Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apartments
Classifieds
Shopping
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio voters hard hit by the economic downturn have opened their state to casino gambling after an expensive campaign promising thousands of jobs.
With 91 percent of precincts reporting unofficial results, Issue 3 passed 53 percent to 47 percent.
It marked a significant victory for Penn National Gaming Inc. and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who spent nearly $35 million promoting casinos in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo.
A study commissioned by the campaign predicted nearly 40,000 temporary and permanent jobs and $4 billion in economic investment.
The casino issue was the fifth attempt in 20 years to open the state to new forms of gambling, and its result has implications for Fort Wayne.
Ozzie Mitson, spokesman for Mayor Tom Henry, said Tuesday the mayor will push for a referendum on legalized gambling regardless of the outcome in Ohio. He said the mayor, his staff and lobbyists continue to push legislators to give Fort Wayne residents a voice on gambling.
Mitson noted Ohioans had a chance to vote, and “the mayor believes the people of Fort Wayne should have that opportunity as well.”
Ohio state Rep. Lou Blessing, a Republican who fought the plan, said he plans to push a ballot issue next May that amends the plan, collects more taxes from the casinos and puts the licenses up for bid.
Ohioans also passed Issue 2, which creates a board to oversee livestock care. The issue was intended to thwart efforts to outlaw holding sows, hens and veal calves in cramped cages or crates. Issue 1, which will pay bonuses of up to $1,000 to war veterans who served in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq, also passed.
The mayors of Cleveland and Cincinnati won re-election. Independent Mike Bell won in Toledo.
Virginians elected Republican Robert McDonnell governor, sweeping the GOP to power and halting a decade of Democratic advances in the critical swing state.
Unofficial results showed McDonnell, a conservative and former state attorney general, with about 60 percent of the vote over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds.
Boosted by a political mood shift that has left many voters cool to Democrats, McDonnell, 55, prevailed with a promise to create jobs and fix the state’s clogged roads without a tax increase.
The race, along with the contest for governor of New Jersey, was viewed as the first referendum on the president and the Democratic Congress before the 2010 midterm elections.
Chris Christie, a former prosecutor who racked up a perfect conviction rate in public corruption cases and became the darling of New Jersey’s Republican Party establishment, has unseated the deep-pocketed but unpopular Gov. Jon Corzine.
Christie, 47, on Tuesday became the first member of his party in a dozen years to win a statewide contest in heavily Democratic New Jersey.
With 75 percent of precincts reporting, Christie had 50 percent of the vote compared with 44 percent for Corzine. Independent candidate Chris Daggett, who at one point had been feared as a potential spoiler, had about 5 percent.
Four years after winning his second term in a blowout, Michael Bloomberg narrowly beat his Democratic challenger in the New York mayoral race.
With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Bloomberg was leading Democrat William Thompson Jr. 50.5 percent to 46.2 percent.
Bloomberg spent more than $100 million on the nation’s most expensive self-financed campaign.
Thompson was widely predicted to lose by double digits, but he hoped to stoke voter resentment over the way Bloomberg sought a change to the city’s term-limits law.
Democrat Bill Owens emerged as the winner in a special congressional election in New York that highlighted divisions within the Republican Party.
Owens, who had 49 percent of the vote, defeated Conservative Doug Hoffman, who had 46 percent, in the heavily Republican 23rd congressional District in rural northern New York.
Republican Dierdre Scozzafava, who withdrew from the race Saturday, still picked up 6 percent of the vote.
Same-sex marriage appeared in danger in Maine in a referendum that gay-rights activists hoped would prove their cause can prevail at the ballot box.
Voters had to decide whether to repeal or affirm a state law that would allow gay couples to wed. The law was passed by the legislature in May but never took effect because of a petition drive by conservatives.
With 481 of 608 precincts reporting, the pro-repeal side had 52 percent to 48 percent for supporters of same-sex marriage.
A vote to uphold the law would mark the first time that the electorate in any state endorsed same-sex marriage.
