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Schweitzer: Election Results Don’t Mean a ‘Dang Thing for Next Year’

By Beacon Staff

John King interviewed Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer on CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend. King asked Schweitzer, who is chair of the Democratic Governors Association, what happened in the recent governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, both of which were won by Republicans.

SCHWEITZER: Well I think that history played out again, uh, both New Jersey and Virginia have been electing people from the opposite party of the president. Governor’s races aren’t like congressional races. When you elect your congressional member you’re thinking about what laws they might pass, and are they part of the administration’s plan for healthcare or the war or taxation or whatever it might be. But when you elect a governor it’s singular. You’re looking for your chief executive. So they’re not really tied to a national party in the way that a member of congress would be.

KING: You don’t see any national message in the voting, particularly maybe the defection of independents from the democrats to the republicans. If not a message, do you see a cause of concern for your party?

SCHWEITZER: No, I don’t think, I don’t think that you can say that this is a dot on any kind of a continuum. These are two races, they ran on their own dynamics. Those are individuals who are running for governor, and it just so happened that the two candidates who are democrats lost and the two candidates who are republicans won. I don’t think it that means a dang thing for next year.

KING: This is something you said before the election, you did have Virginia right, you said “that’s a flip of the coin, I don’t know which way that one ends”, but you did tell Politico “I bet whatever money in my pocket he’s going to win”, referring to Corzine.

SCHWEITZER: Dang good thing I only had two dollars in my pocket that day.