For those of you who aren't wild web-surfers on the political front, here's a quick wrap on things I've been watching:

As anticipated, Mayor Mike gets four more years, and downticket Democratic incumbants rule the day across the board. Lesson learned: heavily Democratic New York City is saddled with an aging and increasingly ineffective political machine which is highly vulnerable to high-profile attacks from maverick Republicans. The machine has to open up at some point, it's just a matter of whether or not this happens as a result of total system failure, or as part of a plan to revitalize city politics. Don't bet on the latter.

In California we approached flawless victory on the ballot initiatives. Big ups. My company worked this campaign and I think we even helped.

Lots of other points of light: Intelligent-design took a big hit in some school board elections; anti-gay ballot measure failed in Maine; Gubinatorial victory in NJ (nice work Stolls) and VA.

Electoral reform initiatives fail in Ohio. Hopefully they'll try again amidst the '06 electapalooza.