Defeated Republican Ken Buck acknowledges that Sen. Michael Bennet’s gamble on making the U.S. Senate contest in Colorado a referendum on Buck’s positions on social issues rather than a debate centered on the economy, jobs, and government spending was the right one–but that the messaging from the Democratic side enjoyed enhanced efficacy due to infrastructure:

Though Buck and Bennet had roughly equal amounts of outside TV money spent against them — Buck suffering $11.3 million in such hits, according to the Sunlight Foundation, and Bennet taking hits worth $10.7 million — Buck said Republicans need a better plan.

Democratic ads may be funded by a variety of trial lawyers, women’s groups or unions, Buck said, but they appear to coordinate on finding messages that resonate in Colorado. State Democrats also have an extensive get-out-the-vote operation and advocacy groups researching and attacking candidates, Buck added.

Democrats have a “large amount of money spent on infrastructure, and that’s where I think Republicans are really losing,” he said.

Despite accusations that he flip-flopped or periodically backed away from extreme Tea Party positions from early in the campaign, Buck said the problem wasn’t his language but Republicans’ lack of video “trackers” catching Bennet in similar situations.

The Democratic tracker(s) that followed Buck did so as early as 2009, way before Buck won the support of the grassroots movement in the state, much less the Republican primary. It is clear that trackers were also trailing the other Republican, Jane Norton. Much of the other video that was used to attack Buck came from others who posted video online from any of the hundreds of campaign events, including conservative bloggers and average folks with digital cameras. Every candidate should expect every event short of closed-door, private events to be subject to some sort of recording. Colorado law is fairly permissive when it comes to audio and video recording, even when no permission is granted by the person being recorded.

The larger point, and one that Buck alludes to but does not address specifically, is what he sees as the left’s ability to turn the acquired video or audio into a meaningful messaging attack. Hard coordination is illegal, but “soft,” thematic coordination is not, and both sides used similar messaging as ads appeared to cover the same ground in their attacks on the respective candidates. Buck’s campaign was not able to use Bennet’s words as effectively as Bennet’s campaign attacked Buck. There was plenty of material, but not as much of it made it from the online world to last-minute attack ads against the appointed Democratic Senator. The end of the infrastructure–the messaging machine–made the trackers’ video invaluable. Simply matching the Democrats tracker-for-tracker will not solve the problem.

**Update–Bennet says no to DSCC chair:

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has decided against chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the 2012 election cycle, according to sources familiar with his decision.

Bennet, who was elected to a full six-year term last Tuesday after being appointed to the seat in early 2009, was asked to consider heading the Senate campaign arm by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The two men spoke by phone about the job on Tuesday.

Bennet aides did not return repeated requests for comment on his decision.[...]

Bennet’s fundraising abilities — as demonstrated in his hard-fought victory over Weld County prosecutor Ken Buck (R) on Nov. 2 — coupled with his relationships with his colleagues made him a potentially attractive choice, sources suggested.

But, coming off of a bruising campaign and with three young children, Bennet has decided to pass.

Sen. Michael Bennet’s unexpected victory in Colorado has led to plum opportunities in party leadership:

A senior Senate Democratic source told POLITICO this afternoon that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has asked Colorado Freshman Michael Bennet to head the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Bennet, who won an uphill battle for election to his appointed seat, “didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no” in the Tuesday conversation with Reid, the source said. Bennet has been on a “thank you” tour of his state in the wake of his bruising campaign but will need to decide soon on the committee post.

The case for Bennet is that the former Denver schools chief is a respected figure in Washington and among major Democratic donors and also identifies with swing state Democrats, such as Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and John Tester of Montana, who face tough elections next cycle.

A prime consideration for Bennet is whether or not he would wish to oversee 23 races (21 Democrats plus 2 independents that caucus with the party) in 2012 that could prove to be monumentally difficult to hold if voters are still dissatisfied. DSCC leadership means fundraising to maintain the current Senate makeup and recruiting candidates to oppose Republicans in the 10 remaining races. No one wants to be DSCC chair and lose the majority in the Senate–something that Bennet is keenly aware of as he weighs his options.

Sharron Angle is by no means done with politics. So she told a crowd of 70 conservative grassroots activists during a surprise visit to a monthly Republican town hall meeting Wednesday evening in Las Vegas.

“I have a lot of options,” said Angle. “I am looking at these options. I can’t stop.”

When the crowd welcomed her with a standing ovation and loud cheers, Angle’s eyes filled with tears. She expressed her gratitude to the small group in a voice filled with emotion.

“Thank you so much,” said Angle quietly. “That means so much to me.”

Angle talked very little about the election, instead focusing on the legislative sessions coming up both in D.C. and Carson City. She reiterated that repeal of health care reform bill and extension of tax cuts should be top priorities.

She also specifically addressed redistricting in Nevada and talked about strategies for avoiding excessive gerrymandering.

“We need to have square districts,” said Angle, referring to (and disapproving of) the strategic spoking of districts into urban areas which tends to benefit Democrats and prevent rural, conservative state legislators from being elected.

When asked if she may consider running for Rep. Dean Heller’s NV-2 seat should the congressman opt to challenge John Ensign — either in the primaries or in the case of an Ensign indictment and/or resignation — Angle would neither confirm nor deny.

Whatever her next run at elected office may be, Angle made it clear during conversations with attendees and event organizers later in the evening that she will continue to work to help Republicans around the state in the months to come. She offered advice on citizen lobbying, grassroots organizing and party precinct leadership, saying she would gladly provide training and help as needed.

Angle’s loss to Harry Reid was her third electoral loss in five years. She previously ran for the state Senate as well as the U.S. House, a race in which she lost her primary bid against Dean Heller by just 421 votes. 

The hotly contested Senate race likely earned Angle some new supporters. It may also have harmed her ability to be elected in a statewide race. The “extreme” label pinned on her by the Harry Reid campaign is a modifier many independents and even some Republicans echoed, some of them in endorsements of the majority leader over Angle.

An Associated Press analysis of exit poll results from the election revealed Angle’s base was bolstered primarily by white men, seniors, and rural voters. This might work just fine for her in the mostly rural NV-but could pose a problem if she chose to make a run at Ensign’s senate seat.

Allen West is under no illusion as to the fragile nature of the GOP’s coming House majority.

“The thing that you don’t want to see happen is that the Republican Party gets thrown on the ash heap as well, in 2012. Not a lot of patience out there right now,” West told Battle ‘10. “As I tell people, if the pendulum swings back to the other side — same old players, same old actors — that’s going to cause people to say, ‘here we go again.’”

West was launched to national stardom by the tea party movement, so there is perhaps no candidate in a better position to understand the electoral frustration that bubbled over on Nov. 2.

“It’s a repudiation of the liberal-progressive legislative agenda that we’ve seen in the past few months. Unemployment has risen, the debt has risen, our deficit has risen,” West said. “But it is not a return to the Republican Party. It’s an opportunity for the Republican Party to regain the trust and confidence of the American people. They’re going to have to do that very quickly.”

He says it will require a different sort of transition, more than a simple reversion to the Republican direction of 2006.

“I think that’s the challenge for this incoming Republican leadership is to allow these new faces to have positions where they can impact the agenda,” West said. “It has to come from a new vision. It has to come from new voices — a new energy.”

West is vibrant part of that new energy, though his political ambition predates the tea party. He began his first run for Congress in 2007, more than a year before Rick Santelli’s outburst on the trading floor gave a name to the fermenting frustration that would become the tea party movement. West lost to incumbent Democrat Ron Klein in the general election that cycle, but fared well for a first-time candidate with little party support, picking up 45 percent of the vote.

Then in October of 2009, West gave a five-minute speech at a political rally in which he praised patriotic dissent and likened the new mass movement to the American Revolution.

“When you think about how patriots got together in taverns, when patriots got together in houses, along rivers and creeks … this is where we are right now in our country,” West told the crowd. “If you’re here to stand up, to get your musket, to fix your bayonet, and to charge into the ranks, you are my brother and sister in this fight.”

The video went viral, was viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube, and helped launch West toward a 2010 rematch against Klein. What a newly attentive national audience soon discovered was that this outspoken, black Army veteran was anything but a rank-and-file Republican.

