now own a 21-19 majority in that body. The Dems now possess all statewide offices, plus these new majorities in the General Assembly.

Democratic Governor Ralph Northam celebrated the election results, indicating that the first orders of business in the upcoming legislative session will include a number of measures popular within the Commonwealth: increasing the minimum wage, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, addressing common sense gun safety legislation, and giving local governments the authority to make their own decisions on war memorials.

Kentucky

In a state that had voted for Donald Trump by 30% in 2016, that currently has Republican supermajorities in its state legislature, and that hosted personal appearances by Mr. Trump in support of incumbent Republican Matt Bevin, one would think that Governor Bevin was a shoe-in for re-election. In fact, though, Democrat Andy Beshear edged Mr. Bevin by just over 5,000 votes to become Kentucky's next Governor.

Mr. Bevin, who has been a strong supporter of Donald Trump and who frequently tried to nationalize the gubernatorial campaign in lieu of running on his record, found that four years of the abrasive Bevin style and out-of-touch positions on key bread-and-butter issues had turned off Kentuckians more than he and most pundits had thought.

(Beshear/Bevin images from Bay News 9)

Mr. Beshear, on the other hand, attributed his victory to having distanced himself from national politics and having connected with voters looking for a leader who would concentrate more on voters' needs and less on "the 24-hour cable news cycle." The Beshear campaign's focus on health care, education, and family incomes was in sharp contrast to Mr. Bevin, whose track record on those issues included eliminating health care benefits, picking fights with school teachers, and expressing the desire to reduce pensions and to eliminate the minimum wage.

Those positions had not won Mr. Bevin many friends and, while recent polls had indicated he likely would narrowly win re-election, he was not a popular politician within the state. Add to that the fact that Mr. Beshear's father had been a popular two-term governor just prior to Mr. Bevin's tenure, and you had the makings for an upset.

Once the results were in, Mr. Bevin would not immediately concede, however. He referenced unspecified voting irregularities and there was some initial talk of the state legislature using an arcane law to select the next Governor. Fortunately, that latter talk was squelched after a few days as leading Republicans in the state basically told Governor Bevin either to put up or shut up on his voting irregularities claim. Soon thereafter the Governor conceded.

(More detail on Mr. Bevin and his four years in office can be found in our previously referenced article, "Fiscal Mismanagement: A Tale of Republican Governors".)