Election Results Analysis

There were some other very exciting results around the country:

• Arizona became the first state to reject a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships, despite 2008 Republican presidential contender John McCain endorsing and appearing in television ads for the hateful Proposition 107; bans passed in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin, bringing the total to 27 states with gay marriage bans.
• Openly lesbian judge Virginia Linder was elected to become the second openly gay or lesbian member of the Oregon State Supreme Court, joining openly gay Justice Rive Kistler on the seven-member court.
• Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Iowa elected their first-ever openly gay or lesbian state legislators: Patricia Todd (Democratic Representative for Birmingham, AL), Kathy Webb (Democratic Rep in Little Rock, AR ), Al McAffrey (Democratic Rep in Oklahoma City, OK ) and Matt McCoy (Democratic State Senator for Des Moines, IA); Pam Spaulding has a great summary of stats on openly gay or lesbian candidates from the Victory Fund
• No Democratic incumbent (Congressperson, Senator or Governor) was defeated. This is the first time this has happened in a midterm election--and as I said earlier, this great Democratic victory would not have been possible if Bush had not defeated Kerry in 2004 and thus had two more years to illustrate to Independent voters the Republican pattern of incompetence, corruption and veniality