West’s campaign speeches read like a tea party manifesto, praising individual opportunity and responsibility, and railing against the health-care reform bill, cap-and-trade, TARP, auto bailouts, the stimulus, and unsustainable debt. He told a debate audience he would “hold John Boehner’s feet to the fire,” and gave the Republicans’ governing document, the “Pledge to America,” a grade of D-minus for failing to sufficiently address immigration, entitlement reform and national security. The strong message took hold, and on Nov. 2, West defeated Klein by eight points and won the right to represent Florida’s 22nd district in the 112th Congress.

And he hasn’t backed off since being elected. West strongly advocated for a flat tax, for example, during our interview: “We need to make sure that all Americans are stakeholders in the United States of America. This current tax code system that we have lends itself to class warfare. Forty-seven percent aren’t paying federal income taxes,” he said.

Needless to say, party bosses probably won’t be itching to discuss some of his proposals. West said he can help force important issues to the front burner the same way he campaigned — with strong advocacy.

“You just have to be a powerful voice,” West said. “I’ve been given a platform and we’re going to continue to use that platform for the right reasons.”

Indeed, West rolled from campaign mode straight into interview mode, appearing on local media outlets as well as Fox and Friends, Hannity, and CNN in the days following the election.

But the job of governing will come to the forefront soon enough — next week, in fact, when Republicans will gather in Washington to choose leaders from among their ranks. West said hasn’t yet committed his votes, but he has given some thought to the committees on which he would like to serve.

“With 22 years in the military, definitely the Armed Services Committee. I think that the government reform committee would be a good one for me, as well as the foreign relations committee with a Middle Eastern focus. And then, of course, the veterans committee,” West said. “So those would be the four that I will request in that order.”

Wherever he lands, though, the first order of business for the new House majority when the gavel hits next year is the same: putting the economy back on track.

“We have to create some type of economic certainty and predictability for the American people. I think we have to start looking at how we grow our small businesses so that we can start tackling this unemployment rate,” West said. “It has to come from private sector growth — their innovation, their ingenuity, their investment — and not the public sector growth, which is the wrong way to go.”

The NRCC lists them all–including their vote leads and deficits–in a page dedicated to squeaking out a few remaining victories.

Congressman-elect Cory Gardner spoke to Battle ‘10 last week following a decisive 12-point, 30,000-vote victory over one-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Betsy Markey, 53 to 41. Gardner won every county except for a small portion of liberal Boulder county, including the battleground Larimer county, that had gone to Democrats from 2004 to 2008 and was seen as the only place where Markey could hold out any hope of keeping the race close.

Since his election, Gardner has been one of just a handful of freshman legislators tapped to join the GOP Majority transition team, a signal of potential future grooming, and a recognition of his hard-fought reacquisition of a seat that skews conservative on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and, with the exception of Markey, had been in Republican hands for decades.

“We always knew Larimer County would be one of our toughest areas,” said Gardner. “We actually felt very good about our results in Boulder County, just based on the number of Democrats to Republicans and unaffiliateds in that portion of the seat. So we always knew Larimer would be a very strong challenge and so we focused our efforts there, we located our headquarters there, and walked tens of thousands of houses in Larimer County. We made tens of thousands of phone calls. It was a very concentrated, grassroots effort to contact anybody and everybody we could in Larimer County personally.”

He believes he picked up crossover votes from Democrats as well. ”Last night, there was a woman who came up and told me that I am the first Republican she had ever voted for. There was another Democrat from Longmont that said she had voted for me. Now she did not say I was the first Republican she had ever voted for, but she did say she was a Demcorat and she voted for me. Both of them voted for Markey two years ago,” noted Gardner. “There were a number of Republicans we met throughout the campaign who voted for Markey in the previous year.”

Gardner continued, “Our message resonated with them, our message that Congress is not acting in the best interest of this country, particularly the best interest of the Fourth Congressional District.”

Congressman-elect Cory Gardner, CO-4

Gardner pointed to Markey’s voting record as the source for his base and crossover appeal. ”That was the key difference. Things like Cap and Trade, health care, the stimulus bill are out of step with the commonsense voters of the 4th,” said Gardner.

Voters turned against Markey, and Gardner noted the lesson to be learned by turning your back on your constituency. ”I think it showed what happens when you don’t listen to the voters that you represent,” said Gardner. “And we made it clear that we have the same background values and commonsense approach that the voters do. That is what brought us over the finish line.”

Unlike the unsuccessful Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado, Ken Buck, Gardner never allowed himself to be distracted by social issues–raised by his Democratic opponent–in an attempt to sidetrack him from what he believed was the overriding concern of the election at every level: the economy and government spending. 

“It was the same from day one,” argued Gardner. “I have told the story often about the Fourth of July parade in Brush, Colorado where somebody was shouting out from the side of the parade, ‘Stop the spending, cut the budget!’ It’s about the economy and that never changed. And it was the same in Fort Collins, the biggest city in the district, as it was in Eckley, Colorado.”

Riding a consistent message and a “wave” of enthusiasm, Gardner also pointed out Markey’s tone-deafness that he cited earlier in the interview lent itself to the perception that voters were being “betrayed.” Gardner concluded, ”There was tremendous enthusiasm amongst Republicans and unaffiliated voters. So it was not so much that ‘We’re going to be a part of a wave’ as it was, ‘Hey, other people agree with us, these guys are out of control!’ The one word that kept coming up wherever I was–Estes Park, Burlington–was the word betrayed. A lot of people felt betrayed by this Congress. It was a Congress that was elected . . . they were not going to raise taxes, they were going to reduce spending or not spend any more, and they did everything but that.”

Gardner spoke about the difficulties–the pressure applied to a candidate’s family–that burdens those that run for office. ”The first thing I’m going to do is reintroduce myself to my wife and daughter and make sure they remember who I am,” Gardner quipped.

Gardner quickly returned to his–and the GOP’s–top priorities. “But seriously, we’ve got to stop the taxes from being increased in January. We’ve got to put a concerted effort into the passage of a balanced budget plan. We’ve got to make sure we’re looking for spending cuts,” said Gardner.

Gardner admitted he was not afraid of tackling the big issues and defending his district’s interests, or making tough votes to accomplish that agenda. ”I’m not afraid to be the handful of ‘yes’ votes when it’s the right thing to do, or the handful of ‘no’ votes when it’s the right thing to do,” said Gardner. “I think that is what the voters in any district expect.” Gardner did point to the pressure that voters have placed on the new GOP majority, and that their priorities must align with what voters sent Congress to Washington, DC to accomplish. “If we get out there and fail to do what we said we’re going to do, then the same thing is going to happen in two years. And by that I mean, if we don’t address the deficit, and we don’t address the debt, then the same thing happens in two years,” said Gardner.

Gardner did not anticipate a change in his approach to being a legislator, or abandoning the voters who elected him in a way that many had felt Markey had by avoiding town hall meetings and ducking out of debates. ”My approach in the state legislature was to hold town meetings anywhere and everywhere. I’ve held town meetings in Eads, Kit Carson, Cheyenne Wells countless times. I’ve held town meetings in Cope, Colorado and I don’t think most people in Colorado know where that is,” joked Gardner. He continued, “That’s the same kind of approach I’ll bring to the Fourth Congressional District. It’s walking main streets, it’s visiting with business owners, it’s making sure that the voters of the district have the chance to see me, in person, that I can listen and learn about the matters that affect their lives.”

Just as messaging is important during an election, Gardner asserted messaging would be as important, if not more so, once the GOP majority takes the reins of power. ”We’ve got to work hard, and we’ve got to be able to say we’ve worked hard to do what we said we would do, show what we did, show what we tried to do, and communicate that clearly and effectively to the voters. The difference being this is actually something the voters want us to do,” said Gardner.

Gardner provided a general overview of what voters in his district could expect to characterize the new Representative’s agenda in coming months. In particular, Gardner pointed to a more open and transparent process in how Congress legislates. ”We’ve developed a 2010 plan, things we believed that if they were adopted in 2010, we’d have a better country. Everything from transparency and accountability, meaning the 72 hours of posting legislation and amendments so everyone has the chance to read it, to getting rid of czars throughout government,” said Gardner.

As for specifics, Gardner outlined measures that would have resonance in the district overall. “We’ve come up with a small business savings account idea which would allow people to save money to invest in businesses and hire new people and expand their businesses similar to a health savings account it it’s tax treatment.”

