ELECTION NIGHT, FOURTH THREAD…. Yes, I’m doing one of these per hour. It seemed more manageable than having one enormous thread for the night.
10:00: Rep. Mary Fallin (R) appears to have won Oklahoma’s gubernatorial race without too much trouble. It’s a gubernatorial pick-up for the GOP.
10:02: More easy calls are announced — John McCain (R) won re-election in Arizona, and Chuck Grassley (R) won re-election in Iowa.
10:06: You know, that gubernatorial race in South Carolina is looking a lot closer than expected. Remind me: how many times was Haley on the cover of Newsweek this year? If she loses, I guess the talk about her as a V.P. candidate will probably fade a bit.
10:12: DNC Chairman Tim Kaine is telling reporters that Dems will, in fact, lose the House.
10:16: In a pleasant surprise for Dems, Rep. Larry Kissell (D) appears to have overcome GOP targeting and won in North Carolina’s 8th. Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) wasn’t as fortunate in Pennsylvania’s 11th, where the incumbent lost.
10:21: Recent polling showed Colorado’s gubernatorial race getting pretty close, but MSNBC is calling it for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (D). His top challenger was former Rep. Tom Tancredo, running as an independent, who is one of only a handful of American politicians I find genuinely horrifying.
10:25: Speaking of Colorado’s gubernatorial race, keep an eye on whether Dan Maes (R) manages to get 10% of the vote — a threshold he might very well miss. The result will be important to the Republican Party keeping its status as a “major political party” in the state.
10:38: Rep. Joseph Cao (R) lost in a very Democratic New Orleans district today. There aren’t many of these red-to-blue House districts this year, but this was one Dems expected to win.
10:40: NBC is reporting that Sen. Russ Feingold (D) really is going to lose. The polls all showed this as practically inevitable, but it still seems incomprehensible.
10:45: The guy who beat Feingold is, as regular readers know, Ron Johnson. To say he’s not ready for prime time is a dramatic understatement. It’s bizarre that he even ran for the U.S. Senate; that he’s actually won is ridiculous.
10:50: It looks like Nikki Haley (R) has won the gubernatorial race in South Carolina after all.
10:53: It was a whole lot closer than Dems would have liked, but the AP says Rep. Rush Holt (D) has won re-election in New Jersey’s 12th.
10:57: There have been some real heartbreakers tonight, but the apparent loss of Rep. Patrick Murphy (D) in Pennsylvania is just awful. Patrick was not only the first veteran of this Iraq War to get elected to Congress, he was also a forceful champion of DADT repeal.
