Politico profiles Tom Steye, the California billionaire who pumped more than $8 million into Virginia’s gubernatorial race tp defeat Ken Cuccinelli (R).

“The sum is more than three times the investment that’s been previously reported, and it nearly matched what the Republican Governors Association, the largest GOP outside spender, put into the Virginia governor’s race. It is more money, on a per-vote basis, than the famously prolific conservative donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson spent in the 2012 presidential election.”

“The 2013 elections amounted to a nightmare scenario for Republicans who had hoped the results might provide some resolution to their ongoing intraparty squabble,” Chris Cillizza writes.

“The end result is that both sides of the GOP argument live to fight another day, each emboldened by the election in their own way. That ‘next day’ will be in a series of Republican Senate primaries over the first seven months of 2014.”

“The first — and most telling — will be in Kentucky, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces wealthy businessman Matt Bevin in May… Then come two critical summer primaries: one in Mississippi and one in Georgia.”

The Virginia attorney general race “remained a nail-biter heading into the weekend, as a rapt band of election officials and observers pored over updates to Election Day numbers,” Politico reports.

“Local authorities have until Nov. 12 to correct, complete and turn in their tallies to the state in the contest between state Sens. Mark Obenshain (R) and Mark Herring (D), which was too close to call on Tuesday as Democrats won the other two statewide offices on the ballot.”

Richmond Times Dispatch: “Uncounted absentee and provisional votes could tip attorney general race”

CBS Sports: “In case you doubt the primacy of Red Sox baseball in Boston there’s this true, actual, verfiable fact on which to ruminate: According to the Boston Election Department, Red Sox DH/warrior-poet/2013 World Series MVP David Ortiz finished with the most write-in votes in the recent mayoral election.”

“I have not had the opportunity yet to speak to the attorney general.”

— Virginia Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe (D), quoted by Politico, saying Ken Cuccinelli (R) never called to concede the election while adding, “I stopped being surprised at politics a long time ago.”

Jessica Taylor: “A
loss by Ken Cuccinelli was supposed to have been a wake-up call to the
tea party that deeply conservative candidates couldn’t win in swing
states like Virginia. Instead, the GOP nominee’s near-miss in Tuesday’s
race for governor has only deepened the party’s ideological
divide….when the results came in, and the margin was only three
points, many were left wondering whether a win had been within reach.
They blamed the GOP cavalry for failing to ride in, believing that
Cuccinelli’s framing of the race as a referendum against Obamacare had
been a winning message.”

Washington Post: “McAuliffe’s unexpectedly slim victory in Virginia set off an
explosion of recriminations among Republicans on Wednesday, and rather
than settling the battle between the GOP’s tea party and business
factions, the election appears to have deepened the internal divide.””

Washington Post:
“Virginians may be in for a long wait, possibly into December, to learn
who will become their next attorney general, the official who serves as
the commonwealth’s top lawyer in such a prominent office that it has
become a springboard to the governor’s mansion.”

After Marty Walsh won the Boston mayoral race last night, Vice President Joe Biden tried to call him with congratulations. But the Cape Code Times reports Biden called political consultant and former Sen. Ted Kennedy staffer Marty Walsh instead of the candidate who won.

Said the non-mayor elect: “We’ve had this for the past 20 years happening
back and forth. Marty tells a funny story from 2006 when Kennedy thanked
me from the stage and his mother thought it was for him.”

Stu Rothenberg: “Democrats can look at Virginia and conclude that Republican ‘extremism on social issues like abortion, contraception and guns, combined with the deep divisions that appeared in the Alabama 1st District GOP primary results, continue to offer them opportunities for 2014 and virtually guarantee victory in 2016.”

“Republicans can look at the tightness of the Virginia contest and conclude that the unpopularity of Obamacare strengthens their hand for 2014 and will be an albatross around the neck of the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016.”

“Pragmatic conservative Republicans can point to Bradley Byrne’s victory in Alabama and Chris Christie’s blow-out in New Jersey as evidence that the tea party wing of the GOP has met its match and “establishment” candidates have greater electability. And tea party conservatives can point to Alabama’s primary results to prove that the establishment will do whatever it can to deny grass-roots conservatives the victories that they deserve — and conclude that fighting just a little harder is all that it will take to defeat the establishment eventually.”

Jennifer Johnson (D) defeated her husband David Johnson (R) for a municipal seat in Waterville Maine, the Morning Sentinel reports.

The couple “say they entered the race to call attention to the importance of being involved and serving the community — and as a way of getting people out to vote.”

For our latest podcast episode, we spoke to ABC News political director Rick Klein about yesterday’s elections:

Subscribe to the podcast via ITunes or RSS and have each new episode delivered automatically to your phone or iPod when it’s ready.

Thanks for listening!

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.”