It’s Election Day. New Jersey and Virginia will elect Governors. New York City will elect a Mayor. There are state legislative races in a few states. Pennsylvania elects some judges, and maybe re-elects some too. Here in the Lehigh Valley we have Executive races in both counties and Mayoral races in Allentown and Bethlehem, kind of. Are my interested in all of these races? No. Honestly, some of them are probably over now. Others have my attention. What are they?

Will Mamdani reach 50% in New York City? As much as I hate this, the answer should be yes. He is the Democratic nominee in a city that is heavily Democratic. Also, despite what some folks might think, this is not the New York City of Ed Koch or Rudy Giuliani. It’s a very liberal place, one that is probably being pushed left by Trump. The post-Bloomberg city (which is wildly misinterpreted in many ways) isn’t really looking to moderate. Oh sure, Adams did win four years ago, when he beat a collection of also rans and never was. Mamdani is problematic and offensive to me in many ways. The truth is, he’s not to the residents there. AND his opponent is Andrew Cuomo. I think Cuomo would do a better job as Mayor. No one is begging for his return to power in New York though. If he wanted to vindicate himself, he should have stayed in office and fought during the allegations, every prosecutor but one ran away from the report (and that one got dismissed at the first hearing). He didn’t though, and that implies there was some fire to the smoke. He’s damaged goods. Mamdani hitting 50% or not is the interesting part to me, I don’t buy the late polls showing Cuomo surging into the race. I’d love it if he beat this guy, but that ain’t happening.

How many seats do Democrats pick up in the Virginia legislature? I was told by someone who knows that the Virginia Dems are now playing in districts as red as R+10. They probably won’t win those, but if they’re winning out as far as R+5, it’s a sign that the Republicans are in very bad shape for next year. For geographic context, this would mean Democrats winning in places like the Richmond suburbs or the western exurbs of DC. I’d be surprised, but if it’s true, it’s the canary in the coal mine.

What does the red and blue on the map of California look like for Proposition 50? This might not make a lot of sense to you right now, but California moved substantially more red in 2024. Trump did the best of his three runs there. Now, he lost the state handily and particularly got battered in the coastal areas, but he did better. Almost the entirety of the inland areas went for Trump last year and it stretched further towards the coast than normal. Proposition 50 would counteract Republican efforts to gerrymander southern and midwestern red states by re-districting California to eliminate most of the GOP’s seats there. California is one of the biggest delegations the GOP has, even with Texas and Florida gerrymandered. That’s going to end tomorrow, but do they show any life, or are the lights going out there.

Is New Jersey too blue for a MAGA Republican? Setting aside the fact that I think Mikie Sherill has better ideas and excellent experience to be Governor, she didn’t run a great campaign. They tried to run a heavily bio driven campaign, leaning on her credentials as a fighter pilot and woman. That’s so 2018. She’s smart enough and has the right values, but her campaign lacked a North Star, most voters don’t know why and what she wants to do in January. People don’t love over qualified, smart candidates, and let’s be honest, they’re more harsh on women for this. Jack Ciattarelli made clear that he wants to undo the Murphy Administration and he’s the change candidate. Look, that’s easy when you’re the nominee of the party out of power. With that all said, let’s just say he did the mechanics of campaigning better, which is kind of understandable in his second run. He made one gigantic mistake though in so far as I can tell, he took the endorsement of Donald Trump. Trump did way better in New Jersey in 2024, and still lost by 9%. He’d probably lose worse in the 2025 electorate. So even though Ciattarelli may have won “the campaign,” does that matter at all anymore? My guess is no. I’d bet she wins by 3-5%. If she wins by more, maybe literally nothing at all mattered.

Forget the Virginia Governor race unless the result is jaw dropping, who wins the Lt. Governor and Attorney General races? Winsome Earle-Sears missed the memo about the 2024 Election. Part of the reason the “trans issue” popped the way it did against Kamala Harris is she was on video talking about it in a way the public disagreed with. Earle-Sears has run her race on social issues that Virginia voters just aren’t much interested in, and because of that Abigail Spanberger is going to crush her and become Governor. Spanberger wins by at least 7% tonight, and the only real question is if it’s more than 10%. That race wasn’t really interesting, as a good candidate beat a bad one. The fun was in the Lt. Governor and Attorney General races. The Lt. Governor’s race will either elect a Muslim woman, born in India or a gay Republican man. The Republican nominee, John Reid, drew the ire of the state’s Republican Governor, who called on him to drop out when his sexually explicit Tumblr account surfaced in the Spring. Honestly, I’ll pontificate a bit here, Reid should lose for many other reasons, but not that. State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, the Democrat, holds a narrow lead, but doesn’t quite hit 50%. I’m definitely watching that race. That’s an undercard compared to the Attorney General’s race. Incumbent Republican Jason Miyares has been accused of being Trump’s lapdog. Democrat Jay Jones sent texts to a colleague talking about killing the former Republican Speaker of the Virginia House and his kids. Honestly, it’s pretty disgusting. Virginians should not be proud, but I guess they have to choose one of these guys. Of course I’m interested in that.

Are we seeing the future in Pennsylvania? Retention votes were never overly competitive in Pennsylvania. I sincerely hope tomorrow’s is not, because it would basically put us in a permanent state of war over these seats. If this race is close, it suggests that this is our new normal though. I think the permanent campaign is part of why we’re in this national mess. I fear it’s our destiny.

Does anything happen in New Jersey? There’s a lot of folks who will privately tell you nothing will happen in the Garden State’s elections tomorrow. Sherill will win and virtually no seats will switch hands in the legislature. That’s not a bad thing if you’re a Democrat.

Who will win the Lehigh Valley’s County Executive races? As goes PA-7, so goes the nation. A Democratic sweep tomorrow will mean bad things for Ryan Mackenzie next year. Unless we screw it up, and pick a bad candidate.

Go vote, folks.