the Informer

This time last year New Jersey was a staunch supporter of Barack Obama and the Democratic party, but on Tuesday the state swung back to the right. Chris Christie won the gubernatorial election with only 48.9 percent of the votes; not even of the votes. Democrat Jon Corzine received 44.5 percent of the votes. The Independent candidate Chris Daggett was a surprise and received 5.7% of the votes, which translates into 134,225 votes. That is a lot of votes for a virtually unknown candidate. I voted for Daggett. But I don't think I voted for him because it was him, as much as I voted for him because he wasn't Christie or Corzine.

That seemed to be a general trend in many elections when you ask someone whom they are voting for. Their response is usually "the lesser of the two evils." That's not what it should be. There should be at least one candidate that you can identify with or that you think will be a good representative to your state or county.

But in recent years many people struggle to find a candidate that will rally the people around them. Obama was able to do that with the younger generation last year. But that doesn't seem to happen on the state level.

I was not excited about any of the candidates. My outlook right now is that in four years there will be someone new.

Looking at the results I should be excited about what that candidate will be able to accomplish or what he/she would like to do while in office. But now I am very apathetic about Jersey politics.

The candidates this year were not the good people that citizens want to represent them. Corzine shunned media organizations such as Fox News and New Jersey 101.5. A piece of wisdom, don't mess with the media. The media is a necessary part of running a successful campaign and refusing to appear on them will hurt you in the end.

In addition to people generally not liking the candidates, some people voted Republican just to oppose Obama. I didn't even consider this until I was on the phone with my grandmother on Tuesday before the polls closed. She asked me who I voted for and I responded Independent.

She then tells me that she was going to vote independent but then felt like she was throwing her vote away. So she chose Republican just to make a statement to Obama, she didn't like either Corzine or Christie. So she voted for the party that was opposing the President. It was an interesting sentiment that was later debated on all the news channels later that night after the polls closed.

But I wonder how many people actually voted for a candidate because of that person would be a good person in that office.

From the people I talked to they either voted for the "lesser of the two evils," "threw" their vote away for an independent candidate or voted against Obama by way of party lines.

I guess the only good thing that came out of this election is that people voted. There were about 2.3 million votes just in New Jersey, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau has about 8.7 million people with 23.6 percent being under the age of 18. I think that was a pretty good turn out for a Jersey election that did not evoke a sense of change or progress in its citizens.,Melissa O'Brien