The view from the Library of Congress

I filmed this at about 1pm Washington time (6pm UK time)yesterday. The morning was spent catching up on the news [It is so good to be able to read the physical editions of The Hill, Politico & the Washington Post - I'm grateful for the ability to read them online from 3600 miles away - but it's nicer to read - and mark - the hard copies. I also rang & then emailed a number of Members' offices - to set up interviews in the coming days.

Having made my way to "the Hill" I popped into the Library of Congress Book/Gift shop - before making this video. Then I crossed to the Newspaper and Current Periodicals Reading room, which like the Congressional Research Service, is based in the Madison Building. I spent some wonderful hours reading the Washington Post from November 1974.

I made my way to Politics and Prose - where I picked up a signed copy of President Carter's Diaries. I have quite a bit of reading to do - and I'll be blogging about some of that soon.

Gubernatorial Races

As you would expect this blog has concentrated on the Senate and House races in Tuesday's forthcoming US Elections. But while the British continue to debate whether it is a good idea to have a number of elections and a referendum on the same day, many US voters have a number of votes to cast - in addition to the Congressional elections.

A number of States will be choosing their Governors. The Democrats will be defending 19 governships, whilst the Republicans defend 18. The latest ratings from Cook can be viewed here. California is currently held by the Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger . The race to replace him pits Jerry Brown (Democrat) against Meg Whitman (Republican). A map of California (and its 53 congressional districts) is available here.

In the last forty years four of the eight Presidents have been former Governors (Carter (Georgia), Reagan (California) , Clinton (Arkansas), and George W Bush (Texas)) - while Nixon failed to win the California gubernatorial race in 1962 against Pat Brown, father of Jerry.



(Nixon's "last press conference", 1962 - after his defeat in the California gubernatorial election)

C-SPAN reports on gubernatorial races can be viewed by clicking the link on the name of the State.

Massachusetts
Texas
Illinois
Iowa