The U.S. Capitol (Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)
TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
Nash@DallasVoice.com
Democrats across the United States this week are celebrating Election Day results that go far beyond the much-anticipated “Blue Wave.” As New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries — currently U.S. House minority leader and the man some are already touting as the next Speaker of the House — said in a press conference on Wednesday, Nov. 4, “It wasn’t a blue wave. It was a tsunami.”
Jay Narey, a long-time Democratic Party and LGBTQ+ activist and president emeritus of Texas Stonewall Democrats, said Wednesday, “In practical terms, this election was an earthquake. It ends MAGA and Trump from a legislative standpoint.”
Democrats have flipped both the U.S. House and Senate at the federal level, and they have made huge gains in state governments across the country.
For example, here in Texas, for the first time ever, every statewide elected office will be held by Democrats as of Jan. 19, when office holders are sworn in.
With U.S. Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska still undetermined, Democrats have claimed control there, having already flipped Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maine.
As of Wednesday evening, in Mississippi, with an estimated 45,000 votes still uncounted, Democrat Scott Colom held a razor-thin 1,138 vote lead over incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith.
In April 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked then-President Joe Biden’s nomination of Colom to to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Hyde-Smith blocked the nomination by refusing to return her “blue slip” — the home-state senator’s required sign-off on such a nomination. She blocked Colom’s nomination because of his support for transgender rights, his opposition to “protecting female athletes” and the campaign and political support from liberal donor George Soros.
In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola holds an even more narrow lead of only 637 votes over Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan, with 25 percent of the vote still left to count.
Even with 49 races still undetermined as of 8 p.m. Wednesday, Democrats are already assured of a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, having gained 30 seats to stand at 240, compared to 147 for the Republicans. Even if Republicans managed to win all of the still-undecided seats, they wouldn’t pass the 200 mark, with 218 seats needed for a majority.
Here in Texas, where Donald Trump last year forced Republicans to redraw gerrymandered congressional districts intended to give the GOP another five seats in the U.S. House, the GOP ended up losing four of the five seats they had redrawn and then lost two other seats they had held.
That means that even though Republicans had hoped to hold a 30-8 lead in the Texas congressional delegation, but ended up just a 24-14 advantage.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa’s nearly 706,000-vote victory over incumbent Republican Greg Abbott in the Texas governor’s race was one of five red-to-blue flips in the U.S.
Kansas’ still-undecided gubernatorial contest could be the sixth flip if Democrat Cindy Holscher can hold onto what was a less than 1 percentage point lead over Republican Ty Masterson. By Wednesday night, with an estimated 14,000 votes left to count, Holscher led Masterson by 7,045 votes.
And in Alaska, with an estimated 70,000 votes left to count, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss Tomkins led Republican Bernadette Wilson by more than 42,100 votes, with Republican Dave Bronson trailing Wilson by 31,371 votes.
As of Wednesday night, Kreiss Tomkins had won 49.1 percent of the vote. In most states, if one candidate does not win at least 50 percent, the top two candidates go into a run-off election a few weeks later. Alaska, however, has ranked choice voting, in which voters cast their ballots for their favorite candidate and can then rank one or more of the remaining candidates in the race. If no candidate reaches the 50 percent mark, then the rankings come into play.
Of the 36 total governor’s offices up for grabs in this week’s election, Democrats won 22. Republicans have won 12 of the remaining gubernatorial contests, with two left undecided as of Wednesday night.
Despite its sweeping victories, across the states and from the top to the bottom of the tickets, Narey warns that, at the federal level especially, “Democrats would be wise to be laser-focused on costs and providing relief to those hurting.
“I think the federal minimum wage is coming soon, to force Trump’s hand,” Narey continued.
“Also, the win in the U.S. Senate cannot be overstated because of the Senate’s control over the federal judiciary.”
Even Trump himself has warned his supporters repeatedly that if the Democrats were to win control of Congress, they would move immediately to impeach him — again.
But, Narey said, “There is a huge difference between justice and revenge.
“I think the American people want Congress working for them rather than focusing time and energy in partisan revenge,” he said. “That does nothing to reduce costs and address affordability.”
Jeffries, speaking at his Election Night watch party in Washington, expressed a similar conviction. The American people have spoken and made clear they’ve had enough of the extremism, enough of the corruption,” Jeffries said. “They want a Congress that’s going to deliver for the American people, and that is exactly what House Democrats will do as soon as we get into office in January.”
As far as impeachment goes, Jeffries said, Democrats “haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out.” And Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, is expected to become chairman of the Oversight Committee, and he said that committee plans to focus on “Trump family corruption” and to scrutinize abuses by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, corporate corruption and the Jeffrey Epstein files.