In case you haven’t been following things here or around, the election season is over! The results are in! Every last vote tallied! Did you get anything good this year or just coal?
Before I rundown the official results, see my past posts for the outlook leading up. I wrote extensively on the ballot initiatives, state, federal, and local positions up for grabs.
Issue 1 – PUT HUNTING IN THE CONSTITUTION
As the PETA lady said, “these kinds of amendments are silly. Why not a constitutional amendment to shop, or play golf?” Sing it, baby. I am by no means a supporter of crazy-ass PETA, but she’s dead right.
I voted NO. I lost, naturally. I was actually surprised, though; over 17% voted against! I thought it would be much lower, possibly single digits. I mean, there aren’t that many animal and PETA nuts in the state, are there? Who else but them and crazy libertards like me would vote against it?
Issue 2 – Boring Interest Rate Stuff
I voted (weakly) for this. Seemed to be rolling back some stupid recession-era rate caps. Anything to take the regs off of lending institutions. I won along with 64% of other Arkansans.
Issue 3 – Boring Bond Issuance Criteria
I voted against. I don’t like ambiguous language in laws. I admit the current language was awful, but I don’t think replacing it with what effectively amounts to no real criteria is a solution. I don’t like giving gov’mint that kinda leeway. I lost to ~62% of my fellow statesmen. Wasn’t surprised, really.
So yeah, all three ballot initiatives passed. I suppose even to get on the ballot it has to have pretty solid support, so maybe that’s not surprising.
State Supreme Court Justice
I voted for Baker who apparently won. I only picked Baker really because she seemed relatively harmless and vague whereas Fox was a total anti-originalist “I’m all about judicial restraint” craphead.
State Representative (for my district)
I didn’t vote for either. The incumbent got it anyway, since there wasn’t any major party opponent. There was a Green Party fool, though. He got a whopping 12.6% of the vote! I’m kinda shocked.
Land Commissioner
I didn’t care much about this, but I did vote for the Rep. I remember seeing him in the lead for a bit the night of the elections, and it looks like he held on. Still, the final tally was fairly close (52-47) so it probably suggests that, yeah, there wasn’t really much different and nobody cared.
State Auditor
I voted for the crazy hillybilly Green Party lady just because what-the-hell and I didn’t like the Career-Pol Democrat. He won, of course. Still, crazy GP lady still got 29.3%! She didn’t even have a campaign site or signs up that I ever saw. That’s pretty pathetic, in a way, that she did so well without the resources to really give a good fight. Makes you wonder… if Greens had green, what would our world be like?
State Treasurer
Boring. Don’t care. Only a Dem incumbent ran against a really crazy Green dude who’s entire platform was simply to make MS Paint pictures depicting the Dem in unflattering circumstances. Really solid campaign, I know. Surprise! She won. Even so, he still managed to get a third of the vote. Christ! And it wasn’t like he was running against a Republican or anything… scary!
State Secretary
Didn’t care much. I think I voted for the Nascar-sounding Rep. He won, barely, with 51-48. Again, probably not much really different between the two. That’s usually the cause for such homogenized results.
Attorney General
Again I voted for the Green lady just to spite the system. Also, because she’s pro-marijuana, anti-prison, and stuff like that, which I thought might be good in the AG spot. Yeah, she’s also super socialist, but it’s not like the AG can really push a successful progressive agenda. Particularly in Arkansas. Not to worry, though, the Dem smeared her with 72% of the vote.
Lt. Governor
I didn’t vote for either. Didn’t care. Just some stock Rep/Dems running and the Dem was sure to win (as was Beebe below) so whatever. Interestingly enough, though, the Rep won by a bit. So I guess we’ll have a split party top-two executive spots. Me likey!
Governor
Beebe bent the Rep (and Green) over his knee and spanked them with 64% (despite being split quite a few ways). Nobody was surprised in the state, though, not even the Rep. I wrote in Penn Jillette. According to the stats, there were 899 write-ins, only 39 of which were actually for any of the three “official" write-in candidates, which I guess means the rest of the write-ins were silly ones like mine. That seems surprising. It could just be the data is wrong.
U.S. Congressman (for my district)
Since Vic Snyder saw the Red Wave coming he smartly decided not to even try to run for re-election. Turned out to be a smart move, because the Dem who took a shot at it lost miserably with only 38%. I didn’t vote for any of the runners since they all pretty much sucked.
U.S. Senator
I had been hearing for months now from the libertarian writers I follow that Blance Lincoln didn’t have a chance. I think it was Jeremy Lott who said it best on several occasions: “They could run a sandwich against her and win.”
Well, the did run a sandwich. A boring pastrami sandwich named Boozeman. And he did indeed win, despite being a thoroughly uninteresting garden-variety Republican. I took a shot with the less-bad tasting independent (basically a stronger sounding conservative and less a career pol like Boozeman) and he got… 3%! Oh well. I wasn’t too hot for him anyway.
So that’s it! How’s that for a Republican landslide? Actually, in this state, we had more of a Republican slight breeze. Quite a few Dems survived, including the governor, so eh. Considering, though, that Reps only barely outnumber Dems nationally, I suppose it’s actually fairly representative of the whole. And despite everyone crying “kick the bums out” most of our state’s pols were either re-elected or unopposed and thus won by default. Even with voters “angry” you still have fairly good job security in politics!
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