While the Republican candidate in Monday’s special election lost, I’d have to say the vote results are actually positive.

Here are the results by counties:

Jefferson County:

Curt Hanson (D): 2699
Stephen Burgmeier (R): 2064

Wapello County:

Curt Hanson (D): 599
Stephen Burgmeier: (R): 603

Van Buren County:

Curt Hanson (D): 667
Stephen Burgmeier (R): 1171

I didn’t list the third-party candidates because they didn’t have enough votes to sway which direction the individual counties went. However, taken overall, one third-party candidate may have done a Ross Perot and siphoned votes away from Burgmeier. Here are the total results:

Curt Hanson (D): 3965
Stephen Burgmeier (R): 3838
Dan Cesar (Fourth of July Party): 40
Douglas William Philips (Nominated by Petition): 242
Write-In Votes: 7
Total Votes: 8092

So Burgmeier lost by 127 votes in what is traditionally a heavily-Democrat area. I don’t see anything bad with that. Naturally, I’d prefer that he had won, but I will gladly take this as a positive sign.

I don’t know about Van Buren county (never lived there, don’t know anyone from there, etc.), so I will assume it is a Republican area and was in the bag all along (may or may not be the case).

But the other two counties, Wapello and Jefferson, I do know about, having ties to both,

First off, Wapello county (where I was born and raised and, until recently, lived) has almost always been a bastion of the Democrat Party. I’d be hard pressed to remember them voting for an actual Republican for anything (they did twice that I know of, the most recent one being a moderate Democrat who had to register as a Republican because the Democrat ticket was full…no joke, he was a friend of my dad’s and he admitted this). In this county, Burgmeier actually won, albeit barely (4 votes). That confirms what I said just the other day, that people in this area are fed up. And that doesn’t bode well for Democrats seeking re-election.

Second, Jefferson county. This is interesting to me because Wapello county has more people living in it than Jefferson county, yet Jefferson county posted about four times as many people voting. If you aren’t aware of it, Fairfield is the main town in Jefferson county, and it’s home to a bunch of meditation kooks who think they can fly/float, that world peace and stability is just a meditation chant away, they don’t eat meat, and (trust me on this one) they really, really like their “herbs” (if you know what I mean). So naturally they fit right in with the Democrat Party.

Put another way, to find an area of Iowa further to the left of this one, you’d have to go up to tea-smoking hippie territory. Of course the county is going to vote (D), no matter what. Still, Burgmeier only lost the county by about 600 votes which, to me, is another positive sign. If a Republican can stand toe-to-toe with a Democrat in these two counties, and actually win one of them, then we’re on our way to taking our country back.

Regardless of what the left says, the people — regular, everyday folk — are pissed at what is being done in their name by these elitists in Washington and their own state houses. They don’t like it, and there’s going to be a backlash next year, mark my words.