This post has been updated below.

Yesterday, two states located thousands of miles from California elected new governors. And although the elections won’t directly affect the Golden State, California Republicans hoping to reverse their recent fortunes in statewide elections will be observing the results closely.

In Virginia, scandal-plagued Democratic moneyman Terry McAuliffe narrowly defeated Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, McAuliffe held a 2.5-point lead. Given McAuliffe’s shady business dealings, lack of experience and past as an aggressive Democratic fundraiser, the race was Cuccinelli’s to lose. Although polls and analysis in the media predicted that Cuccinelli would lose by at least 7 points, his Republican predecessor Bob McDonnell won by double digits.

Political commentators have explained his loss by pointing to McAuliffe’s financial advantage, Cuccinelli’s focus on social issues, Cuccinelli’s unlikeable personality, a divided Virginia Republican Party, a surprisingly popular third party candidate and Cuccinelli’s ties to Virginia’s current governor, who is caught up in his own scandals. The government shutdown — which damaged the Republican brand especially hard in a state filled with federal workers — didn’t help either.

However, it’s likely that the narrow loss — unseen in polling — was a result of Obamacare backlash. As the rollout become more problematic, Democrats took heat from angry voters who felt lied to. Should Obamacare’s problems persist or worsen, the law could drag down numerous other Democrats in 2014.

Meanwhile, in a much more Democratic state, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie won re-election in a landslide, 61-38, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. His opponent, unlike McAuliffe, was solid, if uninspiring. Barbara Buono was a progressive state legislator whose political views aligned greatly with her average citizen in her state. But Christie still won an historic victory. And now Christie will be able to point to the huge margins he ran up in the blue state as a reason to nominate him in 2016, as George W. Bush did with his 1998 reelection in Texas going into the 2000 election cycle.

Lessons

What gives?

Some of the reasons for Christie’s success can’t easily be duplicated in other states. His handling of Superstorm Sandy last year, and his likeable personality, make him uniquely popular in New Jersey. (The strength of his likeability, for instance, garnered him an endorsement from NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal.)

Some of the reason for Christie’s success, though, can be duplicated in other blue states — states like California.

Business Insider’s Josh Barro has been covering the final days of the Christie race and has presented several explanations for Christie’s success. He explained one message that was particularly effective:

When Christie yelled at that teacher yesterday about how education spending levels will “never be enough” for New Jersey’s teachers’ unions, he was doing so in a state that spent $19,291 per pupil on K-12 education last year — more than any state except New York and Vermont and 74% more than the national average. New Jersey’s educational outcomes are excellent, but Massachusetts achieves slightly better outcomes while spending 20% less.

New Jersey residents feel overtaxed because they are; depending on how you measure it, the state is at or near the top in state and local tax burden in the U.S., and Christie’s ire toward groups that demand ever-higher taxes and spending is popular with the electorate. Christie’s demands for school spending restraint, even (successfully) urging voters to reject local school budgets en masse in 2010, have been popular.

Given that California has similar problems with overspending and overtaxing its residents, conservative politicians could feasibly use these sorts of arguments against the excesses of Jerry Brown’s first four years. The egregious prison guard contract, for instance, would be an effective talking point.

But that’s only half of Christie’s replicable success: Christie has also done an excellent job of picking his battles. Although Christie opposes gay marriage, he has effectively conceded a court ruling to legalize it, knowing that fighting it would only anger potential supporters to his left.

California and New Jersey are not the same state, but they are blue states. And Republicans have had success in both in the past. If California Republicans want to start winning again, they might find some lessons in Christie’s victory. Republican state assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who officially kicked off his gubernatorial campaign yesterday, would be especially wise to take note.

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Update: Barro took issue with a point in this article in an e-mail to CalWatchdog. He wrote:

California has very high income tax rates on high earners. But tax collections as a share of personal income are close to the national average. Per-pupil spending on K-12 education in California is actually 17% lower than the national average. Teacher salaries in California are high, but staffing ratios are low, and as a result class sizes are extremely large, second only to Utah.

Because of its lower level of public expenditure, California is able to maintain much lower levels of tax on middle-income residents than New Jersey. Property taxes in California are low; in New Jersey, they are the highest of all 50 states. Income taxes are also low for middle-income California residents.

Because of the different fiscal circumstances, the politics of anti-tax-and-spend policies are very different in the two states, and less likely to be fruitful in California than New Jersey.

The passage of Jerry Brown’s tax increase referendum, including a broad-based sales tax increase, reflects that Californians are not as likely as New Jersey residents to align with the view that the government is overtaxing and overspending. This isn’t surprising given that spending in California is not especially high.

To which I responded:

I should have written:

Conservative politicians could feasibly go on the offense against the nature of some spending in California.

Though California politicians might not be able to point to the same spending levels, there are myriad examples of billions of dollars being misspent. The WSJ piece on excessive prison guard contracts touches on that point. California spending per teacher is extremely high, thanks to unions that also win contracts that occasionally result in terrible things like this happening. California’s expensive high speed rail project, for which spending has spiraled out of control, is another example.

But since the 1960s, the U.S. government has metastasized beyond its District of Columbia center to occupy neighboring Maryland — practically the whole state — and Northern Virginia. Big government benefits all those congressional staffers, bureaucrats, lobbyists and others. So, they vote for big government — and for big-government candidates like McAuliffe. The bigger government gets, the more money and power they get.

Federal workers now make twice what the average American worker makes — and they want to keep it that way by electing candidates like McAuliffe. The suburbs of D.C., including Northern Virgina, include the wealthiest counties in America. According to Forbes, the richest county in America is Loudon County, Va., a D.C. suburb:

“Median Household Income: $119,525. The D.C. suburb has developed into a beltway high tech center, allowing it to feed at the trough of government contracting. The population has nearly doubled since 2001, to over 325,000.”

