The 2005 vote.(POLITICS)(gubernatorial elections)

IT is a quadrennial ritual of the punditry to evaluate the off-off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia and search for glimmerings of what may come in approaching congressional races. There are indeed reasons why Democrats should be heartened by what happened on November 8, and why Republicans ought to be worried. But any talk of 2006 becoming a Democratic version of 1994--i.e., a year for taking control of Congress--is premature.

The gubernatorial victory of Democratic senator Jon Corzine in New Jersey was no surprise: He ran in a blue state, spent freely, and faced a lackluster opponent in Doug Forrester. The race was perhaps most notable for its tawdriness, including a GOP ad that featured Corzine's ex-wife.

The governor's race in Virginia is harder for Republicans to dismiss. The state voted for President Bush last year, and the GOP understandably expects to enjoy a home-field advantage there. Many national Democrats have attributed Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine's win to the president's sagging popularity. But it would be a mistake to think that Virginia politics is driven by presidential polls. If that were the case, then Virginia's outgoing governor, Democrat Mark Warner, wouldn't have been elected in 2001, when Bush's approval ratings were peaking in the aftermath of 9/11.

In truth, Kaine laced a weak Republican opponent in former state attorney general Jerry Kilgore. Although Warner and Kaine had pushed successfully for a tax increase, Kilgore never developed a convincing message on this core GOP issue, partly because Republican legislators split on the Warner/Kaine tax hike. Instead, he campaigned on the death penalty, apparently in the belief that Kaine's opposition to it represented a glaring vulnerability. If Virginians were drowning beneath a crime wave, that might have been true. But they aren't, and the cumulative effect of Kilgore's negative ads ...