Picking and choosing

Picking and choosing
Nationwide, the voters rejected a blanket approach

November 8, 2001

It is always tempting to draw sweeping conclusions about political trends from election results. As so often happens, however, the returns from Tuesday’s vote show that American voters are more independent than ideological, more knowledgeable than knee-jerk. While we can all find something to disagree with in the results, the bigger picture speaks well of the health of our democracy.

Colorado voters killed a pricey proposal to fund research into building a monorail from Denver International Airport to Vail. At the same time, they approved a measure to allow Great Outdoors Colorado to go into debt to preserve open space.

In Denver, a sales tax for children’s programs went down to defeat, as did a proposal to build a new jail. A performing-arts center and library in Fort Collins fared no better.

Voters in Colorado Springs approved a sales tax increase for police and fire protection, and three school bond issues, but said "no" to more spending for street improvements and a tax for parks and recreation.

La Plata County residents voted down a use tax for open space and affordable housing, and Mancos nixed a mill levy increase for schools. In Cortez, however, the voters approved a sales tax hike for a city rec center.

Elsewhere, New York City elected Republican Michael Bloomberg to succeed the term-limited Rudy Giuliani as mayor. It is the first time in history the heavily Democratic city has chosen Republican mayors back to back. And, to the south, Republican Virginia chose Democrat Mark Warner as its next governor.

New Jersey also replaced a Republican governor with a Democrat. Some national observers had looked at that, together with the Virginia race, as a possible harbinger of things to come in 2002. Those states’ switch to the GOP had presaged a Republican resurgence in years past. Whether that is the case now seems less clear, but we will not that for another year.

And, Cleveland, Ohio, elected its first woman mayor, which probably means nothing more than that the voters there liked her better than her opponent.

That seems to be the one broader lesson to be drawn from the election of 2001. The voters looked at the candidates and the issues individually, not from the perspective of some fixed, predetermined, ideological assumptions. They rejected what they did not approve of, and voted for what they liked.

That is exactly how it is supposed to work.