Portsmouth Dems glumly tabulate Tuesday results.

It's taken me a while to recover, so apologies for the lapse over the last few days. First, thank you to every Portsmouth resident who voted in Tuesday's historic election. I know there were many people who supported Republicans locally but cast votes for Obama, and for that, and the message of change for the country at large, we can all be thankful.

Turning to the local race for Town Council. It's taken me a few days to work through the shock and try to come to an understanding. My sense is that several factors contributed to the surprising result: An effective wedge issue campaign, the politics of personality, and failure by the Democrats to organize and get their message out.

In the last few weeks of the race, the question of sewers emerged as a defining issue. The Republican and Independent position was a flat "no," while the Democrats kept coming back to the wastewater study and letting the voters decide. Unlike what we saw in the national election, flinging...uh... mud seems to have worked. The Dems were painted as supporters of sewers and overdevelopment and their measured responses were ineffective at dislodging this label. You can carve this on the headstone of many a failed Democrat: Nuanced positions end up at the bottom of the bay while simple slogans skate by overhead on thin ice.

Second, personalities matter, apparently as much or more than party affiliation or message, for Portsmouth voters and we forget this at our peril. One of the things I've been staring at for the past few days are the results by precinct, and the conclusion is inescapable: Folks voted for people they knew. Canario won Prudence Island. Karen Gleason won Common Fence Point. Huck Little, who's been around forever and everybody knows, won in a lot of places. You can right-click to download a color-coded Excel file here; vote totals in each precinct are tinted in descending ROYGBIV order. I just cannot wrap my head around the idea that anyone who had actually seen Karen Gleason on the Council for the last two years would have voted for her. But there you are.

And finally, no Democratic loss would be complete without the requisite dollop of bitter recrimination. While our opponents — and I say "our" on purpose; I have never hidden the fact that I am a hard-core Dem — were out canvassing with their simple messages about sewers and spending, our team failed to mount an aggressive response. The Democrats stressed all the things they had accomplished over the last few years: the wind turbine, open space, blocking big boxes, keeping the Town running in a tightening fiscal regime. They ran on their record. Oops.

The next two years will be interesting. Now that the conservatives are in control of the Council, let us see what they actually accomplish. It will be increasingly important to keep an eye on what's happening at Town Hall, so I won't be going anywhere. In fact, I've already asked a couple of folks — who now have some extra time on their hands — to help out with blogging so that we can cover even more meetings, and we'll be announcing that shortly.

The campaign is over and it's back to work. A big thank you to everyone who ran, and congratulations and best wishes (at least until I disagree with them) to all the winners. For the rest of us, time to pick up and move on, and it is worthwhile to remember the Buddha's last words: "Transient are conditioned things. Try to accomplish your aim with diligence."