Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher was crushed yesterday in his re-election bid, garnering only 41 percent of the vote. He went down in a classless fashion: with the state GOP authorizing gay-bashingcalls against Democratic nominee Steve Beshear and the governor himself ostentatiously ordering the displaying of the Ten Commandments in the Capitol Rotunda, violating the spirit of a court ruling to do so.

Fletcher lost in large part because of a series of ethics scandals. In neighboring Ohio, however, Republican Bob Latta overcame a campaign ethics scandal to narrowly prevail in a special House primary in an overwhelmingly Republican seat. The Ohio Elections Commission unanimously reprimanded Latta for knowingly lying in a campaign brochure asserting that his primary opponent"opposed" prayer in public schools and"didn’t want" the Ten Commandments posted in public places. Latta's own attorney described the brochure as"misleading," a" cheap shot," and a"political low blow."

And Virginia, where Democrats took control of the state Senate for the first time in a decade, continued its progression to a"purple" state, a remarkable development in a state that has voted Democratic for president only once in the last 50 years but which now seems highly likely to have two Democratic U.S. senators after the 2008 elections.