I will continue to update this post as more results become available.
While we are still waiting for a few results, I think it is safe to declare this election a triumph for conservatives. What follows is a brief summary of many results across the state along with some comments from me.
Jack Hoogendyk won his race convincingly. Hooray!
Tim Walberg defeated Joe Schwarz. Double Hooray!
Lorence Wenke narrowly won renomination over Jerry VanderRoest, 52-48, in the 63rd State House district. This was closer than anybody, including me, expected. Just like 2004, Jerry won Kalamazoo county and Wenke won Calhoun county. However, Jerry picked up votes in Calhoun over last time while Wenke picked up votes in Kalamazoo. Jerry has to be seen as the favorite to win this seat in two years when Wenke is term-limited.
Pam Lightvoet finished first in the Kalamazoo County judicial race. (Great!) She will face second-place finisher Democrat Martin Glista in November. Conlin and Benson lagged behind.
The juvenile home millage passed with about 61%. No big surprise, given that there was no organized opposition.
Robert Jones easily won the 60th State House Democrat nomination. No surprise.
Armando Romero barely won (55-45) the 60th State House Republican nomination. This is shocking, considering that Gloria Ham is an oddball who did not campaign. I can only assume that her totals come from name recognition from her many past runs for office. This does not portend well for Armando in November.
Democrat Franklin Thompson won renomination over Larry Stieglitz in Kalamazoo County Commission district 6. No surprise.
Mike Bouchard beat Keith Butler and will take on Debbie Stabenow in November. Interestingly, Butler won five counties: Kent, Ottowa, Allegan, Barry, and Newaygo. Butler was strongest in the conservative heartland, not in Detroit as expected.
Brian Calley won the Barry/Ionia State House district 87. The Right to Life endorsement made the difference here.
Elizabeth Fulton won the Republican nomination in the 19th State Senate district over Al Cavasin. She will face Mark Schauer in November.
Neal Nitz narrowly defeated his challenger in the (South Berrien County) State house 78th district. Good.
Mark Jansen narrowly beat Joanne Voorhees in the Kent County 18th Senate district.
Johnny Knowles won the East Lansing 69th district House primary. Great! The differences in Republican and Democrat vote totals portend a difficult race to follow.
Congressman Joe Knollenberg easily disposed of liberal challenger Pat Godchaux in the (Oakland County) 9th Congressional District. Good.
John Pappageorge beat Shelley Taub for the (SW Oakland) 13th Senate district nomination. Not great. Let's hope that the party establishment is right that he can hold this seat in November.
Marty Knollenberg narrowly won the (Troy) 41st district House primary. Not good. Still, the fact that Mike Bostic almost beat someone with the Knollenberg name is important.
Bob Gosselin won his bid for nomination to the Oakland County Commission, beating an incumbent. Great.
Libertarian Leon Drolet won his bid for the Macomb County commission. Let's see how much stuff he can privatize.
Conservative Mark Abbo defeated liberal Beth Stewart in the (Plymouth/Northville) 2oth House district. Good.
Every one of the Detroit legislative races had contested Democratic primaries. All the incumbents won. No surprise.
Pro-life moderate Democrat John Gleason won the (Flint) 27th Senate primary.
Carl Williams won the (Saginaw County) 32nd district Democrat primary. He was the most liberal candidate, and is the least viable in the general election. Republican Roger Kahn has to be a slight favorite in November.
4 comments:
Your "Double Hooray" for Schwarz reveals your total ignorance of reality. Losing Schwarz and his experience and talent is a HUGE loss for the District and Michigan. Walberg will do little, will accompolish nothing and become part of the problem in Washington. He is utterly unqualified and ethically challenged to say the least. He's proven he is a pathological liar.
If you care about our country and the future of our freedoms, you would understand what a loss this is.
Walberg was elected by a very small minority of very selfish, short-sighted people. He will be a disaster.
The Gosselin "machine" is showing cracks, although you seem to be one of the few remaining worshippers.
Gosselin was the heavy favorite despite Molnar's incumbency, because Gosselin himself was the incumbent term-limited State Rep.
He only won his HOMETOWN by 60 votes, against a grossly underfunded opponent. Gosselin could be defeated next time around with a serious and well-funded opponent.
Bosnic's loss represents a loss by the Gosselin machine - the entire Gosselin ring threw their weight behind him, and he still couldn't win. Even Howrylak lost his race for County Commission, although Pryor will probably be friendly to Gosselin he's not their perfect choice.
$20 Buck Bob seems to be going down, pun intended. The thumb won't be up for long.
the coverage of the entire primary cycle by this blog was atrocious, in my opinion. Too much time was spent focusing on Wahlberg v. Schwartz (a race that affects our group in a very minimal way). Meanwhile, almost no attention was given to Butler v. Bouchard. This election may have been over as soon as Bouchard entered the ring, but it was still the most important primary in the state. Additionally, there are two posts on the end results - one is somewhat informative but very lacking while the other is completely irrelevant. For the relevant one to have been of use, information was needed on WHY the candidate's victory was good or bad for anyone in particular.
If we continue to use this blog for the primary purpose of posting news we're ignoring the most important reason that there is to have a blog - to discuss ideas. Posting for the sole purpose of information dissemination should be limited - if one is to post on news, one should discuss one's opinion of the situation. If that doesn't occur then the blog degenerates into nothing more than a way to find news.
I've always tried to make my posts contain provocative yet well-minded opinions so as to create more discussion. I would hope that my fellow bloggers would follow my lead.
Best of luck to all this school year!
I think the coverage was well handled here. We all knew our eyes would be on the Butler-Bouchard primary, so we each were free to keep an eye on all that. But for people like me who are stuck on the East side of the state, getting news about Jack Hoogendyk, John Knowles, and our other conservative friends isn't exactly easy. So it was nice for me to just log in here and get the results.
On the Senate primary thought (now that I'm typing a response), I'm a bit disappointed that Butler lost. I thought he had a real good chance of winning the middle of the road voters in the state. However I'm not disappointed Bouchard won. I think he's a great candidate and will represent our state very well.
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