Kaine says Democrats faced uphill battles

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is ascribing Democratic defeats Tuesday in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections to uphill battles against historical trends.
“In both Virginia and New Jersey we had strong candidates who were running against a significant historical tide and faced uphill battles from the start of this campaign,“ Kaine said in a statement released after midnight.

“In New Jersey, the party in power in the White House hasn’t won the governor’s office since 1985 and the party in power in the White House hasn’t won the governor’s office in Virginia since 1977.  It would have been historic, if not unprecedented, to win one or both of these races given historical trends.“

Kaine is doing a round of national network television interviews on Wednesday, starting with NBC’s “Today” show.

In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell, a former attorney general, captured the governorship, defeating Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, a state senator from Bath County. In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie, a former U.S. attorney, ousted Gov. Jon S. Corzine, the Democratic incumbent. The dual defeats come as Democrats gear up for U.S. House contests and for fights over at least 35 U.S. Senate seats in 2010.

“These races (in Virginia and New Jersey) turned on local and state issues and circumstances and on the candidates in each race—and despite what some will certainly claim—the results are not predictive of the future or reflective of the national mood or political environment,“ Kaine said. “Exit polls showed that both races turned on local issues.“

Kaine said that “in each state, the president’s approval ratings are better today than the share of the vote he received in each state in 2008.“

That is not reflected in the most recent Richmond Times-Dispatch poll, conducted Oct. 28-29, in which Obama’s 43 percent favorability rating matched his 43 percent unfavorability rating. In 2008, Obama received 52.6 percent of the nearly 3.7 million votes in Virginia’s presidential contest.

Kaine called Tuesday’s special election for a congressional seat in upstate New York “perhaps the most consequential race of the night,“ noting that “the Republican candidate, a moderate, was purged from the Republican Party by the most extreme elements of the conservative right wing, including Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. “

“This race turned out to be the worst of all possible worlds for Republicans as not only did the Democrat, Bill Owens, win a seat that Democrats have not held in more than 100 years, but what occurred in New York has exposed a war within the Republican Party that will not soon end,“ Kaine said.

He likened the split in New York to infighting in Pennsylvania when longtime Republican Sen. Arlen Specter became a Democrat.

“The all-out war between Republicans and the far right wing is a disaster for the Republican Party and will dog it well after today,“ Kaine said.