Can you believe that Hogan won the Maryland governorship?
On the surface, it is shocking. But consider the following:
- In the last 16 years, every single state in the northeast—even Vermont—has elected a republican governor at least once. The lone exception—until now—was Maryland.
- New York and California get a bad rap, and rightly so. But California has Silicon Valley and the Pacific Coast, and New York has the Manhattan infrastructure and figured out that giving small businesses tax breaks might make them come—or not leave for Utah or Texas. Both have open-water shipping access.
What do states like Maryland, Minnesota and Illinois have? To me, these were the states that were in the most serious trouble. Minnesota even chose to re-elect Al Franken and Mark Dayton. The only thing that can keep them from sliding into mediocrity is a republican legislature.
Minnesota is no longer the big blue example of the Midwest, and long gone are the glory days of male professional sports and the era of Humphrey/Mondale. Their quest to seemingly resemble a quasi-socialist Scandinavian nation (minus the North Sea oil) is well underway, save for the growth of the Catholic Church in the last century.
Illinois has suffered like many heartland states from constituencies that
don’t vote their core family values. I once heard Brian Brown (or maybe it was his group) call IL a “pro-family” state. Frankly, I don’t know where that came from.
But perhaps in the Maryland, all the rich liberal migration to Virginia has cleared even more space for Hogan to win. Maybe if the GOP got some good African-American candidates, they can compete in that state for federal elections.
The gubernatorial elections in 2014 shows that well-off, elite, liberal Caucasians in the northeast and Great Lakes are not quite as eager to part with their dollars (at least not be wasted by democrats) as some of them bleat about. I was wondering when they were going to wake up.
Folks weren’t getting the sarcasm 
