The South

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Alabama

In the presidential race, the home of the Crimson Tide stayed reliably red: John McCain won the state by more than 20 percentage points. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) also won in a walk, taking 63.5 percent of the vote in a race against a state senator.

State officials reported record turnout, perhaps 80 percent, in a state that saw some of the civil rights movement's most grim confrontations.

In the state's U.S. House races, Democrats successfully defended one seat -- in the 5th District, where state Sen. Parker Griffith will replace retiring Rep. Robert E. "Bud" Cramer. The party gained a seat when Montgomery Mayor Bobby N. Bright defeated a Republican state representative by less than a percentage point in the 2nd District, where Rep. Terry Everett (R) is retiring.

Arkansas

McCain won big here, taking a 20-point victory in the state that launched the last Democratic president, but which has not been blue since 1996. Barack Obama had essentially written off Arkansas after he defeated Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

The state's other races all went for incumbents. Sen. Mark Pryor (D), without a GOP challenger, routed Green Party candidate Rebekah Kennedy. The state's House members -- three Democrats and a Republican -- all won big.

Florida

Obama won the nation's most (in-) famous battleground state by more than two percentage points, or about 190,000 votes. Exit polls showed that the Democrat's attempts to woo Hispanic voters -- a demographic that helped twice swing the state to George W. Bush -- had worked, and that black voters had also turned out in large numbers.

Pundits had predicted that the race might come down to the Interstate 4 corridor across Florida's midsection, a tossup within a tossup, set between the state's conservative north and Democrat-leaning south. Obama won crucial counties in that region, including those around Orlando and the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

In the state's U.S. House races, Democrats gained one seat, but they remain outnumbered in the Florida delegation, 15 to 10.

Two Republican incumbents from the Orlando area-- Tom Feeney and Ric Keller -- both lost, as expected. But Rep. Tim Mahoney (D), whose candidacy foundered after a sex scandal, was crushed by lawyer Tom Rooney, part of the family that owns football's Pittsburgh Steelers.

And both Diaz-Balart brothers, Republican congressmen from South Florida, won reelection. Lincoln Diaz-Balart beat former Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez by 15 percentage points, and Mario Diaz-Balart took a five-point win over Joe Garcia, a former Miami-Dade Democratic chairman.

Georgia

McCain won by about five points here, as the state burnished its reputation as a Republican stronghold in the Deep South. GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss and former state representative Jim Martin are headed to a Dec. 2 runoff to decide their race, which featured heavy negative campaigning.

Incumbents won in all 13 of the state's congressional districts, with seven Republicans and six Democrats returning to the House. Rep. John Lewis (D), who was beaten during civil rights protests in the 1960s, will serve for a 23rd year. And Rick Goddard (R) was unable to unseat Rep. Jim Marshall in one of the closer contests for a House seat. Goddard hammered away at Marshall's support of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, but fell short with voters.

This was the first presidential election since the passage of a law requiring voters to show government-issued identification. Opponents of the law said it would suppress turnout among minority groups.

Kentucky

McCain won in the Bluegrass State by a large margin, collecting 57 percent of the vote, while Obama received 41 percent. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) withstood a push by Bruce Lunsford, but in a state where voters are conservative in suburban and rural areas, Democrats were beaten far and wide.

In a closely watched House race, Republican Brett Guthrie beat David Boswell with 53 percent of the vote. Republican Ed Whitfield won as expected in a runaway over Heather Ryan, 64 percent to 36 percent.

Louisiana

McCain won 58 percent of the vote here, trouncing Obama in a reliably red state that the Democrat appeared to write off. In the Senate race, however, Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu won easily over State Treasurer John Kennedy. In the House, Republicans took back the seat vacated by retired Rep. Richard H. Baker, as state Sen. Bill Cassidy defeated Donald J. Cazayoux Jr., who won the seat in a special election in May.

Two races were not decided on Tuesday, because Hurricane Gustav delayed the primary process. Rep. William J. Jefferson, who is awaiting trial on bribery charges, won an all-Democratic primary runoff against Helena Moreno on Tuesday, but he still faces a general election on Dec. 6. Another House race, for the seat of retiring 4th District Rep. Jim McCrery (R), will be decided that day.

Mississippi

McCain won easily here, beating Obama by about 14 points in one of the country's most conservative states. Republicans also held onto Mississippi's two Senate seats. Long-serving Sen. Thad Cochran was reelected handily, and Sen. Roger Wicker beat former governor Ronnie Musgrove (D) to keep the seat he was appointed to last year after Sen. Trent Lott (R) resigned.

The state's closest House race was in the 1st District, where Rep. Travis Childers (D) -- a surprise winner of the special election to replace Wicker -- won a full term by more than 10 points.

In the 3rd District, Republican Gregg Harper was elected to replace retiring GOP Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering. Democratic Reps. Gene Taylor and Bennie Thompson were both reelected, giving the state three Democrats and one Republican in the House.

North Carolina

The battle between Obama and McCain remained too close to call yesterday. Obama won big in the primary and had mounted a huge TV and ground game ever since, but McCain fought hard to keep the state's record of being in the GOP column since 1976.

With Gov. Mike Easley (D) term-limited after eight years, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) bested seven-term Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory by 50.2 percent to 46.9 percent. In the past, Republicans have won the governorship only in years of big presidential victories.

Democratic state Sen. Kay Hagan defeated Sen. Elizabeth Dole after a bitter campaign, capturing a seat that had been in Republican hands for 35 years. Dole, the wife of former longtime senator and former presidential candidate Robert J. Dole of Kansas, was a target for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which ran largely unanswered TV ads for Hagan all summer. When Dole found herself trailing in the polls, she opened an attack on Hagan.

Rep. Robin Hayes (R), who won by 329 votes last time, lost this election to the same opponent, populist teacher Larry Kissell, who this year had much stronger national support. Hayes, who dipped into his own fortune to try to save the seat, added to his problems by telling a McCain rally that "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

South Carolina

The Palmetto State went big for McCain, giving him a roughly 10-point victory on a day when South Carolinians cast a record 1.8 million ballots. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R), a close friend of McCain's, easily won reelection against a little-known Democrat, Bob Conley.

In the state's tightest House race, Rep. Henry E. Brown Jr. (R) won reelection in the Charleston-area 1st District over businesswoman Linda Ketner, the daughter of the founder of the Food Lion grocery store chain.

Tennessee

Few surprises here. McCain took the GOP-leaning Volunteer State easily with about 57 percent of the vote, winning by a slightly larger margin than President Bush in 2004. Tennessee has been turning redder with time, rejecting even native son Al Gore (D) in 2000, and the Obama campaign invested little in the state.

Local reports said the only time Obama set foot in Tennessee in the past year was to participate in the presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville.

Longtime Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) also won big, as predicted. House incumbents, five Democrats and three Republicans, won eight of the state's nine seats. In east Tennessee's 1st District, Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe (R) -- who squeaked by Rep. David Davis in the primary -- kept the seat in GOP hands.