Yesterday was Voting Day across the country, as local elections were decided and local and state politicians and referendums met their fate.
Three stories in particular, at least it seems to me, could very well be Bell Sheep of the direction in which America’s Political Pendulum is swinging, in the months leading up to the President Election of 2016.
Dispatch.com has the first story.
Ohio voters strongly rejected legalizing marijuana today, despite a $25 miillion campaign by proponents.
The Associated Press called State Issue 3 a loser about 9:30 p.m., 30 minutes after the first results were released by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office.
The issue to legalize pot for recreational and medical use is going down 65 percent to 35 percent, losing in all 88 counties with more than 48 percent of the statewide vote counted.
“At a time when too many families are being torn apart by drug abuse, Ohioans said no to easy access to drugs and instead chose a path that helps strengthen our families and communities,” said Gov. John Kasich in a statement.
Curt Steiner, campaign director for Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies, said, “Issue 3 was nothing more and nothing less than a business plan to seize control of the recreational marijuana market in Ohio … Never underestimate the wisdom of Ohio voters. They saw through the smokescreen of slick ads, fancy but deceptive mailings, phony claims about tax revenues and, of course, Buddie the marijuana mascot.”
However, State Issue 2 is passing 53 percent to 47 percent. Some counties voted against Issue 2, including Athens County. Issue 2 is an amendment proposed by state lawmakers to make it more difficult for special economic interests to amend the Ohio Constitution in the future.
The vote-counting process was set back 90 minutes when ResponsibleOhio, the group backing Issue 3, went to court complaining that problems with electronic poll books at some Hamilton County polling places caused voting delays. Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman ordered polls there to stay open; Husted subsequently told boards of election not to release statewide issue totals until polls closed in Hamilton County.
Issue 3 would legalize marijuana for recreational smoking and in edible form for Ohioans 21 or older, and in medicinal form for those of any age with qualifying medical conditions. Commercial growth would be controlled for at least the first four years by investment groups at 10 specified locations around the state.
A core of about two-dozen wealthy investors, including former NBA star Oscar Robertson, two descendents of President William Howard Taft, and boy-band member Nick Lachey contributed about $25 million to the Issue 3 campaign.
The pot legalization issue was opposed by a broad but not-as-well-funded coalition that was expected to spend about $2.5 million pushing back against ResponsibleOhio.
Issue 2, described as an anti-monopoly amendment, was hurriedly put together by the General Assembly earlier this year when lawmakers realized the legalization issue was likely to make the ballot. That measure would require supporters of monopolies, oligopolies and cartels to secure voter approval twice at the same election – one time to exempt the issue from the monopoly ban and a second time for the proposal itself.
The interaction of the issues remains open to debate and that may account for voter confusion.
There does not appear to have been any confusion to me.
Politico.com reports next, that
GOP businessman Matt Bevin easily won Kentucky’s governorship on Tuesday night and will become just the second Republican to inhabit the governor’s mansion in Frankfort in more than four decades.
The Associated Press called the contest with Bevin leading Conway, 52 percent to 44 percent, with 80 percent of precincts reporting. Polls prior to the vote showed a close race, with most surveys giving Conway, the state’s sitting attorney general, a slight advantage.
Bevin, a multimillionaire investment manager who has spent $7 million trying to win elected office between this run and his failed 2014 Senate primary against now-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has completed a stunning political turnaround. In 2014, he lost the primary to McConnell by 25 percentage points, was mocked by fellow Republicans as an “East Coast Con Man” and a supporter of cockfighting. He entered the governor’s race just hours before the filing deadline and won a May primary against two more establishment-oriented Republicans by a mere 83 votes.
The general election was ugly, with both candidates repeatedly impugning the other’s integrity and Conway repeatedly blitzing Bevin with negative ads branding the eventual victor as a hypocrite and a liar. Bevin was outspent for most of the contest and had his tactics consistently questioned by his fellow Republicans. But a late $2.5-million spending blitz from the Republican Governors Association helped Bevin close the gap in television advertising in the final weeks.
