Harbinger?

Off-year election results around the country were a mixed bag.

And by “mixed”, I mean generally good for conservative Republicans nationwide, and six of one, half a dozen of the other in Minnesota.

Tinkering With Leviathan:   Saint Paul’s elections yesterday, were a victory for DFL zealots over DFL extremists.

The City Council gained two councilors who ran on an agenda critical of Mayor Chris Coleman.   This can, in some ways, be read as a very mild moderate win – Jane Prince, who ran unopposed in Ward 7, and Rebecca Noeker (who is currently leading by a razor-thin margin as the “Instant Runoff” counting slogs on and on in Ward 2) ran in opposition to Mayor Coleman’s profligate subsidies of favored businesses via “Tax Increment Financing”, as well as his botched plan to install parking meters on Grand Avenue to try to chisel revenue out of shoppers in Saint Paul’s only successful mid-market retail district.

But I wouldn’t count on much change from the Council on the larger issues that are sandbagging Saint Paul; the stifling regulatory environment, the obeisance to the Met Council’s lust for 19th-century transit, and the crime problems that are percolating along University and out on the East Side.

Meet the New Boss, Same As The Old Boss:  The Saint Paul School Board election, as predicted, installed the four union-backed wholly union-owned candidates over the four formerly union-owned candidates. Whatever residue of independence from the Teachers Union that might have existed in the Saint Paul public schools will be hunted down and buried in concrete shortly.

While changing Superintendent Silva’s intensely unpopular disciplinary policies may be one of the upshots of yesterday’s elections, look for the fiscal profligacy and unaccountability to accelerate.

The election will be a great boon to charter schools – if Saint Paul parents are smart.

Schools Dazed:  The referenda in the various school districts around the east metro went about 50-50; the pattern seemed to be, broadly, that voters approved the bond levies for maintenance and repairs, but voted down the big additions to infrastructure and programming.

Which may show – who knows? – that voters are still manipulable by demands “for the children”, but they have their limits.

We’ll see.

The Gathering Storm?:  Around the country, the news was less ambiguous.  A Republican not only won the Kentucky governor’s race. but so did his black Tea Party Republican Lieutenant Governor.  In VIrginia, Michael Bloomberg, hoping in his ghoulish way to capitalize on the deaths of a couple of TV reporters, pumped a ton of money and a lot of agenda into a couple of key races, with control of the Virginia state senate on the line.  It flopped; just as in Colorado a couple of years ago, only in the most addlepated coastal hothouses can gun control get any popular traction.

In Houston, a referendum on gay rights got swept away in a vote that would be hard to see as anything but a backlash against the creeping fascism of the Social Justice Warriors and their waves of lawsuits and coercion against supporters of traditional marriage.  And even in San Francisco, the sanctuary-city-promoting sheriff got sent packing.

It’s a year ’til the next election.  Look for “progressives” with deep pockets to spend a ton of money to try to iron out the wrinkles in the narrative.

9 thoughts on “Harbinger?

  1. Every single issue or person I voted for, won. And every issue I voted against lost.

    Life is beautiful. Bring Clottin on!

  2. The Kentucky thing is interesting. One thing I’ve noticed about prominent black conservatives…they’ve almost always come from very disadvantaged backgrounds, but worked hard and accomplished a lot.

    And Houston…..you mean subpoenaing pastors sermons and trying to get a hold of their emails isn’t a winning strategy? Urban blacks and Hispanics may be liberal Democrats on most things, but not when it comes to giving special rights to men who wear dresses. Also probably didn’t help any that the day before the election, the Obama administration ordered an Illinois public school to allow a boy to shower with the girls.

  3. The loony left always says us Tea Party activists are racist, and us pro-life people don’t care about babies once they are born.

    The new Kentucky Governor, a Tea Party supporter, has adopted 4 children from Ethiopia. Has 9 children in total. Compare that compassion to Abortion Barbie in Texas whose campaign was based on support for late-term abortions.

  4. In N. St. Paul/Maplewood/Oakdale, BOTH school levy requests failed. In the first one, they proposed revoking the current $400 per student levy and replacing it with a new $1500 per student levy. The 2nd proposed a new 3% tax for technology on top of the jacked up first request. Don’t know why, but the 2nd required the 1st to pass.
    Considering we routinely reelect Wiger and the Wrong Lillie Brother, I’m pleasantly surprised that both questions failed. Apparently my area might be in the bag for the DFL, but we’re not completely stupid.

  5. It didn’t go well at all in New Brighton. We’re now back under the boot of the DFL, pretty much entirely. When the property taxes go up, people will start to understand what they’ve selected.

  6. ” Look for “progressives” with deep pockets to spend a ton of money to try to iron out the wrinkles in the narrative.” They are going to use those ‘deep pockets’ to go judge/venue shopping. The Proposition System in Cali may be ‘what Democracy looks like’, but it got high centered when it ran into the third most powerful force in the universe (behind compound interest and a declining birth rate) a lefty Federal judge.
    “…people will start to understand what they’ve selected.” A sawbuck says they won’t. Taxes are what ‘rich’ people pay – most people don’t see themselves as rich and don’t look at their year-over-year taxes.

  7. people will start to understand what they’ve selected.” A sawbuck says they won’t. Taxes are what ‘rich’ people pay – most people don’t see themselves as rich and don’t look at their year-over-year taxes.

    Senior citizens who own their own homes entire and who live on fixed incomes absolutely look at their year-over-year taxes, especially their property taxes. We have a lot of those in New Brighton and it’s going to bite hard.

  8. I’m glad about the results in Kentucky and am waiting to see how Louisiana turns out after the run-off election now that the Vitter’s opponent is apparently about the endorse the Democratic candidate. The one that concerns me is Pennsylvania where Democrats won all three Supreme Court races. This is going to have a major impact on future redistricting and also if it’s a sign that Democrats have a stronger ground game in PA, makes it less likely we’ll be able to carry it in 2016 which means we need to run the table on the other “swing States.”

  9. Read about the Pennsylvania Court race. 2 of the 3 vacancies are due to scandal. 1 of the new justices is the brother of Union Boss.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.