The phone has stopped ringing (thank God) and the polls have all closed; most of the votes have been counted, so how did we do? The Democrats lost a couple of big Governor Seats in New Jersey and Virginia to the Republicans, with no impact locally, but they definitely could shake things up in their states and maybe nationally. Their citizens spoke loudly, no more business as usual (unless you’re a New Yorker).

The big news locally in Upstate New York is the loss of a huge traditionally Conservative district to the Democrats (since the 1800’s). The local Republican Party 23rd district leaders anointed a liberal insider to carry the flag for a Conservative district. She failed from the beginning to energize the base leaving the field wide open for any actual Conservative to run unopposed as a third party candidate.

Doug Hoffman lost by less than a “Dede” (<6 percent); he was always the long shot and deserves our applause for his historic showing. It took all of the substantial combined forces and bankrolls the Republi-Crats could muster to beat down this late coming, third party, un-groomed outsider by 4 %. That just solidifies my belief that the only people the Dema-Pubs hate worse than each other is anyone else! After throwing her support to the opposition party, Dede still stole 6% of the vote and she wasn’t even running — now who’s the spoiler? Why would an experienced Republican political veteran purposely throw such an important election lock, stock and barrel to the opposition? Is she a wolf in sheep’s clothing, turncoat, backstabber, poor sport, traitor, actor or player, any or all of the above?

One interesting note: our new high-tech green voting machines could not eliminate her name or the waste from the low-tech paper ballot. How is that any better than what we’ve always had? At least in the old machines you could just remove or add a tiny cardboard label. Now we will have to reprint the entire ballot if it is to be accurate on Election Day. More of our hard earned money, well spent!

Talking heads on both sides will be replaying, analyzing and regurgitating this election until the next one. I hope that we haven’t seen the last of Doug Hoffman or other strong third party candidates like him. If this was a boxing match, the Commission and Criminal Investigators would be all over it, because it’s an election, it’s just all over.

Contact John Robinson at [email protected].