When asked about the metrics that defined the election and that would define any solutions used to address them, Gardner targeted unemployment and the effect that government regulation has on increasing uncertainty in the business community that, by extension, hurts the economy, driving up unemployment. ”If you look at a place like Greeley, Colorado it has been amongst the highest in cities around the country with unemployment. Weld county has fared a little bit better, Larimer county is a little bit better than the average in the nation, but it is still too high. We have to put policies in place that will help spur economic activity,” said Gardner. On the next point, Gardner was adamant. “That is a market-based approach, that’s not government saying ‘Alright, we’re here to do it for you.’ But it is also the uncertainty that we’ve talked about time and time again about cap and trade. Is it going to pass? Is it going through the regulatory process? Or the uncertainty of the health care bill and what it means to businesses. Those are the kinds of things we’ve got to make sure that businesses know they can invest and they’re not going to be penalized for it,” concluded Gardner.

Gardner believed that in addition to more “red” on the map symbolizing Republican takeovers in the 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts, the electoral success this cycle gives the GOP a lead in the Congressional delegation for the first time since 2007 and will boost Republican chances in the state in 2012. ”It really sets the tone for the next two years. The people of these districts rejected what Congress and this President have done over the past two years–that is was an agenda out of step with what we believed should be the direction of the country and over the next two years we’ll see the effects of that in the next election,” said Gardner.

The 2012 election will be Gardner’s first as an incumbent, but will also represent the first post-redistricting election challenge. He remained optimistic but sanguine about the political realities. ”We’ve taken control of the state house, so obviously we’ll be interested in what happens,” said Gardner. “A lot of high stakes involved.”

Battle ‘10 wrapped up the conversation by asking for the one thing that stood out to him as the most interesting takeaway from the entire process. ”It is amazing because we announced on May 7, 2009 and within two hours on November 2 it was decided whether people wanted to talk to me or not,” joked Gardner. And you bet they are already gabbing away.

• Though the GOP will hold the governor’s mansion and supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature, the Miami Herald reports that policy differences among leaders of the two branches will ensure that Governor-elect Rick Scott’s campaign promises will be strongly debated.
   
• The last high-profile item on Gov. Charlie Crist’s to-do list: consider posthumously pardoning Jim Morrison, front-man for The Doors, who was convicted of indecent exposure for actions during a Miami concert in 1969.
   
• Despite their support for strong immigration policy, exit polls show both Marco Rubio and Governor-elect Rick Scott won the Hispanic vote. “Immigration is not a core issue for Florida Hispanics,” a strategist told the Miami Herald.
  
  
• The Congressional Black Caucus, which is notorious for its left-leaning stances, will welcome newly elected black Republicans, should they wish to join. Congressman-elect Allen West, who beat out Rep. Ron Klein in the 22nd district, appears set to take them up on the offer.
   
• A South Florida website is also reporting that West has named his chief of staff — Joyce Kaufman, a talk-radio host who interviewed and supported West during his campaign.

Pat Toomey is preparing to head to Washington as Pennsylvania’s next senator. There’s a sentence that in itself is rightly comforting to at least 51 percent of Keystone Staters. But if he’s to stay there — with better than 2 percent margins — Toomey and the Pennsylvania Republican Party are going to have to address a structural weakness in the state.

Look at the map below. It looks impressive. Toomey won 60 of 67 counties last week as he topped Joe Sestak 51 to 49 percent. But look closer. He also lost every major urban area except for Harrisburg.

He lost Erie. He lost Pittsburgh. He lost Scranton. He lost Wilkes-Barre. And he lost Philadelphia. In Pennsylvania, losing seven of 67 counties can cost you an election.

And absent Tea Partiers and the wave they created, Joe Sestak could very well be headed to Washington.

The question for the Pennsylvania Republican Party, and specifically Rob Gleason, it’s chairman, is this: When will the time come to focus on reclaiming Philadelphia? It’s all very well to secure, say, 2,000 votes in Forest County, but when you lose more than a quarter million in Philadelphia county — and lose them every cycle — you should begin to notice a structural disadvantage.

And that weakness is probably the core reason no Republican presidential candidate has won the Keystone State — supposedly a battleground — since 1988, before today’s youngest voters were even born.

As it stands, Pennsylvania elections are won for Republicans only in good years, and only by tinkering on the margins. But Philadelphia is ripe for conversion. What stands in the way is the city’s own peculiar machine politics, which runs on patronage and cushy “understandings,” as those inside will tell you, between the city’s Republican and Democrat bosses.

But if the Republican Party is serious about making Pennsylvania competitive once more — and perhaps even winning a presidential race here in two years — the machine politics in the City of Brotherly Love need to be dismantled.

That is, unless the party is content with heart-stopping Election Night margins of one or two percent. Remember this: Toomey won by only 77,437 votes — out of 3.9 million cast.

Former ACORN supervisor Amy Busefink has opted to plead guilty to a pair of gross misdemeanors rather than face 13 felony counts for her role in paying people to register voters. Busefink will be sentenced on January 10. Prosecutors said Monday they will not seek a prison term, but the judge may order one if he sees fit.

Busefink, a Las Vegas field operative who ran an illegal voter registration program in 2008, paid a $5 bonus to canvassers who registered 21 or more voters in a day. In addition, ACORN terminated people who failed to make a quota.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Conrad Hafen said Busefink will probably have to pay a fine and do 100 hours of community service.

ACORN still faces a November 29 trial on 13 counts of compensation for registration of voters, the same charges Busefink and another employee faced. While ACORN no longer exists and is in bankruptcy, the organization faces fines up to $65,000.

Sign-waving is practically a political tradition, but Daniel Webster had a different kind of placard Wednesday. The morning after the election, when most candidates were probably taking a well-deserved rest, Webster woke up bright and early and headed to one of the busiest street corners in his district.

His message was simple: “Thank You.”

On Nov. 2, Webster was elected to represent Florida’s 8th district in the U.S. House of Representatives, beating out incumbent Democrat Alan Grayson by a whopping 18 points. He wanted to thank voters for their support and the privilege to serve.

“There was one corner that we had worked right at the end of the election and it’s the heart of Southwest Orange County, which is a big chunk of our win,” Webster told Battle ‘10.

He picked different areas of the Orlando-area district for Thursday and Saturday mornings, but was nonetheless out with his sign, waving, thanking voters — and sometimes, receiving thanks in return.

“I probably had six or eight people pull in on the corner and then walk over and thank me, or just congratulate me,” Webster said.

Photo by Abby Tyrrell, courtesy the Daniel Webster campaign

“One of the downfalls to the Democrats was the fact that they spent so much time there [in Washington], they had no time for townhall meetings and other things with their constituents. And I think that was the start of them crumbling,” Webster said.

As a state legislator from 1980 to 2008, Webster has had a long career in Florida government. But those that know him describe a man who wasn’t changed by the subversive influence of politics. Webster credits his faith, his family, and the time he spent at home.

“I would come at the last minute, but when I got there, I gave it everything I had. But when the gavel went down for an end of a week or whatever, I immediately left,” Webster said. “The ones I’ve seen that have been sort of pulled into the vortex of the community of Tallahassee or Washington are ones that linger. And so I don’t plan on lingering.”

The time he does spend in D.C., he’ll have his nose to the grindstone, though what form his work takes will depend on the committees he is assigned, he said.

Webster served on transportation and judiciary committees during his time in the Florida legislature, and he said those two committee assignments in the U.S. House stick out to him. In addition, he said he’s interested in the Armed Services Committee. The Rules Committee, too, piques his interest. During Webster’s tenure as speaker of the statehouse, he threw out the rules book and started from scratch with the goal of creating a more efficient and merit-based chamber.

“Wherever I land, I hope I’ll be able to help prioritize spending and eliminate debt,” Webster said.

One of the first orders of business, though, is picking House leadership. Webster said the top two positions seem pretty well set, but that he hasn’t settled on his votes for other slots.

“I’ve been contacted, but I haven’t committed,” Webster said. “I tell them, you know, I have questions for them.”

Most importantly, he said, is how they pledge to lead.

“I do not want to see a power-based system controlled from the top down. I want to a member-based system based in principles at the seat of that — a member-empowered Congress.”

