and it's got to be fairly heartening for thet( white hous >> thanks for your time tonight. i appreciate you working late with us. that's "the ed show." i'm ed schultz. the rachel maddow show starts right now.nb see you tomorrow night right here on msnbc.g if you're a civics dork or even just a politics dork, election day is kind of like secular christmas. no matter what your religion is÷ every single year, even when it's an off year election, election day is an exciting thing.é@e1 but if you have a job like we d here at msnbc, it is like christmas, but it's christmas where you're the parent, not christmas where you're the kid.1 meaning that even if you are totally psyched about it and it's your favorite day of the year, and it is, it's also a lot of work.e1 it's a fast-moving live parts, sort of high-stress night of making television.t( it is exciting, it can be exhilarating, but it goes>7!y later than a normal night on tv. you're tap dancing the whole time.

and the next day, particularly early in the day you're a little bit spent. so today, early this afternoon here from the rachel maddow show, thanks to the laughing squid, we spent most of the afternoon figuring out which politicians in today's news are most suited for the musthair treatment.xd by the magic of photo shop, a man's mustache doubles as his hairdo. here's another good one. this guy very, very sharp looking.e1xd it's the musthair, everybody.xd it is very disturbing, and yet it is veime.e1turbing, and yet the musthair tumbler and the laughing squid blog inspired usó here at "the rachel maddow show" today to create our own examples from some politicians in the news. here, for example, herman cain, difficult because he doesn't have any hair on top to blend, but there you have it.lp incidentally, as ed noted last

hour, the the american mustache association did rescind its herman cain endorsement today, for what's that worth.ok here's the musthair version of john bolton, former u.n. ambassador.r here, i hope he does not mind, because he's about to be our ok guest, here is raul greelva. i have always admired his mustache. branstad. terry branstad looks the most amazing of anybody i have ever ó seen with@uésuáu$air treatment. the mustache as hair treatment. terry branstad is ever going to become nationally famous. right now is not making terry çó branstad nationally famous.u i mean, like john kasich and rick schneider, terry branstad the great tide that was the huge republican election in 2010. he, too, has pursued an agenda in his state that's very, very

conservatively, both economically and socially.ñi but unlike those other very well known nationally famous governors, terry branstad has not become nationally famous i]f from iowa, and i think that's because in large part he hasn't been able to get a lot of his stuff passed. republicans in iowa have the xd amazing mustacheio terry branstad in the governor's office, and they doxdñ control state house, but the democrats hold the state senate1 so big conservative priorities like, for example, getting rid of same-sex marriage rights in iowa, those priority have said stalled because of divided but terry branstad is no fool. and in september of this year, when it came time to appoint someone to an available full-time gig on the state utilities board, he bypassed a whole bunch of people that really wanted that job, a whole bunch of republicans who really wanted that job. donors, elected officials, appointed a conservative democrat to the job.fá now, why is that a genius move? it's because the democrat he appointed to that job was a state senator.fá

a state senator from a republican-leaning district. so that promotion of that ut of the state senatehat left democrats with just a one-seat advantage in the state senate.e1 &/q!q"uájjpá's district, which á is a republican leaning district, and then you replace that democrat. it's easy peasy, right? thanks to branstad's move, repu !cans thought they could replace that democrat with a republican, and th/ny%=]:uád be under 100% republican government. i!o would become wisconsin west.e1r terry branstad could get nationally famous now for something other than the amazing mustache/hair thing. it was a genius political move.( and it utterly failed. iowa voters did pick a new state picked another democrat.fá a democrat named liz mathis.e1 and perhaps they picked her because they were treated to calls like this against her.i] >> so before you support liz mathis, call her and ask her which homosexual sex act she endorses. >> yes, that's d+ the campaign

went in iowa.ñi we'll have more on that coming up later in the show tonight. so the democrat won that race in iowa. the democrats, there, hold on to the state senate in iowa. enius republican plan wa. by the genius republican governor there is foiled. that happened in iowa. even though there was national focus on ballot measures in a e1 few different states last night, and new jersey and kentucky hadi some pretty striking results.+ in kentucky, a number of statewide office holders were up for election, and it was nearly a clean sweep for the democrats, in kentucky. abramson won re-election by a 20-point margin.5a the state auditor's race and th attorney general's race, despite some big national guns weighing on behalf of the republ'ç people like mike huckabee, rudy giuliani, sarah palin, the republican in the ag's race just got creamed.

