Democrats got the senate

Virginia win gives Democrats the Senate - Yahoo! News Virginia win gives Democrats the Senate By BOB LEWIS, Associated Press Writer 2 minutes ago Like President Bush's win in 2000, the victory that gave Democrats total control of Congress made for edge-of-your seat ballot-counting — even after election night. But Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record), who came out just short, is unlikely to wage the kind of prolonged fight that took the Florida recount to the Supreme Court. Democrat Jim Webb won Virginia's pivotal Senate race Wednesday by about 7,200 votes, giving the Democrats total control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 12 years. An Allen adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity because his boss has not formally decided to end the campaign, said the Republican likely will not request a recount if a statewide canvass of votes doesn't show significant changes. Allen wanted to wait until most canvassing was completed before announcing his decision, possibly as early as Thursday evening, the adviser said. Officials in several large localities told The Associated Press on Thursday that they hoped to finish their canvass by the end of the day. Their deadline for completing the work is Tuesday. The Associated Press contacted election officials in all 134 localities where voting occurred, obtaining updated numbers Wednesday. About half the localities said they had completed their post-election canvassing and nearly all had counted outstanding absentees. Most were expected to be finished by Friday. The new AP count showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236. Virginia has had two statewide vote recounts in modern history, but both resulted in vote changes of no more than a few hundred votes. There are no automatic recounts in Virginia, but state law allows a candidate who finishes a half-percentage point or less behind to request a recount paid for by state and local governments. Control of the Senate hung in the balance for most of Wednesday as Webb clung to an excruciatingly small lead. Moving swiftly to establish himself as the winner, Webb began assembling a transition team hours after he proclaimed victory around 1:30 a.m. "The vote's been counted and Jim won," said campaign spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. Some absentee ballots remained to be counted, she said, but Webb considers it "a formality more than anything else." After GOP Sen. Conrad Burns (news, bio, voting record)' loss in Montana, the Virginia contest was the last undecided Senate race in the country. Webb's victory gave the Democrats 51 Senate seats and majorities in both the House and Senate for the first time since 1994. Webb, a 60-year-old Naval Academy graduate, novelist and decorated Vietnam veteran who served as Navy secretary under former President Reagan, bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and switched to the Democratic Party. During the campaign, he tried to tie Allen to President Bush and the war. Allen, the 54-year-old son of a Hall of Fame coach of the Washington Redskins, is a former governor once popular for abolishing parole, and he had once been expected to cruise to a second term this year as a warmup for a run for the White House in 2008. Then in August, he mockingly referred to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent as "Macaca," regarded by some as a racial slur. And some former football teammates from the University of Virginia charged that Allen had commonly used a slur for blacks — something he denied. Allen battled back, accusing Webb of denigrating women in a 1979 magazine article decrying the admission of women to the Naval Academy. Allen also tried to portray sexual descriptions in Webb's six best-selling war novels as demeaning to women. The State Board of Elections is set to meet on Nov. 27 to certify the results of the statewide canvass. Allen would have 10 days after that to go to court to ask for a recount, which would be overseen by three judges. "These canvasses often turn up mathematical mistakes and tabulation errors, juxtaposition of numbers, numbers being written in the wrong columns and attributed to the wrong candidate, and the canvasses correct those mistakes," said former Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie, an Allen campaign adviser. In the 1989 gubernatorial election, Democrat L. Douglas Wilder's GOP opponent, Marshall Coleman, asked for and received a recount. Wilder was declared the winner by just under 7,000 votes out of 1.8 million cast. ___ Hey where's that pro George Allen blogger at now? But if ya out there here's something for you HA HA.