Indeed, Webster’s slogan throughout the campaign was, “Washington is broken.”

What Republicans have, Webster said, isn’t a mandate, but an opportunity to prove that the party can provide principled leadership.

“This was a swing that only two years ago swang the other way. I think there has to be pressure on everybody to perform, if you will,” Webster said.

Freshman legislators may help ensure that GOP leadership stays true to the roots of its conservative and tea-party support, but Webster said the fury of the electorate — as evidenced by the election results — likely speaks for itself.

“I would be surprised if the senior members didn’t get it, too,” Webster said. “I think they got it.”

Last month, I spoke to Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist about the fine print in his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” and whether John Kasich, at that time the Republican candidate for Governor in Ohio, was violating that pledge with certain proposals. Norquist didn’t think so, which made the attacks by then-Governor Ted Strickland even more disingenuous.

However, now that Kasich’s been elected, the pledge is getting more play from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Highlights below:

With Gov.-elect John Kasich and soon-to-be House Speaker Bill Batchelder rising to power in January, a no-new-taxes pledge signed by both suddenly has huge implications for the next state budget.

The pledge requires signers to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to raise taxes.” It was signed by Kasich, Batchelder and seven other Republicans beginning new terms in the Ohio House in January, including Rep. Tim Grendell, the state senator from Chester Township who will jump chambers because of term limits.[...]

[D]own at the Ohio Statehouse — where Kasich and GOP legislative leaders will hammer out a plan to address a shortfall in the next state budget that could approach $8 billion — the pledge could have the most profound implications.

Unlike the federal budget, the state budget must be in balance when the two-year spending blueprint is passed next summer. So taking tax hikes completely off the table limits the options available to policy makers.

Such a strategy has turned well-heeled lobbyists for special interests and health and human-service advocates into nervous Nellies. But the confident Kasich sounds eager to “get the snouts out of the trough,” as he put it on the campaign trail.

One of Kasich’s first pronouncements since becoming governor was to summon lobbyists to a luncheon Thursday to tell them: “If you’re not on the bus, we will run you over with the bus. And I’m not kidding.” And he’s not backing down a bit on his no-new-taxes pledge.[..]

However, that doesn’t mean that Kasich couldn’t eliminate some loopholes in the state tax code that give exemptions to special interests. For example, financial planners and lobbyists are exempt from paying state sales tax.

Under the terms of the pledge, Kasich could eliminate some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax exemptions in the state tax code — but there’s a big catch. He would have to offset those moves with tax cuts, so he wouldn’t gain a cent of new revenue.

“John said throughout the campaign that everything is under the microscope,” Nichols said.

I smell a Chris Christie-style battle brewing in the works, if Kasich is serious about holding to ATR’s Pledge. Those loopholes sound like they could be political hay for Democrats if he’s not careful. Ohio’s political scene might be dominated by Republicans again, but I suspect that conflict will be alive and well.

Congressman-elect Cory Gardner (CO-4) has already moved from National Republican Congressional Committee “Young Gun” to one of the Republican representatives tapped for recognition as part of the “transition team” that will play a role in the run up to taking control of the House, but also identified as one of the “rising stars” that will most likely be groomed for eventual House leadership in subsequent Congressional sessions.

Battle ’10 interviewed Gardner following his election last week, and will have that interview posted tomorrow. First, a look at Gardner’s elevation to the transition team, as well as the things the newly minted Congressman should expect in coming months, from a logistical standpoint–where to live, who to hire–but also what to expect politically, as the jousting for Gardner’s support on House leadership, committee appointments, and legislative agenda begins in earnest.

From the House GOP Majority Transition Office:

Walden Announces Members of Majority Transition Team

Washington, D.C. – As Republicans prepare for a new majority in the House of Representatives, Transition Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) today announced the members of a transition team who will help ensure the House is ready to act right away on the priorities of the American people in January. Members of this team will work to implement the congressional reforms included in the Pledge to America and look at additional ways to make Congress more transparent, cost-efficient, and accountable to the people. Ready to get to work, the transition team will hold its first meeting this evening with further meetings scheduled for Tuesday. Upon announcement of the team members, Rep. Walden released the following statement.

“Americans have sent a clear message that Congress must be run differently, and this team is ready to prove that we’re listening,” said Rep. Walden. “Our transition team includes proven leaders who will meet our challenge to restore the House of Representatives as a great deliberative body that respects the will of the American people. The diverse mix of experience, backgrounds, and regions represented by this group will help to ensure this process brings meaningful reform to how Washington does business. Each one of these members accepted this responsibility with an encouraging enthusiasm, and I’m thankful to all of them for serving.”

Members of the GOP Majority Transition Team

Rep. Rob Bishop (UT-1), Rep. John Campbell (CA-48), Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (WV-2), Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT-3), Rep. Tom Cole (OK-4), Rep. Mike Conaway (TX-11), Rep. David Dreier (CA-26), Rep.-elect Cory Gardner (CO-4), Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA-6), Rep. Doc Hastings (WA-4), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX-5), Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4), Rep.-elect Adam Kinzinger (IL-11), Rep. Buck McKeon (CA-25), Rep. Candice Miller (MI-10), Rep.-elect Martha Roby (AL-2), Rep. Mike Rogers (MI-8), Rep. Paul Ryan (WI-1), Rep.-elect Tim Scott (SC-1), Rep. Pete Sessions (TX-32), Rep. Pat Tiberi (OH-12)

Gardner’s first priorities:

Gardner unseated incumbent Democrat Betsy Markey by almost 11 percentage points to win election to the U.S. House of Representatives. He’ll be sworn in at the beginning of January 2011, and for the next two months, he’ll be hiring staff, finding office space in Washington and Colorado and getting to know other members of Congress, including the dozens of his fellow Republican freshmen elected in one of the greatest waves in U.S. history.

He’ll also be courted by veteran Republicans seeking his support for leadership candidates, as well as potential Republican presidential candidates. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, widely expected to make a presidential run in 2008, called Gardner on election night to congratulate him.

And then there are intensely personal decisions for the 36-year-old congressman-in-waiting, his wife Jaime, and their 6-year-old daughter, Alyson. Do they all move to Washington or maintain the family home in Yuma?

Former Rep. Bob Schaffer (R-CO) represented the same Congressional District from 1997-2003, and offered outsiders–all the rest of us who weren’t elected–an exhaustive glimpse inside the next stage of the “campaign”:

“Congratulations, congressman! Boy that sounds good doesn’t it? Congressman Gardner? You ran a great race and you’ll be an outstanding member of Congress. Say, by the way, I’ve got the chairmanship of (fill in the blank) almost in the bag, but I wanted to make sure you’re on my team. You know, I really enjoyed campaigning with you out in Lovemont — was that the name of that little place? — and I’m glad my visit helped you win your race. When you get back to D.C., I’ll have my chief of staff get in touch with you to set up a meeting right away to map out a plan for how you and I are going to work together. Okay? Oh, again, congratulations to you and your wife Jane (staffer interrupts)…I mean Jamie.”

Keep in mind, incumbent GOP members of Congress have been working on these inter-party cam-paigns for months, sometimes years. Cory will be negotiating them next week.

There will be no rest after Tuesday night’s contest. Mr. Gardner just finished a marathon and now has to gear up for a different kind of campaign. He’ll be contending with, among and against the nation’s best campaigners. [...]

Gov. John Hickenlooper, despite his pretensions for being bipartisan, will devote enormous resources and energy to gerrymandering the 4th Congressional District (based upon the 2010 Census) by pulling half of Boulder County into the new district — possibly even drawing Yuma (Gardner’s home) out of it. Mr. Gardner will need to “lawyer up” to survive this part of the campaign, too. [emphasis added]

• Charlie Crist told The Hill that he’s proud of Senator-elect Marco Rubio, and that he has no regrets about leaving the GOP: “The last thing I am ever is bitter. I’m just not made that way or wired like that.”
   
• Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Alex Sink, who lost by one percentage point, called the White House “tone-deaf” in an interview with Politico and said the administration doesn’t appreciate the damage policies like health care reform have done to candidates: “‘They got a huge wake-up call two days ago, but unfortunately they took a lot of Democrats down with them,’ said Sink of the White House.”
   
