It's Edwards in a Landslide

Some final local notes on last week's election.

Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D) was reelected to Congress last week with 85.8 percent of the vote, according to an early and informal count, giving her the widest margin of victory in Maryland's 4th Congressional District since 2000.

Edwards was first elected in a June special election after defeating longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Albert R. Wynn in the February primary. With her win last week, she will be sworn in for a full two-year term in January.

The extra months, which she gained after Wynn chose to resign rather than waiting around to bequeath the seat to Edwards, ensures she will have seniority over other new members of Congress elected this month.

She walloped Republican Peter James, who had run a low-key campaign that mostly consisted of a few visits to Metro stops and a single campaign event with libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) The event took place in the District.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Edwards swamped the vote in a Democratic wave year featuring a popular presidential candidate on the ballot. She took 95 percent of the vote in her Prince George's County precincts, which make up two-thirds of her district, and won a not-too-shabby 71 percent of the vote in Montgomery County. Those numbers are likely to change a bit in final tallies, as provisional and absentee ballots are sorted.

"For the first time in a long time, voters throughout my district and the country are energized about the hope and possibilities of the future," Edwards said in a statement after the election. "With President-elect Barack Obama and greater Democratic majorities in Congress, I am excited about the opportunities that await to forge a new path for our nation's future by addressing our economic crisis, safely and responsibly ending the war in Iraq, providing quality, affordable health care to all, and investing in our nation's infrastructure, which will also create jobs."

Voters' Skepticism Of Taxes Continues

Prince Georgians continued their famously skeptical stance on new taxes in last week's election.

County voters didn't just oppose a ballot initiative that would have raised the tax on phone bills from 8 percent to 11 percent. They practically ripped up their ballots and stamped on the pieces over the issue.

An astounding 71 percent of county voters opposed the measure, even though ballot language assured voters the new revenue would have gone to education. An even higher percentage opposed the measure than backed ballot initiatives in the 1990s that required tax increases, such as the telephone tax proposal, be submitted to voters for approval on Election Day.

The striking defeat came despite fairly vocal support for the proposal by the county's Board of Education and County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D). Voters seemed to differentiate the proposal from other ballot questions asking them to allow the county to take on debt to build schools and other government buildings. Voters approved five initiatives that will allow the county to borrow a total of $361.8 million to build libraries, community college facilities, public works, public safety buildings and other county installations.

"That says to me that people knew what they were voting for, they had educated themselves," said anti-tax activist Judy Robinson, who had led the 1996 effort to require tax increases to get voter approval. "I think people literally said, 'This far and no farther.' "