Picking up where I last left off on the Senate Final 2:
* Montana: Tester (D) 49%-48% Burns (R-Inc.), 100% reporting per CNN. This one is over, as CNN and AP both declare Tester the victor. He won by about 3,000 votes. What it means for the Senate is, if the GOP somehow wins Virginia, there's a 50–50 tie assuming Joe Lieberman sits with the Dems, leaving Cheney the tiebreaking vote. If the Dems take Virginia, which seems likely, then it's over, they have the majority in the Senate, and Bush will be making lots of phone calls to Lieberman's office over the next two years.
* Virginia: Webb (D) 49.55%-49.24% Allen (R-Inc.), 99.88% reporting per state site. Some movement in the last few hours, and Allen shaves off a sliver of Webb's lead, but it's looking pretty grim for the incumbent at this point with only 0.12% of the vote remaining to be counted. This of course doesn't take into consideration any recounts, but given the general mood of the GOP today, I wonder if they’ll even bother to pursue that. They lost, they know that they lost, so expect to see Ken Mehlman's head on a spike soon.
* New Mexico: No movement on the Wilson-Madrid race in District 1, it's same as it was last night. According to this, some 8,300 stray votes remain to be counted, which should be done by Friday. Stay tuned.
* Texas: GOP incumbent Rep. Henry Bonilla was forced into a runoff as he could not break the 50% line in his race for the redrawn 23rd District. Bonilla, a Tom DeLay buttboy, was forced into the election as the morphed district had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. His closest challenger is the aimlessly wandering Ciro Rodriguez, who, despite his bewildering disorganization and wishy-washiness, ended up scraping together 20% of the vote last night. The runoff between Bonilla and Rodriguez in December could favor Bonilla by a razor thin margin, since if you tally up the support for the other 5 Dems in the race, you get 49% to Bonilla's 51% (48% plus worst case scenario of all 3% of the lone independent's percentage). You kinda have to factor in Rodriguez's hapless history as opposed to Bonilla's stubborn crookedness. People like a slimebag that stays in one place like a fat rock, as opposed to rolling stone going from district to district. We'll have to watch this one and hope that at least some Republicans get the hint that the fuckin' DeLay era is over.
* Wyoming: The tough battle for Wyoming's lone House seat appears to have ended, pending a recount. With 100% of precincts reporting, GOP incumbent Barb Cubin ends up with a 900–vote lead and the win. I bet Dem challenger Gary Trauner feels like slapping Libertarian Thomas Rankin (7,465 votes) now, too.
* Washington: In an extremely slow tally in the 8th District, incumbent GOP Rep. Dave Reichert is trying to hold off a strong challenge by Dem challenger Darcy Burner, and as it stands with 31% of the vote counted, Reichert leads by a little under 3,000 votes (51%-49%). Hopefully they get this one done by Inauguration Day, and hopefully Burner's campaign is ultimately a successful one.
Meanwhile, President Bush today in an uncomfortable-to-watch press conference reiterated over and over again, in almost as boring a manner as Nancy Pelosi, that he would work together with the opposition for bi-partisan change. He looked pissed, he sounded assertive, he's obviously stung, and even more impatient with a press corps that seemed to finally realize that it's their job to hold the Chief Executive accountable, since us ordinary Joes aren't allowed anywhere near the President unless we're bona fide conservative sycophants.
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