• Rep. Alan Grayson, ousted in Tuesday’s election by 18 points, told Politico that Democrats would have fared better if they had been more bold and had passed card check, immigration reform and civil rights legislation. The Orlando Congressman doesn’t rule out another run for office, but told the Daily Caller that his new focus will be on his family — though he just might spend some time at Disney World when he gets home.
   
• Governor-elect Rick Scott is the subject of a post-election profile by the New York Times: “Many of the newly elected Republican governors have said they want to run their state like a business. But few have been as brash and bold in corporate life — or with their economic campaign proposals — as Rick Scott, Florida’s new chief executive.”
   
• After the shellacking of a lifetime, Florida Democrats begin to ask whether heads will — or should — roll at the state party.
   
• The Tallahassee Democrat takes a look at amendments 5 and 6, which passed with more than 60 percent of the vote and are set to change the rules for redistricting. Conservatives are predicting a judicial mess as lawsuits are filed in response to the changes. In fact, the amendment pertaining to U.S. Congressional districts is already being challenged by two minority U.S. representatives who benefit from racial gerrymandering.
   
• Amendment 8, which would have loosened class-size restrictions on schools, fell short of the 60-percent threshold needed to pass. School districts who will be fined for breaking the rule say they don’t have enough funding to meet the strict requirements, and are saying they may sue.
   
• The GOP plans to use its new expanded majorities in the state legislature to override nine items vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist during a one-day session on Nov. 16. The focus is on items with wide support, so the big ticket items — a teacher merit-pay bill and a pre-abortion ultrasound requirement — aren’t on the agenda.

Even aside from winning an election, it’s been a busy week for Senator-elect Marco Rubio.

• Rubio is in Israel. From his spokesman: “Senator-elect Rubio and his wife Jeanette will be making a private and personal visit to the Holy Land next week. There will be no official meetings or media interviews, and specific details of the trip will be kept private. Senator-elect Rubio is also working with pro-Israel supporters to make an official trip back to Israel early next year after he is sworn into office.”
  
  Details are scarce, but the Miami Herald reports that Rubio is meeting a billionaire backer in Israel.
   
• The New York Times profiled Rubio following his victory: “The right finally had an action hero: young, dynamic, serious about policy, with a biography ready-made for inspiration.”
   
• Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg Times writes that Rubio threaded the tea-party needle: “If the tea party is expecting Rubio to plant its yellow ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag in the hallowed Senate chamber, it’s in for a letdown.”
   
• Rubio gave the weekly Republican address on Saturday:

• And the Senator-elect has released a web video to thank his supporters:

On Tuesday, I wrote that among the many factors that could come into play to in a decisive fashion for either U.S. Senate candidate was the so-called “gender gap,” a trend noted in polling and specifically targeted by Democrats in their attacks on Ken Buck’s positions.

Tuesday’s results show that the gender gap was real, at least as far as Sen. Michael Bennet’s electoral victory was concerned.

Bennet won the majority of battleground counties handily–as noted below (won/lost for Bennet)–but more importantly, all eleven counties show a significant registration advantage for women among all “likely” voters. The full list of counties for Colorado shows that more than 50 of the 64 counties have a gender registration advantage among women. Bennet’s targeting of women’s issues and pushing the “Buck dislikes women” meme allowed his campaign to do well in the suburban counties that are critical to any statewide campaign’s success. With women already favoring Democrats, and in particular independent and single women showing a clear partisan preference, Bennet’s strategic and tactical use of strong messaging overtly targeting women allowed him to take advantage of the marginal female vote–the unaffiliateds and leaners (and possibly even some Republicans) who “just couldn’t vote for Buck.” It did not produce a staggering landslide, but enough margins of a few thousand in each of the counties to give him a narrow, 1 point victory.

Exit polling showed women giving Bennet an insurmountable lead. Even with Buck winning men almost as handily, the clear numerical advantage the Democrats were looking at meant that Buck could never make up the ground if women turned out and perhaps even split their tickets, voting against Buck in the Senate race but sticking with Republicans in the Congressional races and state-level races.

The county is followed by the “likely” voter registration with women listed first, followed by men:

Adams: 90,642 78,953 WON

Arapahoe: 147,137 126,112 WON

Boulder: 84,817 78,148 WON

Denver: 146,700 127,093 WON

Douglas: 82,915 76,404 LOST

El Paso: 155,460 134,643 LOST

Jefferson: 159,027 140,145 WON

Larimer: 88,174 79,445 WON

Mesa: 38,435 34,474 LOST

Pueblo: 40,913 34,718 WON

Weld: 59,609 53,521 LOST

Total Women: 1,093,830

Total Men: 963,656

By Gender by Status

The gap appeared in many other states as well in both gubernatorial and U.S. Senate battles. Not all Republicans lost, however.

If folks in the Denver metropolitan statistical area and television market feel shell-shocked by the amount of political ads they saw in October, it is for a good reason. Nielsen released the staggering figures –1.48 million–that amounted to a record number of political ads run in the month of October, and putting Denver in 8th place for the number of political ads seen as a percentage of all ads placed on TV:

From a memo sent by Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams, who rejected the get-out-the-vote superiority of the Democrats, citing the impressive wins Colorado Republicans saw elsewhere in the state:

Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn and Congressman Mike Coffman were overwhelmingly reelected. Congressman-elect Cory Gardner unseated Betsy Markey in the Fourth District while Congressman-elect Scott Tipton unseated John Salazar in the Third District resulting in a 4-3 Republican advantage in Colorado’s U.S. House delegation. The last time two incumbent members of Congress were defeated in the same election in Colorado was 46 years ago in 1964.

Attorney General John Suthers and CU Regent at-large Steve Bosley were reelected while Walker Stapleton unseated Democratic incumbent State Treasurer Kerry Kennedy and Scott Gessler unseated Democratic incumbent Secretary of State Bernie Buescher resulting in a clean sweep of the other statewide offices.

There is no doubt the malicious and deceitful ads by Michael Bennet were largely responsible for Ken Buck’s defeat. Bennet and his leftist allies spent millions during the final three weeks with despicable ads narrowly targeted to undecided unaffiliated women voters attempting to make Ken Buck unacceptable. They wanted to move the debate from the economy and spending to abortion and other social issues with those voters. That narrow slice of the electorate was still up for grabs as Buck was clinging to a narrow lead going into election day. Unfortunately, their strategy worked.

Despite the myth already being propagated since election day that Democrats had a more effective turn-out operation, the Colorado Republican Victory voter identification and turnout operation was successful and superior to the Democrats.

According to the Denver Post as of today with 96 percent of precincts reported, Buck had 783,426 votes as opposed to Suthers with 908,026, Stapleton with 815,715, and Gessler with 804,953. Clearly there was a drop off between Buck and our other statewide candidates. While the Bennet/leftist media strategy moved those unaffiliated women voters away from Buck, they largely went on to vote for Republicans Suthers, Stapleton, Gessler and Bosley. [emphasis added]

The Secretary of State race certainly bears this out. Scott Gessler was an outstanding candidate but had very little money to spend in his campaign against Secretary of State Bernie Buescher. Voters knew very little about Gessler and not that much more about the incumbent Buescher. And yet, Gessler unseated Buescher.

Had the vaunted Democratic turnout operation been as effective as post-election mythology is portraying it, Democrats would have swept all of the statewide offices we won.

**Update–folks on the progressive side of the state also assail the GOTV superiority meme, noting that Bennet barely won while Democrats lost on many other fronts.

Something went wrong with the methodology in a series of Mason-Dixon polls commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal/8 News Now in the two biggest Nevada races, as acknowledged this week by RJ publisher Sherm Frederick.

“We pay for the poll, and we expect accuracy,” Frederick told Patrick Coolican at the Las Vegas Sun. “We obviously didn’t get the kind of accuracy we expected, and we’re going to have to ask some questions about where the breakdown occurred.”

The last Mason-Dixon senate poll, published October 29, showed Sharron Angle beating Harry Reid by five points (49-44). On election day, Reid won by five points (50-45).

The last NV-3 poll, published October 31, showed Joe Heck beating Dina Titus by ten points (53-43). On election day, Heck won by less than a single point (48-47).

The story going into election was that Republicans were poised to easily win both races. The after-story was that Reid beat Angle by nearly six points, and Heck just barely defeated Titus.

