Chris Christie Wins Traditional Blue State New Jersey

Bob McDonnell Liberates "Old Dominion" from Democrat Deeds

One of the most difficult tasks facing the Obama administration's communication team is to explain away the momentous shift in public perception which allowed Republican candidates to sweep two important gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.

Bob McDonnell's victory against Creigh Deeds in Virginia was signaled weeks before the vote when President Obama abandoned his campaign trips to Virginia in support of Democratic candidate Deeds.
President Obama's political team decided that the New Jersey governor's race was too important to spend more time and money campaigning against a looming likely Deeds defeat in Virginia. That's the kind of political hardball the White House is playing these days with its friends. On the other hand,President Obama made several trips to New Jersey to appear at Corzine campaign rallies in spite of pressing geopolitical and domestic matters in Washington. The President's frequent appearances in New Jersey prompted one wag to joke that some New Jersey voters believed President Obama was on the ballot there.

White House insiders rationalized during the week preceding the vote that they recognized Deeds as a weak candidate and unlikely to attract independents. Virginia has a large number of voters who are registered Independent; that group voted substantially for Obama in Virginia during the presidential elections. An Associated Press after-the-vote survey reported that four of ten Virginia voters "said their view of Obama factored into their choice" in yesterday's elections. It does sound better for the president to put the poll results another way: 60 percent of voters said that Obama was not a factor in their decision.

However one interprets the facts, the task for the Obama communications team must be now to mitigate the potential damage to the 2010 congressional elections. One way of doing this is to enlist the aid of the President's supporters in the media. A CNN analysis by political editor Mark Preston is blunt in the headline: "Elections Not a Referendum on Obama."