The second richest county is Falls Church, another D.C. suburb:

“Median Household Income: $117,481. Like Loudon County, this independent city of 13,200 over 2.2 square miles is loving life in suburban Washington.”

Even Silicon Valley isn’t as rich as these counties. The Northern Virginia counties are living high off the hog on your tax money, and want to keep it that way.

Given that, it’s surprising Republican candidate Ken Cucinelli got as many votes as he did, garnering 45 percent to McAuliffe’s 48 percent. Cucinelli’s campaign finally gained traction in the last week as he relentlessly attacked Obamacare.

But it still wasn’t enough. The D.C. elites said, “We love Obamacare! It means more government, and more government means higher salaries and lobbyist fees for us! Go McAuliffe!”

The rest of the state said, “We hate Obamacare. It means higher rates for us, with the money going to the D.C. elites in Northern Virginia.”

Metastasizing

Under both Republican President Bush and Democratic President Obama, the federal government has grown from about 18 percent of the U.S. economy (under Bill Clinton, during the time of a Republican Congress) to 24 percent today. That’s a 33 percent increase in just 12 years, with all that money flowing through the D.C. area, including Northern Virginia, and a large percentage of it sticking there.

Add in state and local government burdens, about 20 percent in California, and government devours 44 percent of our economy. But it can’t last. When the parasite gets too big, it either is expelled from the host, or the host dies, taking the parasite with it.

Already, the federal deficit — which bloats the salaries of all those Northern Virginia McAuliffe voters — continues at more than $600 billion, “down” from the $1 trillion-plus of Obama’s first four years. The federal deficit is $17 trillion and counting. And the unfunded liabilities — including mammoth pensions for all those federal workers who voted for McAuliffe — amounts to an incredible $222 trillion and counting.

McAuliffe’s victory is not a victory for more big government, but a bell tolling its demise.

By Steven Greenhut

We’re used to political races revolving around pointless slogans, but sometimes an important race focuses the public’s attention on a meaningful and relevant issue. For instance, the Virginia governorship may hinge on voters’ increasing distaste for insider-enrichment deals known as “crony capitalism.”

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has touted his efforts to start a “green car” company in Mississippi as a prime example of his American entrepreneurial know-how as he battles against Republican Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general.

The politically well-connected McAuliffe — a former Democratic National Committee chairman described this month by the Washington Post as someone who “made a fortune in an array of businesses, often by using his political contacts” — apparently purchased Greentech Automotive in 2009 from the Chinese government, which seems like a match made in heaven, given that the Chinese “capitalist” model is heavy on political favoritism.

McAuliffe quietly resigned as chairman of the company in December — so quietly that the public only learned about it April 5 — but was still championing his role with the company as recently as this month, when one of its funding sources turned into a campaign disaster. That financing mechanism is the EB-5 program, whereby foreigners are offered green cards in exchange for investments in U.S. companies.

Clinton crony

In short, McAuliffe, who helped President Bill Clinton raise campaign cash, was building a car company based on $500,000 “investments” from foreigners seeking to live in the United States. “GTA counts among its allies Hillary Clinton’s brother, Anthony Rodham, who shares an office with GTA and is CEO of Gulf Coast Funds Management, an EB-5 center that raises visa-investor money for GTA,” the journalist site Watchdog.org reported.

The Associated Press featured a photograph of Bill Clinton at the unveiling of the MyCar (pictured above) at the Horn Lake, Miss., facility, where thousands of cars would supposedly be produced in its first year of production. Crony capitalism is bipartisan, of course, and Mississippi’s former governor, Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, was in on the action, too. His development authority pledged more than $8 million in taxpayer-funded freebies so that GTA could build a plant on a still-vacant parcel in Tunica County.

It’s hard to envision a huge market for $18,000 “neighborhood electric vehicles” with a top speed of 35 mph and the appearance, arguably, of a clown car. For perspective, that’s roughly the same price as my V-8 pickup truck that could probably — and accidentally, I note — drive over a few of these minicars without my even noticing.

McAuliffe and his fellow Greentech executives went to job-desperate Mississippi after Virginia officials scoffed at their plan. In 2009, a Virginia economic development official, Jeffrey Anderson, reviewed the project for then-Gov. Tim Kaine’s administration. His conclusions were devastating.

“Since GTA will need the funds to develop the plant, it will need the funds largely upfront,” Anderson wrote. “The EB-5 program requires that the jobs be created within about 2.5 years. … Even with a significant multiplier, it is unlikely that GTA will put enough folks to work quickly enough to satisfy the requirements of the EB-5 program.”

He also questioned its cronyism: “We believe that having the principals of the regional center be the same as the principals of the company benefiting from the investment creates a conflict of interest.”

GTA was late on its property tax bill in Mississippi because it hadn’t started construction of its permanent plant. A Memphis Business Journal reporter visited the leased facility and noted that there were only six cars on an assembly line.

ChiCom tactics

Sadly, Greentech even is echoing Chinese-style tactics to shut down dissent. After Watchdog.org produced investigative reports about the project — and quoted analysts who made the same points as those made in the media and by Virginia officials — Greentech slapped Watchdog’s parent company (the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, where I am vice president) with an $85 million lawsuit.

If the goal was to stop coverage about Greentech, it hasn’t worked. The Greentech project has become the focus of the gubernatorial campaign.

In China, the children and grandchildren of the Communist revolutionary leaders, dubbed “princelings,” used their family and political connections to become the country’s new robber barons, using political clout to silence critics. In America, some political princelings aren’t above similar tactics.

Fortunately, Virginia voters will decide in November whether they believe that good jobs come from these political deals. Let’s hope a backlash against crony capitalism spreads elsewhere.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at: steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.