Pre-election polls conducted by CNN, FOX and Rasmussen were wrong as well. Each showed similar results to the Mason-Dixon survey.

The Sun story said one reason for the skewed numbers may be that pollsters rely on random dialing to land lines and do not account for voters who only have cell phones. A recent Pew Research Center report revealed that 25 percent of Americans can be reached only by cell phone. These people tend to be younger, a demographic that leans heavily Democratic. 

In addition, polls tend to under-survey Hispanics, who are reluctant to participate in polls and also tend to vote Democratic.

The Review-Journal publisher denied any intentional bias his newspaper’s polls and told the Sun he was open to the possibility that cell-only and other demographic problems had rendered a flawed result. He also noted that Nevada may not be a reliably Red state any longer:

“Maybe Nevada is changing,” Frederick said. Indeed, once a reliably Republican state, Nevada is home to 60,000 more Democrats than Republicans, and its school population has more minorities every year.

Frederick denied bias in the polls. “Contrary to the opinion of our enemies, we don’t try to juice these polls,” he said.

Still, some pollsters got it right.

Republican pollster Glen Bolger, commissioned to conduct a survey for the Nevada Retail Association in September, showed Reid leading by five points.

The Reid campaign this week also released data from its internal polling showing Reid winning by five percent for most of the general election season.

The Seattle Times has called the race — the “Queen of Pork” has won a fourth term. Sen Patty Murray (D) will return to Capitol Hill, where she’ll find a much-depleted Democratic majority waiting for her.

Dino Rossi has issued a very gracious concession statement:

“This evening, I called Senator Murray to offer my congratulations on her re-election to the U.S. Senate. 

“I ran for the Senate because I believe we need a basic course correction from where Washington, D.C. has been taking us and to make sure this country is as free, as strong and as prosperous in the future as it has been in the past to preserve the best of America for future generations.

“That was a message that found a very receptive audience all across this state, though not quite receptive enough.

Poor guy. Another valiant effort. If only he had run in Delaware, Nevada, Alaska…

So it is that the same Washington state voters who overwhelming rejected ballot initiative 1098 — to impose a new income tax on high earners — have re-elected a Senator who has explicitly promised to do just that by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Go figure.

Story here. This means that I got at least one prediction wrong on Illinois, and it’s not a good feeling in this case. Fortunately, the other race where I may have been wrong has a Republican potentially winning in what was thought to be a safe Democratic district.

The U.S. Senate battle between reelected Democratic incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet and his Republican challenger Ken Buck won the title for the most expensive race with more than $33 million spent in favor of both candidates, with a slight majority favoring the GOP candidate with 54 percent of overall independent expenditures:

Race–Colo. Sen. Michael F Bennet, D (incumbent)

Last week–$5,964,300

Two weeks ago–$7,566,269

Three weeks ago–$4,878,765

Total–$33,435,827

Partisanship–54% Republican

State Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, a Republican icon who has served as GOP leader in the Nevada Senate since 1983, today lost his leadership seat to longtime Senator Mike McGinness, R-Fallon.

Raggio, a moderate who publicly endorsed Harry Reid over Sharron Angle in the U.S. Senate race, had been widely criticized for that choice.

Going into this morning’s caucus meeting, GOP circles were buzzing with talk that McGinness was gathering votes from the more conservative senators. McGinness reportedly had the nod from newly elected Republican senators Elizabeth Halseth and Michael Roberson, both of whom are far more conservative than the senators they replaced.

Before the election, McGinness told Las Vegas Sun bureau chief Cy Ryan he was “disappointed” with Raggio’s endorsement of Reid.

This is not the first time Raggio has been at odds with the more conservative and libertarian factions of the party. In 2003, he joined Republican governor Kenny Guinn in support of a tax increase. Then, in 2009, Raggio and four other senators joined Democrats to override Governor Jim Gibbons’ veto of a state budget that included tax increases.

Raggio, first elected to the state senate in 1972, is the state’s longest-serving state senator.

Republicans gained one seat in Tuesday’s election, but Democrats still control the state’s upper house 11 to 10.

Photos by Gina Sandoval, election night contributor to NRO Battle ‘10

Two days after the election, defeated Congressman Ron Klein finally called to congratulate his successor, Congressman-elect Allen West.

The call came at about 3:15 p.m. while West was being interviewed by Battle ‘10 at a Starbucks in West Palm Beach. Things started cordial and West said he appreciated the congratulations, but the brief conversation turned curt when Klein asked about West’s family.

“The fact that he asked me how my family was doing really upset me, because after all the very nefarious and nasty things he was putting out there that affected my family, I didn’t appreciate that whatsoever,” West said.

During the campaign, Klein repeatedly attacked West for personal financial issues, and a mailer sent out by the Florida Democratic Party accidentally disclosed West’s Social Security number.

West won the 22nd-district seat by eight points, and his victory was clear on election night. A West staffer told Battle ‘10 that the campaign had waited for a call from Klein, but that the congressman’s staff communicated Tuesday evening that he was unavailable. Klein’s statement on the “hard-fought campaign” also makes no mention of West.

“I think that for whatever reason he feels still that I should be responding to his agenda and his schedule, which, you know, if he had a sense of character and a sense of honor, he would have done the right thing election night,” West said.

Looks like we called this one wrong, folks. According to My Stateline, incumbent Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has pulled out an almost 19,000 vote lead over Bill Brady. If Quinn is elected (which it looks increasingly likely he will be), there will be an interesting question about ticket splitters in Illinois, not to mention the question of how the pollsters got this so wrong.

Some quick thoughts with stories to follow on a couple-few of these items:

• Harry Reid won by 41,000 votes due to wins in the big three counties (Clark, Washoe and Mineral). He also did better than expected in a number of rural counties.
• Only two percent went to ”None of These Candidates” in the senate race. Surprising.
• Less than one percent went to “Tea Party of Nevada” candidate Scott Ashjian. Voters wised up.
• Some of CNN’s exit poll data is interesting (nearly 4,000 interviews were conducted). The gender gap favored Reid, and he won Hispanics (who were 15 percent of the vote) 68-30. Reid also won women by eleven points.
• Angle won seniors 53-44. She also did well with college graduates. According to this sample, though, she only won independents by four percent. Recent polls had shown her winning nonpartisan voters by 15-17 percent.
• As mentioned yesterday, the public polling in the Senate race was terrible. We can chalk it up mostly to poor methodology including silly samples.
• The pollster for the Las Vegas Review-Journal,Mason-Dixon, finds itself under fire, having missed the Senate and House results by about nine points. The pollster said Angle was up by four, but she lost by five. Mason-Dixon also showed Heck up by 10, but he won by less than one percent. In 2008, Mason-Dixon was also way wrong on the spread on Obama’s victory.
• Kudos to Republican pollster Glen Bolger. His survey was widely derided, but it was correct.
• Ditto to Reid’s own pollster, Mark Mellman, who (we now know) showed his man up by 4 or 5 points.
• Is Sharron Angle done with politics? Probably not. Look for her to go after Dean Heller’s seat should the congressman decide to challenge John Ensign (unless Ensign is indicted in which case he may finally resign). Angle also might seek Ensign’s seat. Whoever wins the primary will probably face Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) who has given signals she wants to win the seat for the Democrats.

With close to 70 percent of ballots counted, Sen. Patty Murray (D) has ever so slightly increased her lead over Republican Dino Rossi:

Murray: 801,537

Rossi: 776,703

And counting…

…but are still confident they will prevail.

Subtly lowering expectations perhaps? We could be in for a long one.

In Connecticut’s fifth congressional district, Democratic incumbent Chris Murphy beat Republican challenger Sam Caligiuri, 54 to 46 percent. Because results from New Fairfield haven’t been reported yet, I colored that town gray until further notice.

Here’s the 2006 map from CT Local Politics:

In short release issued just moments ago by Ken Buck:

Buck Congratulates Senator Bennet

DENVER – Ken Buck said he called Senator Michael Bennet this afternoon to congratulate him on winning the U. S. Senate race.

Buck said that while the final margin in the race is very small, Colorado voters have spoken and he wishes Senator Bennet well.

Buck said, “my Senate campaign has been the experience of a lifetime. I will be forever grateful to the thousands of Coloradans who helped make this grassroots journey possible.”

