Election results open thread

12:55 AM No on 1 in Maine (good guys) say will have to wait until morning to count all the votes. Mood not very optimistic in the crowd.

Openly gay Annise Parker will face Gene Locke in runnoff to be next mayor of Houston.

Andrew Sullivan on Maine: "It is staggering to me that the message discipline from the DNC is so tight that they even forbade OFA from telling Obama-supporters which way to vote on the referendum. It's one more sign, I fear, that the Democratic establishment's opposition to marriage equality is real; and the president's peeps are increasingly determined to do what they can keep us from the right to civil marriage."

11:50 PM I'm back in the hotel room with Joe. We were downstairs for a while. Hung out with Jeremy Hooper of Good As You blog, and gay journalist Rex Wockner. Joe says the race in Maine is terribly close - it's nail-biting time.

Openly gay candidate wins mayorship in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Is this going to be the big night for the gays?

If we win in Maine, and that's a big if, but if we win in Maine, after already winning in Kalamazoo, the gays and the Republicans will be the big winners of the evening. That's hardly a definitive lurch to the right. In fact, it's quite bizarre.

Joe reports we won Bangor, Maine 54-46 - the second biggest city in the state, in the northern part of the state - Joe says we needed to win Bangor, and we did. We lost Lewiston 60-40, but Joe says Lewiston is a very conservative Catholic town.

You can watch a UStream video feed of the election night party/reception taking place downtstairs in the hotel.

WE WON IN KALAMAZOO! (Background on what this was about.) From One Kalamazoo's press release:

ONE KALAMAZOO DECLARES VICTORY IN BALLOT FIGHT
Kalamazoo residents approve nondiscrimination ordinance

With only absentee ballots outstanding, 65 percent of Kalamazoo voters have approved Ordinance 1856 by a vote of 6,463 to 3,527, adding protections for gay and transgender people to the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance. This margin is larger than the number of outstanding absentee ballots that are currently being counted.

On Maine's No on 1: In Brunswick, where Bowdoin College is, we won today by over 2,464 votes - that's a good margin, Joe says, and an important win. In 2005, we won Bowdoin by 2600 and some votes - that was the last time Maine voted on an anti-gay measure (and the good guys won).

Pam Spaulding tweets that Jesse Connolly, campaign manager for No on 1 in Maine, will be on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC at 9:15PM Eastern.

Joe tells me all of Portland, Maine has now been reported, except the absentees. But the absentees are going to be huge, he says. Stay tuned.

Adam Bink of OpenLeft tweets that in our worst precinct in Portland, we're still beating the bad guys (Joe informs me that apparently this data is coming from the cabal across the hotel room from me - who knew?)


Joe, his sister Sharon, and their friend John are busy getting election results from all over Portland, Maine. We're holed up in a Holiday Inn in downtown Portland.

You can catch the Maine results on this site. In Maine, they're voting on a ballot question that would repeal marriage rights for gay couples in the state.

Washington State, where voters are deciding whether the new domestic partners expansion law - giving gay partners "everything but marriage" - will become law.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan: "voters will decide whether to keep a city ordinance protecting gay, lesbian, and transgendered people. It prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, or public accommodations. It's being challenged by a group that says gay activists are seeking special rights."