Victory!

The Yellow Dog is wagging his tail this morning... We have big gubernatorial victories in New Jersey, with Democrat Jon Corzine handily trouncing the King of Slime, Doug Forrester and in Virginia, where Tim Kaine kicked butt on George W. Bush’s boy, Jerry Kilgore.

In Virginia, Kaine won despite a well-publicized visit by Bush himself to support Kilgore – second prize for Republican candidates: Two visits from Bush! -- which provides a good clue of how minuscule the president’s coattails are going into 2006.

In my own local races, Democrats nearly swept Westchester County races, including Andy Spano winning as Westchester County Executive, despite a hideously negative campaign by his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino. Tim Idoni was easily elected to the County Clerk position. Sadly, Democrat Tony Castro lost the County Attorney seat to Republican Janet DiFiore – but we did sweep the county judgeships. All in all, a very good night.

But the most gratifying for me personally was in my own town of Ardsley, where I am a Democratic district leader. When I became involved in local politics three years ago, Republicans held a 3-2 advantage in town government – including the mayor’s office – despite Ardsley being almost 70 percent registered Democrat.

With victories last night – Democrats Jay Leon for Mayor and Larry Nardecchia and Pete Porcino for Trustee – my town is now governed by five Democrats. Through a strong effort by all Ardsley Democrats, we have created a situation where Republicans did not even bother to field an opposition for the elections yesterday.

In a short amount of time, we Democrats have gone from a 3-2 minority to ruling the town 5-0.

May we all continue to work hard to spread that trend nationwide.