In Connecticut’s fourth congressional district, Democratic incumbent Jim Himes beat Republican challenger Dan Debicella — though we’re unsure by how much yet. It’s clear that Himes’s margin in Bridgeport must be substantial for Debicella conceded relatively early last night. Here’s the 2010 map based on AP’s latest numbers:

And here’s 2006, when Himes beat longtime Republican incumbent Chris Shays.

In Connecticut’s third congressional district, Democratic incumbent Rosa DeLauro beat Republican challenger Jerry Labriola, 63 to 36 percent. Here’s the new map:

And the 2006 map from CT Local Politics:

In Connecticut’s second congressional district, Democratic incumbent Joe Courtney beat Republican challenger Janet Peckinpaugh, 60 to 39 percent. Here’s the 2010 map.

And here’s the 2006 map. Remember that in that year, Republican incumbent Rob Simmons lost by only 83 votes to then-challenger Courtney.

Republican senate candidate Joe Miller doesn’t think the race is over.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, 41 percent of votes were for write-in candidate, 34 percent for Republican Joe Miller, and 24 percent for Democrat Scott McAdams.

“Previous write-in campaigns in Alaska have demonstrated that as much as 5 to 6 percent of returned ballots have not met the standard to be counted as a valid vote,” said the Miller campaign in a statement.

“Without a single write-in ballot counted, Lisa Murkowski has no claim on a victory,” the campaign continued. “To complicate the matter, the Division of Elections has yet to adequately explain how a ballot will be marked in favor of a candidate. The current standards are extraordinarily ambiguous. We trust that officials will conduct the hand count with propriety and consistency.”

The Miller campaign will have the support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh told The Hill, “The NRSC has been assisting the Miller campaign from day one and we continue to assist his campaign.”

The write-in ballot count will not begin until next Wednesday.

For those conservatives interested in schadenfreude:

Sen. Patty Murray (D) currently leads Republican Dino Rossi by just over 14,000 votes (less than one percent), with 62 percent of ballots counted. An estimated 500,000+ ballots remains to be counted, although it is difficult to be know the exact figure.

“No one knows how many ballots are left to count, since large volumes are in the mail and final return rate isn’t knowable,” Dave Ammons, spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed, wrote in an e-mail to seattlepi.com. “Both sides have legitimate theories for a path to victory, but it’s far too close to see how the offsetting trends play out. In my view, this is one of those classic too-close-to-call races. We need to let the vote tally continue.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Exact numbers are tricky to come by, but we’ll take a stab. Prior to the election, the secretary of state estimated that about 60 percent of the total vote would be tallied Nov. 2. That would leave about 572,000 ballots remaining. King County officials say there could be about 350,000 votes still to count from the state’s largest county, which Murray was winning by more than a 60 percent margin.

Where can Rossi pick up votes? Places like Spokane and Clark County, which were favoring the Republican. In Spokane, there are about 100,000 ballots left to count, officials estimate. Rossi was winning 56 percent of the votes there. There also appeared to be about 100,000 votes left to county in Clark County, where Rossi was winning 54 percent of the vote.

Whatever the actual number of remaining ballots, a large chunk of them will be counted today and the results reported this afternoon (Pacific Time). BATTLE ‘10 will have those numbers as they come.

Both sides expressed confidence following the initial results. Sen. Murray told a crowd of supporters in Seattle last night: “We are winning tonight. We will be winning by even more tomorrow. We will win this race.”

Meanwhile, Rossi campaign manager Pat Shortridge wrote in a memo that “We are confident that the margins we are seeing throughout Washington State, combined with the state legislative victories, will put Dino Rossi ahead by an overwhelming margin.”.

Fresh off an election granting the GOP new veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, the Miami Herald reports that the house and senate will open a one-day session on Nov. 16 to swear in new members and override a few of Gov. Charlie Crist’s vetoes.

Connecticut Local Politics did political junkies in the Nutmeg State a great service by mapping the state’s electoral results in 2006 and 2008. Using the site’s old maps, I’ve updated them to reflect the 2010 returns. Here’s the first congressional district, in which Democratic incumbent John Larson beat Republican challenger Ann Brickley 61 to 37 percent, according to the Associated Press. I used the AP’s tallies for this map. (Note: Brickley won Torrington by 10.5 percent, making that town a darker shade of red — just barely.)

Here’s the 2006 map from CT Local Politics.

I’ll try to do the congressional districts, senatorial race, and governor’s race. Next up, the second congressional district. Stay tuned.

Republican senate candidate Carly Fiorina just delivered her concession speech, speaking about the conservative values she had run and giving a warm-hearted account of the campaign.

“This morning, the outcome is clear,” Fiorina said, acknowledging her refusal to concede last night, when the major networks had called the state for Boxer but the votes remained close. “We won with the independents, but in the end we could not overcome the registration advantage the Democrats have.”

Fiorina spoke almost nostalgically about the campaign she had run, calling it a “great adventure [and] great privilege.” Talking about the Californians she had met on the trail, she said, “I have been touched by every one of them.”

“I would not trade a single moment,” she said.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer won 52 percent of the vote to Fiorina’s 43 percent.

Kendrick Meek and Charlie Crist are both non-committal as to their next moves. Meek will probably head back to Washington, D.C. soon, since his children attend school there. Crist said he will “finish strong” as governor, but declined to say whether he might go back to the GOP.

The only thing both candidates know for sure? They’re taking some time off and going fishing.

Democrat Alex Sink conceded this morning after failing to pick up enough votes to turn around a lead of less than 100,000 held by her rival, Republican Rick Scott.

“Nothing in my life has honored me as much as your willingness and the willingness of everyone in Florida to put their faith in my plan to turn around the state of Florida,” Scott said in a victory speech today.

Scott’s victory makes the sweep official: The GOP won every major contested office last night, including the governorship, all three elected cabinet positions, the U.S. Senate race, and four U.S. House races — while also making gains in the state house and state senate.

Wisconsin was the only state in the country last night to see the its governorship and Senate seat flip parties, in addition to both chambers of the state legislature. In Wisconsin’s case, every changeover was a victory for the Republicans:

Scott Walker (R) defeated Tom Barrett (D) 52 to 47 percent.

Ron Johnson (R) unseated Sen. Russ Feingold (D) 52 to 47 percent.

Republicans made dramatic gains in both the state Assembly and state Senate, winning decisive majorities in each. Democrats went into Nov. 2 with advantages of 50-45 in the Assembly and 18-15 in the Senate. The GOP now has a 59-38 majority in the Assembly and a 19-14 majority in the Senate.

Republicans also took back a majority of seats in the state’s House delegation. Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble both won seats currently occupied by Democrats, while Dan Kapanke came up just short against Rep. Ron Kind. Republicans now hold five of Wisconsin’s eight House seats.

The change reflects a dramatic shift in the support of Wisconsin’s independent voters from Democrats to Republicans over the past two years. Independents went 59 percent for Obama in 2008, but Feingold got just 43 percent and Barrett 42 percent of the independent vote.

Fox 31 also calls the Senate race for the Democrat:

Democratic U.S. Senator Michael Bennet retained his seat by beating Republican Ken Buck in a neck-and-neck race. Bennet had an 8,000-vote lead Wednesday morning with 88 percent of the precincts reporting.

The locations with remaining votes, primarily Arapahoe and Boulder counties, are Democrat-friendly, and it was not going to be possible for Buck to catch up.

Bennet’s campaign was confident his lead would grow when those ballots were counted, so his team felt very good Wednesday morning about his chances of winning the race.

Buck’s lead, which had gone up and down all night, was at 9,000 votes around 2 a.m. Wednesday, after additional returns from several smaller rural counties. But Bennet took a lead of just a few thousand votes with 88 percent of the precincts reporting at 8:00 a.m.

