Voter Blow Back
By Michael Boyajian
The other day I finally realized there was a lot of voter discontent out there when I saw a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t Blame Me I Voted For Hillary.” Now recently this voter discontent was reinforced in my mind when I went door to door with a rising star in politics, Alyssa Kogon. Alyssa is running for the State Assembly in Dutchess County against Republican Joel Miller who has held the office for 16 years.
As we walked our way through a Republican neighborhood in the Village of Fishkill we realized that no one had been asking what political party we belonged to. They just wanted to know if Alyssa was an incumbent and when she said no they said she had their vote.
We heard voters declaring “we are going to fire all of them,” “if you’re a challenger you have my vote,” “I will not vote for anyone who is already in office.” They were all clear about sending a message to the professional politicians out there and Alyssa who is a concerned citizen, school teacher and small business owner was listening and telling people she was not a politician.
Now Congressional Republicans have been beating their chests and banging the war drums over all of this but it might actually backfire on them at the local races in Republican areas. You see it’s not just Democrats the voters are mad at it is anyone holding office. And that means in Republican areas a lot of GOPers are going down this November thanks to their yahoo brothers and sisters in Congress. This might actually be a good instance of being careful for what you wish for you might just get it.
Oh sure they might hurt Democrats in Congress and even take a house but at what expense? You can just see droves of Republican locals walking the plank for the sake of Congress and that will especially hurt next year when local majorities get to gerrymander, or redistrict if you will, voting districts.
And that is where the real power lies as former GOP districts are cut up to favor Democrats in the future. One can see that it may carry over to the 2012 election helping Democrats to make up losses in Congress. That is the real surprise in all of this, that the winners are actually going to be the losers.
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