Wally Edge raises an interesting question about the upcoming mid-term election:
If Democrats are successful in bucking the trend of mid-term elections going against the party that controls the governorship, as they were four years ago, it might be a signal of just how blue a state New Jersey has become — or evidence that Larry Bartals’ 2001 redistricting map was, as the GOP claims, truly one-sided.
He lists the last three decades of mid-term results, showing that the party that controlled the governorship has historically lost seats.
I have two issues with his analysis. First, the Florio mid-term and the first Byrne mid-term occurred at times when the electorate was teed off over new taxes. The backlash that created had a lot to do with those results.
My other issue is one of time: Going back 30-plus years is rather meaningless given the drastic demographic changes that have taken place.
I have another theory, however. The Florio mid-term was actually an aberration based on his unpopular tax plan, as was the election of Christie Whitman as governor (she eaked out a win over Floiro and then barely held on against Jim McGreevey — the two smallest margins of victory in memory). Whitman’s first win was a function of lingering anger over Florio, while her second win, I think, came courtesy of her incumbency and little else.
Using these suppositions — and that’s all they are — as a baseline, and adding the recent blue votes in presidential races (and the fact that there has not been a Republican U.S. senator from New Jersey since the Carter administration), one could make the argument that a different trend is in play: That the GOP is slowly disintegrating, consistently losing seats regardless of who is in the governor’s seat.
I’m no political scientist, but this is as plausible a description of the New Jersey political landscape as any other.
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Hank Kalet 