Veddy, veddy interesting articles in today’s Era about the election here in Lancaster County. Out front, Tom Murse’s piece confirmed something we speculated about yesterday - that Obama, while not winning Lancaster County, was going to do very well in the suburbs:
Obama came closer to winning Lancaster County than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson beat Republican Barry Goldwater here in 1964. He did so by appealing not only to urban voters but to suburban voters, including those in the populous townships bordering the city — East Hempfield, Lancaster, Manheim, and East and West Lampeter.
Republicans outnumber Democrats in those five suburbs by nearly 17,000 voters, but McCain won by only 3,391 votes there. Obama also won in some districts in Manor Township that are near the city.
Turnout in those townships, at nearly 72 percent, was markedly higher than it was in more rural, historically conservative areas friendly to McCain such as southern and eastern Lancaster County — Providence, Martic, Little Britain, Salisbury, Sadsbury and Paradise townships.
The more suburbanized Lancaster County becomes, the more the GOP stranglehold is loosened.
Yet elsewhere, we see both U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts and, for state Senate, Lloyd Smucker cruising to victory.
This suggests that some people - maybe many - who voted for Pitts and Smucker also voted for Obama.
Home rule gets voted down - and I figured it would. Bottom line, it was simply too confusing, MEGO - my eyes glaze over. And there simply was no guarantee that home rule would produce more effective and efficient governance. It might have. But it would have increased the cost of government. And this is not the right environment for that.
Finally, and this one is a stunner - folks in ELANCO voted to take state gambling dollars, winning with 70 freaking percent of the vote. That is a huge repudiation of that school board and others tempted to follow in its footsteps. Pocketbook issues appear to trump “moral” issues in that community; and if that’s the case in rural eastern Lancaster County - I suspect it would be the case almost anywhere else in the county, too.
