Where’s the Swingometer when you really need it? After months of mind-numbing televisual campaigns, billions of dollars thrown about to make the public think that voting one way or another will cause the world to end and taxes to rise, and with more mud slung than at all the Glastonburys put together, the mid-term elections are finally over, and we can all go back to normality (whatever that is). The Democrats appear to have taken back the House, giving the Administraitors some well-needed opposition, and as I write, the Senate is still too close to call. However, while this has been touted as a ‘national’ election, with the Iraq ‘war’ being the main issue among voters, many of the really nasty battles were the local ones, the ones at state-level, or (even more passionately) at county and city level. Those were the ones that really inflamed local passions, certainly in this part of California, and I have to say that over all, I’m disappointed with the results.

Arnold won the gubernatorial race (I love writing that word, I had never heard of it until I came out here), with a pretty convincing victory over Phil Angelides. I’m not surprised – not many people are – and that perhaps isn’t as bad a thing as it once sounded. For one thing, Arnold really changed direction last year when he was slapped in the special election, deciding that the only way to progress is to work together with the other parties, and not just give the cushy jobs to your Republican buddies. He has meant this as a lesson to be learnt at national level; it has clearly won over Californians, who have, believe it or not, stopped seeing the Austrian as a joke. I am still not sure I buy the whole snubbing-Bush angle he took – I am certain that the Administraitors knew that certain elections would be won if the Prez was not in the picture. Personally, I think the real reason Californians voted him back into office is because they want to make sure he doesn’t go back and make any more movies, for another few years at least.

While the governor race was not a surprise, the big losses were felt in some of the statewide Propositions and local Measures. Billions of dollars were ploughed into these campaigns, sums of money so vast that it is absolutely criminal how wasteful this election has been. Across the entire country I cannot begin to imagine how much money was spent; could this money not have been better used to tackle poverty, or help disaster victims, or start a national health service? Unfortunately, this election has proved that such ridiculous and decadent spending pays off. One such costly fight was over Prop 87, which proposed taxing the oil companies to fund research into alternative forms of energy, and making it illegal for the oil firms to pass the cost onto the consumer (a point not only ignored but contradicted by the oil companies who funded the ‘No’ campaign). The ‘No’ people, who were funded by ‘consortiums’ that included Chevron, ploughed a whopping $94 million into convincing the public that such a law would be ‘wasteful’ (“a recipe for waste, not progress” was their tag). In order to simply be heard, the ‘Yes’ campaign was forced to spend heavily too, with most of the $60 million being provided by Hollywood stars (people who don’t stand to lose profits if the law is passed). The irony is that after a while, both sides started to say the same thing, to appeal to the more patriotic voter (“they burn our flag, we buy their oil”, and so forth). Well, the boys who spent the most won, because voters listened to the nagging TV screen, drove their SUVs to the polling place, and rejected Prop 87. So much for California leading the way on climate change.

In Davis, the big battle was also won by the guys with the money – Measure K, the vote on whether to build a massive big Target store on the edge of town, was passed, much to the disappointment of downtown businesses and people who like that Davis is a town free of the big-box type strip malls that have turned most of the US into a soulless vacuous parking lot (see Vacaville, aka Vacantville). Target really marketed to the locals, giving itself a new, green image – Davis is famous as one of the most progressive and environment-conscious cities in America. The “Yes on K” (funded by Target) signs argued that by building a Target in Davis would mean less driving to nearby Woodland or Natomas for those who want to shop there, thereby polluting less – it was sold as the green option. The new store is also supposed to be radical in that it is one of only a few in the country that are built to new environmentally sound standards. I don’t know how dumping tons and tons of concrete and tarmac over a plot of land the size of is the green option. It was all a massive marketing trick to win the green vote; Target are only interested in the potential Davis market, a market they really want to tap into, this being a town of 30,000 students. Now I, like many others, will go to Target from time to time (my wife loves it there), but I really don’t think Davis needs a Target. If Target really only wanted the customers, why not pay for a bus to ferry students from campus to the store at Natomas? Because they don’t want to do that. They’d rather the whole of I-80 between the Bay and the Sierras became one long strip-mall. The local community group, “Don’t Big-Box Davis”, managed to raise a worthy $20,453, but it was not enough to beat the national corporate giant, the “thinking woman’s Wal-Mart”: Target could afford to spend big, a massive $269,795 in total (source). It paid off; Measure K narrowly won, and the big boys have conquered again.

Even in the congressional seats that the Democrats were hoping to win from the Republicans, not everything went to plan. GOP candidate John Doolittle was re-elected, following much fund-raising on his behalf by Bush and his family (though many candidates avoided him like the bird flu). It seems that California is not as progressive and left-leaning as many people think. However, another local Republican, Richard Pombo, managed to lose his seat to the Democrats, having flirted too closely not only with King George but also that rat Jack Abramoff. What’s more, now that the Democrats have the majority in the House, it has fallen to a Californian to step up as the first ever female Leader of the House – Nancy Pelosi, from San Francisco, the city George Dubya would never set foot inside. And so after all of the hype, all of the money, all of the verbal garbage, all of the dirt and scandal, all of the false grinning and debate-avoidance, all of the flags and patriotic slush, all of the false expensive TV spots, the election is over, and life goes on. And not a Swingometer in sight.