Beth Reinhard:
“Hillary Clinton supporters are crowing that helping to install
Democrat Terry McAuliffe as the next governor of Virginia puts her one
battleground state closer to the White House in 2016. While drawing
broad conclusions from off-year political race can be dangerous, there
are signs that McAuliffe’s victory offers Clinton reasons for optimism
if she runs for president.”

Over at The Week, I’ve tallied 3 big wins for Democrats and 3 big wins for Republicans last night.

Charles Stile: “Christie’s bold leadership during Superstorm Sandy, the shrewd marketing of his Jersey tough guy persona and several important legislative accomplishments are indeed important factors in the strong support for his reelection. But while the public was seeing all of that, Christie discreetly and methodically courted Democrats with every lever of power at his disposal. By the end, many of those Democrats would supply the manpower, money or simply the photo ops for his campaign.”

Politico: “Most public polls leading up to Election Day had Democrat Terry McAuliffe coasting to victory, some by double digits, in the Virginia governor’s race. Instead he squeaked by, beating Republican Ken Cuccinelli by less than 3 percentage points.”

“The much-closer-than-expected outcome blunts the narrative that this was a clean win for Democrats going into 2014 and guarantees an intense blame game among Republicans about what might have put Cuccinelli over the top.”

Mike Duggan “overcame questions about his outsider status to become Detroit’s first white mayor in about four decades,” the Detroit News reports.

Detroit Free Press: “For the first time in 40 years, predominantly black Detroit elected a white person as mayor. Community leaders, political observers and voters provided a number of theories on how that happened. But among them was a theme: The election was about much more than skin color, even in a region where race has been a foremost issue for decades.”

Martin Walsh, “a legislator and longtime labor leader, ground out a tight victory over Councilor at Large John R. Connolly Tuesday to become Boston’s 48th mayor, propelled by a diverse coalition that transcended geography, race, and ideology,” the Boston Globe reports.

The Boston Herald notes Walsh’s win “was fueled by a groundswell of union support, a massive, grassroots
get-out-the-vote effort and the backing of several key elected
officials of color.”

Bill de Blasio (D), “who transformed himself from a little-known occupant of an obscure office into the fiery voice of New York’s disillusionment with a new gilded age, was elected the city’s 109th mayor on Tuesday,” the New York Times reports.

“His overwhelming victory, stretching from the working-class precincts of central Brooklyn to the suburban streets of northern Queens, amounted to a forceful rejection of the hard-nosed, business-minded style of governance that reigned at City Hall for the past two decades and a sharp leftward turn for the nation’s largest metropolis.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) “won re-election by a crushing margin on Tuesday, a victory that vaulted him to the front rank of Republican presidential contenders and made him his party’s foremost proponent of pragmatism over ideology,” the New York Times reports.

“The governor prevailed despite holding positions contrary to those of many New Jersey voters on several issues, including same-sex marriage, abortion rights and the minimum wage, and despite an economic recovery that has trailed the rest of the country.”

Terry McAuliffe (D) defeated Ken Cuccinelli (R) in the Virginia race for governor.

Washington Post: “For McAuliffe, the triumph vaulted him to the top of Virginia’s
political pyramid four years after losing his first bid for governor.
For Cuccinelli, the defeat halted his rise as a Republican party star.”

“Amid the ongoing war within the GOP, the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm is signaling a more aggressive approach in trying to get its favored candidates through contentious primaries in 2014,” NBC News reports.

“The approach is a switch from previous cycles, when the NRSC has stayed out of open contested primaries. A number of hard-line conservative candidates won primaries in 2010 and 2012 but went on to lose general elections. And this time, the GOP is facing several potentially messy primary fights — and again staring down third-party groups that are working to elect more conservative or Tea Party-backed candidates instead.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told CNN that Mitt Romney called him immediately when news broke that someone had leaked details about the 2012 vice presidential vetting process to the authors of Double Down.

Said Christie: “Mitt called me right away, and I could tell he was really embarrassed and outraged about it… It’s very disappointing. I think it’s a complete violation of trust of me and the spirit within which I entered that process.”