After an agonizing Election Day and night, the results are (mostly) in and I am feeling incredibly hopeful and buoyed up by our many victories. Apologies in advance for the many exclamation points in this post.
Here in my swing district, NY's 19th, Democrat Antonio Delgado is my new Congressperson and I could not be happier! We successfully kicked Republican John Faso to the curb after just one crappy term. Faso consistently voted against our best interests and was caught on video promising one of his constituents who suffers from a brain tumor and spinal condition that he would protect her healthcare complete with repeated hugs (spoiler alert: he lied...)
There's also a new Sheriff in town here in Ulster County -- an experienced State Trooper and former U.S. Marine and DEMOCRAT named Juan Figueroa! I am thrilled to see the back of our previous Sheriff, Paul Van Blarcum who liked to use the Sheriff Office's official Facebook page to disparage the players taking a knee and encourage people to boycott the NFL, and to urge people to carry firearms in response to school shootings. No more!
My Democratic candidate for NY State Senate lost her race but Democrats won control of the NY State Senate in earnest - no more awful IDC! Come January, we'll have our first ever woman Majority leader in the NY State Senate. Hopefully, this will allow the Dems to tackle a series of long-overdue reforms that have been languishing for years.
On the national level, DEMOCRATS NOW HAVE CONTROL OF THE HOUSE!!! This means that creepy Devin Nunes is no longer going to be overseeing the Mueller investigation among other crucial checks on Trump's power. Some highlights of yesterday's results:
We elected a record-breaking 100+ women to Congress yesterday, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is now the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at 29 years of age!
Voters elected our first two Native American women to Congress - Deb Haaland in New Mexico and Sharice Davids in Kansas. Davids is also Kansas's first openly LGBT Congressperson!
Midwest voters elected our first two Muslim women to Congress - Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Ilhan Omar in Minnesota!
And Colorado's new governor, Democrat Jared Polis is the first openly gay man elected to a governorship.
That jerk Scott Walker is no longer the Governor of Wisconsin, he was beaten by Democrat Tony Evers! Nevada has a new Democratic Governor and Senator! And in Georgia's race for governor, Democrat Stacey Abrams is NOT conceding to Brian Kemp, her Republican opponent who refused to step away from his post overseeing state elections while he campaigned... I like that fighting spirit and who knows, Georgia has an interesting law requiring one candidate to win at least 50% of the vote - Kemp currently has 50.4% but we'll see what's in those absentee ballots - maybe there will be a runoff election.
I won't pretend that the Senate seats we lost last night are not disturbing but I feel filled with hope today.
We progressives are just getting started and we've got the next two years to improve and build on our strategies, our voter registrations, our ground game and our candidates. There's a lot of work to do but we can do it.
A big thank you to all of you who knocked on doors, sent postcards, registered voters, made calls, sent texts, talked to your neighbors, drove people to the polls, donated money and VOTED!
Let's take a little rest to celebrate and gather ourselves for the coming push to get rid of Trump and take back the Senate. Then, back at it!
No comments:
Post a Comment