Despite polling showing Ken Buck with a lead or within the margin of error (in Democratic-leaning polls) since the primary in August, it appears that appointed Sen. Michael Bennet stands a strong chance of being elected to a full term. He currently holds a 7,000 vote lead, though this would still be close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

At least for the U.S. Senate race, three factors appear to have allowed Bennet to close a gap in the final days of the campaign. A social media induced storm of commentary starting on the left side of the blogosphere reintroduced a non-story that gave Bennet a key wedge to attack Buck with that targeted women: a refusal to prosecute a weak rape case that even the female Boulder county DA said was unwinnable. That happened in 2005, but a progressive group “shopped” the story, and finding no takers in the mainstream media, allowed the left-leaning Colorado Independent to publish the story–and put it into the “mainstream.” That citation was eventually used in attack ads that pounced on “Buck doesn’t care about women” meme that the Bennet campaign pushed since August. If Bennet ultimately wins, it will be because Buck lost with women by a large margin. Buck inadvertently compounded the story by asserting that being gay was akin to alchoholism, all within the same week.

Second, the fractured Tea Party movement, having seen its gubernatorial candidate implode, eroded Republican cohesion and a unified GOP ticket. That helped draw down momentum from the Buck campaign, introducing upstream voter apathy about the U.S. Senate race as the governor’s race devolved into a two party conservative split between nominal Republican candidate Dan Maes and American Constitution Party candidate and former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo.

Finally, the get-out-the-vote effort installed by the “Colorado Model” and Democratic donors ahead of the 2004 election may have saved the day for Bennet, turning out Democratic voters in a tough political environment and allowing the party to stay just ahead in key battleground counties in the suburban Denver metro area that provided a counter to Republican strength elsewhere. The vote margins were small–there were no blowouts in the counties outside of the Boulder-Denver corridor, but leads of a few thousand votes in places like Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson and Larimer counties appear to be the key to Bennet retaining his seat.

Republicans will also mull over the potential reasons why so many polls–and strong favorable partisan early voting returns–failed to produce a victory. Very few polls showed Bennet in the lead, though he managed to stay with the margin of error, but appeared to indicate that Buck could eke out a narrow 1-2 percent victory. Even after the rape case and gay gaffe broke during the first week of early voting, Republicans showed strong early returns as the partisan ballot advantage appeared to be playing heavily in their favor. Ultimately, concerted Democratic messaging appears to have swayed women voters and independents in suburban Denver, eliminating the polling advantages that Buck enjoyed earlier in October.

There are still outstanding ballots, and so the final tabulated results are not yet in. But what’s being reported in the unofficial results indicates that Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes has secured more than 10.0% of the vote. Fears based on the latest round of polls that Maes would land in single digits didn’t materialize. And some pundits (myself included) are humbled again on the high-profile races.

The U.S. Senate showdown remains up in the air with some late counties, as well as military and provisional ballots outstanding, (despite the Denver Post jumping the gun). But Republicans have consoled themselves so far by winning the Secretary of State and Treasurer offices, along with John Suthers holding on as Attorney General. And while several races remain uncalled this morning, the GOP looks like they have won a narrow majority in the state house and are holding on to faint hopes of taking the state senate.

Besides the obvious (i.e., the governor’s race), disappointments for conservatives include the relatively close loss of Amendment 63 (the right to health care choice) and the wider-margin defeat of the Clear the Bench Colorado campaign to unseat three state supreme court justices. Election Day is over. And yet it’s not all over. Stay tuned for the last results to be made official.

Guest post by Ben DeGrow. Cross posted at Mount Virtus.

Republican Ryan Frazier gave Rep. Ed Perlmutter the toughest challenge he’s faced in CO-7, but in the end fell short of unseating the incumbent Democrat:

“Somebody upstairs, somebody was fooling around saying: ‘You da man.’ No, we da team!” Perlmutter said in his victory speech. “Thank you very, very much.”

The race was being watched nationally as an indicator for just how many seats Republicans would win and had been featured in numerous media outlets as a harbinger of the 2010 midterms.

“It’s been a tough two years for America. And this race has been really tough and it really has taken all of us,” he told the crowd. “The support that I got from different organizations and different people was fantastic.”

In his concession speech, Frazier maintained a defiant tone.

“I’m very honored and proud to be someone who lives in this district with you. And I want to tell you right now that sometimes you fall down, but the real challenge of an American is how you get back up and keep moving forward,” Frazier said. “Folks, let me assure you, we are not done. We are not done.”

This was the closest election Perlmutter has had since first winning Colorado’s newest congressional district in 2006.

“We just had to fight and make sure we had the personal touch with every voter, either by phoning them or by going door to door, and that’s what made the difference,” Perlmutter said in an interview with 9NEWS. “I’m just very proud that we had such a team effort to make a difference, to win this thing.”

Appointed Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, though clinging to a slim lead, has been pronounced the winner of Colorado’s U.S. Senate race by the Denver Post:

Appointed U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet will be elected to the U.S. Senate after pulling ahead of challenger Ken Buck this morning.

Long after most Coloradans — including the candidates and their supporters — had gone to bed, returns from Denver and Boulder moved Bennet past Buck and into the lead, 47.5 percent to 47.1 percent.

A recount would be required if the difference between the two candidates’ vote totals is less than one-half of 1 percent of the highest vote total, or about 3,900 votes based on current tallies.

Bennet leads by nearly 7,000 votes with an estimated 30,000 still to be counted in Boulder County.

Many Sharron Angle supporters were reportedly shocked and dismayed when the race was called for Reid last night. The surprise was most likely caused by one of two faulty assumptions.

Many Republicans believed Tea Party enthusiasm and anti-Reid anger would kick enough sand in the gears of the Nevada Democratic turnout machine to slow it down and enable the Energizer Bunny of Silver State politics to outrun her competitor.

And many Republicans believed the polls.

Both were clearly incorrect. As as a result, both the party faithful and the pollsters have some self-examination to do over the next few months.

For Floridians, red is the new purple.

The deeply divided state had historically been jointly-owned territory — a state carried by Clinton, then twice by Bush, and then by Obama in 2008. But during Tuesday’s election, it was all red, all the time.

In fact, Republicans swept every major competitive contest. Marco Rubio emerged victorious from a three-person Senate race; Panama City funeral home owner Steve Southerland ousted 2nd-district incumbent Allen Boyd; former state legislator Daniel Webster dropped progressive icon Alan Grayson in the 8th district; tea party favorite Allen West came out on top of a grudge match with 22nd-district incumbent Ron Klein; former sheriff Sandy Adams retired 24th-district freshman Suzanne Kosmas. Many of the races weren’t even close.

Moreover, Republicans were elected to fill the three state cabinet offices of CFO, attorney general and agriculture commissioner. And Rick Scott is in a tight race for the governor’s mansion, leading Democrat Alex Sink by approximately 72,000 votes. The Scott campaign believes it will be enough for victory.

Not that state legislature would necessarily need him. Republicans expanded their control over both chambers of the state legislature to a veto-proof majority: 28-12 in the senate and an expected 80-40 in the house.

All in all, the storm was big enough that it should have been given a name by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It all probably happened for two reasons. First, the enthusiasm gap was real. The Division of Elections doesn’t display instant partisan voter data, but consider the early and absentee voting numbers. More than 2.2 million Floridians voted prior to election day. Of those, 1,102,090 were Republicans and 825,103 were Democrats, giving the GOP an advantage of 276,987 voters, or approximately 14 percent.

All caveats apply. Absentee and early voters are self-selecting and may not represent the broader voter base. Trends from two weeks earlier may not hold on election day. But early voting was both an indicator of the wave to come and, ultimately, a voter deficit that Democrats had to make up on election day.

Down-ballot candidates such as state legislators and cabinet members — and even possibly Rick Scott — may also have been buffeted by Rubio’s coat-tails. As a major party energizer, Rubio likely brought voters to the polls, where they then voted down the ticket.

It’s also hard to view the election results without filtering them through the tea party prism. Each of the five federal candidates above was portrayed by opponents as extreme. For Rubio it was his supposed desire to gut Social Security. For Southerland and Adams it was offhand statements about repealing the 17th amendment. Daniel Webster found his social conservatism and personal religious faith were a source of hit points. West, meanwhile, was attacked for tongue-in-cheek comments made at tea party rallies.

Whether out of frustration at the negativity or out of simple pragmatism, voters largely refused those claims, handing conservative candidates victories at huge margins: 20, 18, 13, and 8 points, respectively.

But as important as federal candidates are, state candidates might have a larger long-term impact. If the GOP captures the governor’s mansion and increases its control over the statehouse, the agenda will likely be sweeping. The simplest place to start? Charlie Crist’s vetoes of a teacher merit pay bill and an abortion ultrasound requirement.