Election 2010 Awards

Here are my Election 2010 awards:

1. Most Surprising House Result: A tie between Illinois District 8 and Texas District 27. In the Illinois race, Democrat Melissa Bean was no longer considered vulnerable after she drew an underfunded, unemployed Tea Party candidate named Joe Walsh as her Republican opponent. Walsh ran a strong grassroots campaign under the radar and stunned her on election night. In the Texas race, Democrat Solomon Ortiz was a 14-term incumbent in a 74% Hispanic district who was not on anyone's list as being even potentially vulnerable until the last few weeks of the campaign, when allegations about ethic violations began to surface. (It should be noted that both these races are very close and neither have been officially certified yet.)

2. Most Surprising Senate Result: Probably the Alaska Senate race. Again, the results are not finalized yet, but it appears very likely that Lisa Murkowski will win as a write-in candidate -- the first time a write-in candidate has won a Senate election since Strom Thurmond. As much as I dislike Murkowski, this is an impressive feat and one that I did not expect her to pull off.

3. Most Surprising Governor Result: The Illinois governor's race. Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn was extremely unpopular and suffering from an association with the corrupt former governor Rod Blagojevich. Despite trailing badly in polls virtually the entire year, Quinn managed to hold on and narrowly defeat Republican Bill Brady in an otherwise dismal year for Illinois Democrats.

4. Most Satisfying Election Result: The Florida District 8 House race. Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson said on the House floor last year that the Republicans' health care plan was for patients to "die quickly." He aired an especially vicious ad against his Republican opponent Daniel Webster, whom he dubbed "Taliban Dan." The ad took Webster's quotes out of context to make it appear he was saying the opposite of what he really said and to make it appear that he supported the subjugation of women, Taliban style. Apparently being an obnoxious loudmouth and partisan hack doesn't win you votes; Grayson was crushed on election night.

5. Most Disappointing Election Result: Harry Reid's re-election to the U.S. Senate. This one's not even close. For years, Harry Reid has been a thorn in the side of conservatives. His nasty rhetoric, extreme partisanship, and left-wing ideology have not earned him any friends across the aisle and have made him extremely unpopular both in Nevada and in the country at large. Reid has made too many outrageous comments to list here: everything from insensitive comments about blacks and Latinos to calling the President of the U.S. a "loser" to likening ObamaCare to the movement to give blacks the right to vote. Yet, Reid was re-elected by a wider margin than expected on Tuesday.

6. Most Embarrassing Incumbent Loss: Blanche Lincoln's Senate loss in Arkansas. It is rare for an incumbent -- especially a Senate incumbent -- to fall below 40% of the vote. Yet Lincoln managed to scrape together a mere 37% of the vote as she got crushed by Republican John Boozman, after polling as low as 29% earlier in the cycle. Lincoln achieved this feat by alienating the conservative Democrats who had fueled her previous victories by voting in favor of health care reform, while at the same time managing to anger her liberal base by refusing to support a public option.

7. Most Impressive New Member of Congress: Marco Rubio, newly elected Florida senator. Although only in his early 40's, Rubio already has an impressive resume, including a highly influential Speaker of the Florida House. No one gave him a chance when he launched a long-shot primary challenge to sitting Republican governor Charlie Crist last year; running a principled, issues-based campaign, he succeeded in driving Crist out of the party to avoid an embarrassing primary loss and then beating him and Democrat Kendrick Meek soundly in the general election, pulling nearly 50% of the vote in a three-way race! Rubio is one of the most articulate candidates I have ever heard, and he has achieved his success without watering down his conservative message or compromising his Christian faith. I wouldn't be surprised if a presidential bid is in his future.

8. Most Unprincipled Politician: Even in a category this crowded, Charlie Crist stands out. As recently as May of this year, Crist was the self-described conservative Republican governor of Florida running for the U.S. Senate. As the above-mentioned Rubio moved ahead in the polls and Crist realized he was likely to lose the primary, he left the Republican party and launched an independent bid for the Senate -- just a couple of weeks after solemnly promising on national TV that he would stay in the Republican party! As he realized he needed to pull a significant number of Democratic votes to win, he began dramatically shifting his positions on issue after issue. By the end of the campaign, Crist had become the de facto Democrat in the race and had flip-flopped on almost every major issue from abortion to government spending to education to the environment. Calling Crist "unprincipled" is actually putting it charitably.

9. State With the Most Favorable Election Results: This would be a tie between Pennsylvania and Ohio, both of which provided the GOP with significant victories on election night. In Pennsylvania, Republican captured the governor's seat by a comfortable margin and elected a conservative Republican to the Senate -- both were pickups of Democratic seats -- and picked up five Democratic House seats (falling just short in two others). In Ohio, Republicans succeeded in defeating an incumbent Democratic governor who Obama campaigned hard for, and also easily defended an open seat Senate race. In addition, they defeated five Democratic House incumbents, an impressive feat.