Bevin’s win continues two distressing Obama-era trends for Democrats. The party will know hold just 17 governorships, down from 29 in 2008. Only a single one of those — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe — hails from the South. (Democrats will have a chance to pick up a governor’s mansion in the South on Nov. 21, when Democrat John Bel Edwards faces GOP Sen. David Vitter in Louisiana’s gubernatorial race.)
Despite his unorthdox, underfunded and oft-criticized campaign — as recently as mid-October, national Republicans were ready to give up on the contest — Bevin’s team insisted throughout the race their candidate’s ideological leanings on everything from abortion rights to Obamacare to school choice were more in line with Kentucky voters and would allow them to survive a huge monetary disadvantage.
Matt Bevin is a Tea Party Conservative who appears regularly on Glenn Beck’s Radio Program.
Finally, per newser.com,
An ordinance that would have established nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people in Houston failed to win approval from voters on Tuesday.
The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was rejected after a nearly 18-month battle that spawned rallies, legal fights and accusations of both religious intolerance and demonization of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Supporters of the ordinance had said it would have offered increased protections for gay and transgender people, as well as protections against discrimination based on sex, race, age, religion and other categories.
Opponents of the ordinance, including a coalition of conservative pastors, said it infringed on their religious beliefs regarding homosexuality. But in the months leading up to Tuesday’s vote, opponents focused their campaign on highlighting one part of the ordinance related to the use of public bathrooms by transgender men and women that opponents alleged would open the door for sexual predators to go into women’s restrooms.
Democratic Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is gay, and other supporters of the ordinance had called this “bathroom ordinance” strategy highly misleading and a scare tactic.
The ordinance was initially approved by the Houston City Council in May 2014 but a lawsuit to have residents vote on the measure eventually made it to the Texas Supreme Court, which in July ordered the city to either repeal the ordinance or put it on the ballot.
Tuesday’s referendum drew attention from around the nation, with the measure getting high-profile endorsements last week from the White House, high-tech giant Apple and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. The ordinance also had received support from other members of Houston’s religious community.
Campaign for Houston, which fought the ordinance, said opponents included a diverse group of individuals, such as pastors from all denominations and local and state elected officials.
On Monday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had tweeted his support for opponents, saying, “HOUSTON: Vote Texas values, not @HillaryClinton values. Vote NO on City of Houston Proposition 1. No men in women’s bathrooms.”
Houston’s Mayor is a Lesbian who, in the past, attempted to subpoena Christian Pastors’ Sermons for speaking out against the Sin of Homosexuality.
I believe that these three stories are indicative of the swing of America’s Political Pendulum back to the Right, or, Conservative, Side.
Modern American Liberals are beside themselves trying to figure out why Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson are leading all of the other Republican candidates, several of whom more closely mirror their own political ideology.
Both Trump and Dr. Carson are striking a resident note with the majority of American people because they are saying the things which we would like to say to these professional politicians, who have forgotten who gave them their phony baloney jobs.
Liberals, on both sides of the Political Aisle, during the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, have had their way in the course of a great many things.
Plain talk and forthrighteousness have been replaced by weasel words and political correctness.
The fulfilling of promises made to constituencies by Republican politicians, has been replaced by “Vichy Republicans” “going along to get along” with their drinking buddies from across the Political Aisle, as exhibited by last week’s “Budget Deal”.
Just as the colonists revolted against taxation without representation, I believe that we are seeing the beginning of a revolt by average Americans, like you and me, living here in the Heartland of America, who have had enough of lies and broken promises, given to them, by politicians who are supposed to be serving them and not the other way around.
The backlash, last summer, against Barack Hussein Obama’s reluctance to lower the American flag on all government buildings after the massacre of five of our Brightest and Best, after he and Valerie Jarret immediately bathed the White House is a rainbow of spotlights, after the Political Activists in the Supreme Court legalized Gay Marriage, was just a prelude to what we, as Americans, will not only bear witness to, but, also, participate in, over the next several months, leading up to the Presidential Election of 2016.
The American people are getting ready to exercise their Constitutional Right to determine the future of our nation, in a mighty way.
Last night was just a sample of things to come.
Until He Comes,
KJ
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