Election Highlights

For now, an overview of some significant results from the 2010 elections:

• Rhode Island has elected its first Independent governor, Lincoln Chafee! 
• In Maine's gubernatorial race, Independent candidate Eliot Cutler's last minute surge was not enough to overcome the gap between himself and the Republican front-runner.  Cutler lost by under two percentage points, garnering 36.7% to Paul LePage's 38.2%. 
• In New York, the Green Party's candidate for governor, Howie Hawkins, received enough votes to ensure ballot access for the party for the next four years. On the Libertarian Party line, Warren Redlich appears to have come up about 5,000 votes short of the 50,000 vote threshold. 
• In Colorado, Tom Tancredo demonstrated that it is indeed possible to run a viable, high-profile candidacy for governor under the banner of a third party, in this case, the Constitution Party. 
• Ballot Access News reports that the elections have resulted in some parties gaining qualified status, and others losing it, in states across the country. 

What are the odds of an independent sweep in the northeast?

In the northeast, three prominent and promising independent candidates for governor continue to attract the attention of commentators who recognize the latent power of those who have declared their independence from the two-party state and the politics of the Democratic-Republican political class. In the Providence Journal, Froma Harrop reflects on the regional trend in a profile of Chafee's candidacy in Rhode Island:

They make less of a ruckus than the Tea Party people, but independents in New England are brewing their own revolution. Third-party governors may have been elected elsewhere -- Walter Hickel in Alaska (1990) and Jesse Ventura in Minnesota (1998) -- but in New England, such candidacies have become almost routine.

Independents are making credible runs for governor in Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island. The strongest contender, Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, is a former U.S. senator and former Republican. Polls show Chafee comfortably ahead of his likely Democratic and Republican rivals.

This regional trend preceded the Tea Party phenomenon. The U.S. Senate's two independents are Connecticut's Joe Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders, both of whom caucus with Democrats. Connecticut's former governor, Lowell Weicker, had been a Republican-turned-independent. And if elected, Eliot Cutler would be Maine's third independent governor . . .

The third independent running for governor is state Treasurer Tim Cahill in Massachusetts. He and Cutler were Democrats. A recent Rasmussen poll shows Cahill with 23 percent support, putting him a reasonably close third behind incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick's 35 percent and Republican Charles Baker's 27 percent.