10. State With the Most Disappointing Election Results: This would also be a tie between California and Massachusetts. Although both of these states are heavily Democratic, the GOP had high hopes for both this year. In California, Republicans nominated two top-tier, self-funding candidates to run for Senate and governor. Although at times both candidates seemed to be well-positioned to win, both ended up falling well short in the final count. Republicans made a real effort against at least 4 House incumbents in the state as well, but they lost 2 and 2 are currently too close to call. Democrats retain their stranglehold on the U.S. House delegation from the state and on the state legislature. Republicans also had high expectations in Massachusetts, still feeling a bit euphoric from Scott Brown's shocking victory in January. This election brought them back to reality. Their gubernatorial candidate fell well short, foiled by a third-party candidate who split the anti-Democratic vote. They recruited strong candidates to run in several of the state's House districts, including against Barney Frank, but fell well short in all the races. Democrats continue to control all the state's 10 House districts and an overwhelming majority in the state legislature.

11. Most Important Win for Conservatives: This is certainly a matter of opinion, but I would argue that it was the Pennsylvania Senate race. In perhaps no major statewide race in the country was there a sharper ideological contrast between the two candidates. Republican Pat Toomey was a former congressman and president of the Club for Growth who has been a reliable economic and social conservative throughout his career. Democrat Joe Sestak, by contrast, had an extremely left-wing voting record in Congress, which included championing leftist causes like gays in the military, opposing Israel, and bragging about his pro-ObamaCare vote. Democrats knew the stakes of this race, as Obama came numerous times to campaign for Sestak. And the race was closer than expected, which means conservatives dodged a bullet in a Democratic-leaning state.

12. Most Embarrassing Statewide Candidate: Alvin Greene, Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina. This unemployed military veteran living in his parents' basement somehow managed to win the Democratic primary with 59% of the vote, despite never spending a dime or holding a single campaign event. Despite facing felony charges relating to pornography, Greene soldiered on during the campaign, proposing such "out of the box" job creation ideas as making action figures of himself to sell to the public. Listening to him speak and do interviews was almost painful to watch. In the end, however, he managed to get a whopping 28% of South Carolinians to vote for him.

13. Biggest Waste of Money by a Political Candidate: This award has to go to Meg Whitman, GOP candidate for governor in California. Whitman spent nearly $150 million of her own personal fortune -- a record -- on her gubernatorial bid, yet (with final results still pending) she appears to have barely gotten over 40% of the vote and lost by over 1 million votes. This is proof positive that you cannot buy an election, especially when you are running in a state that is not a good ideological fit for your candidacy.

14. Least Gracious Winning Candidate: This would have to be a tie between two delightful public servants -- Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia. Frank, upon winning a tough race against Republican Sean Bielat, gave an angry victory speech in which he lashed out against Fox News and other favorite liberal bogeymen and complained that his GOP challenger and other Republicans had run campaigns "beneath the dignity of democracy." Er, yeah. Thank goodness for congressmen like Frank, who has respected the dignity of democracy by allowing his previous gay partners to grow pot and run prostitution services out of his house. And then there's Congressman Moran, who refused to take an election night concession phone call from his opponent. How dare you challenge me? Don't you know I'm congressman for life?

15. Most Underreported Story of the Election: The increasing ethnic diversity of the Republican Party. Like Martin Luther King Jr., I am tired of liberals focusing more on the color of people's skin than the content of their character, and I think the media's obsession with racial diversity is harmful to our country. Still, it is important to point out the increasing diversity of elected Republicans, because it shows how ridiculous the charges of racism are against conservatives in general and the Tea Party movement in particular. For the first time since 2000, there is now a black Republican member of Congress -- in fact there are two. Allen West defeated a Democratic incumbent in a House race in South Florida, and Tim Scott won 72% of the vote in a primary runoff against Strom Thurmond's son and then easily won the general election in a heavily white and Republican district in South Carolina. Scott and West were both interviewed on Hannity last night, and I was impressed with how eloquently they articulated conservative principles. Numerous other black conservatives ran in House races around the country but came up short.

Many other conservative minorities were also elected on Tuesday. Indian-American Nikki Haley, another very articulate conservative, became the first woman and the first minority to be elected governor of South Carolina; she joins fellow Indian-American conservative Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Despite Harry Reid's comment that he couldn't imagine how any Hispanics could be Republicans, many conservative Hispanics won on Tuesday. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and an outspoken proponent of limited government, won a resounding victory in the Florida Senate race, while South Florida elected a new Cuban Republican congressman, David Rivera. Two other Hispanic conservatives won resounding victories in key governor's races -- Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Brian Sandoval in Nevada -- while Hispanic conservatives picked up Democratic House seats in Washington, Idaho, and Texas. And many conservative women were elected to the House, including in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Alabama, Washington, and South Dakota. So much for the Republican party only electing white males.