and in fact, in all of those other races.lpe1i]c actually, a quick correction on the attorney general thing. i have been calling the pa-pool, because it's spelled p'pool, but it's pronounced my apologies.q the only race that a republican won last night in kentucky, only statewide race was for agricultural commissioner. despite that electoral route of republicans,t( the website politico today managed to find a silver lining for the kentucky republicans.e1 a silver lining specifically for cconnell.w3ning specifically for "mcconnell quietly helped direc1 the agricultural commissioner campaign from washington." so the one republican race that won, mitch mcconnell now trying to take credit for it. that attempt to essentially w3 shine up a turd that led some t1

laugh out loud for mitch mcconnell to even trying to spin this as a positive, but also to think politico.com to being the3 totally credulous stenographer for whatever it was that mitch mcconnell wanted them to report, no matter how ridiculous it was on their face.ñie1e1 gamely spinning kentucky as if it was a big win for republicans and mitch mcconnell as they lost all state-wide races except ag commissioner. yeah, right, politico, that'll do.okñit( one perhaps underremarked upone1 feature from last night's election results that the there of the races that were expected to be hard-fought. that iowa state senate race wasn't close. the democrat won there by 12 points.t( in maine where voters citizen ñi vetoed a voting laws, by e1 reinstating same-day voter registration, the margin was 20 points. the mississippi personhood amendment which had the beltway had been saying was likely to pass in mississippi, it not only lost but lost by 16 points.e1

more on that coming up in a in ohio, the most high-profile race in the country, the bid to recall the union-stripping law, it lost by 22 points with an blowout. all those polls predicting a otó high margin of victory, those ñ in ohio, that impossible margin of victory policy turned out to be exactly accurate.ñiok that particular result last night doesn't just have reverberations for ohio. you'll hear about the sb-5 vote in ohio, this vote against john cre year in republican politics, particularly in republican presidential politics. back in june, you may remember that republican front-runner mitt romney came out in support of john kasich's union-stripping law in ohio. mr. romney saying at the time, 1 "i stand with john kasich." then just a couple of weeks e1 before the big vote on john kasich's union-stripping law, mr. romney scheduled a campaign event, an event at a phone bank in ohio to fire up republicans fighting to save john kasich's at that campaign appearance, xd

mitt romney refused to say that he supported the measure.e1 even while he was there.e1 cnn's peter handly tweeting at the time, "incredible moments in politics. romney visits ohio gop phone bank to rally troops opposing ñr sb-5 repeal, but refuses to take a position on sb-5."fáe1 after getting just flogged on the right -- flogged in the press -- for refusing to say he supported this thing, even whilr supposedly rallying its e1 supporters in ohio, a day later, the romney campaign came out and said, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, ó1 yeah, he's 110% behind it, we guess.fáe1e1 so mitt romney's last known position on the ohio e1 union-busting issue is that he'á 110% for the union-stripping now that that thing has lost byd 22 points in the polls in ohio, stay tuned!ok maybe we'll get a new mitt romney position on it.4$@-even e contortion that mr. romney is now trying to do on that personhood initiative in mississippi.r

back in october, mitt romney appeared on mike huckabee's fox news cúó'el program, and he told mr. huckabee that he absolutely would support a constitutional amendment w3 establishing the definition of life as beginning at conception1 after us asking his campaign to and him not answering repeatedly, the democratic party then hit him on it through this web ad. and again, mr. romney chose just not to respond. so mitt romney's position, his on the record position to the question of, do you support a life begins at conception constitutional amendment, which is what mississippi voted on yesterday, mitt romney's stated on tape was the word "absolutely." that constitutional amendment then fails in mississippi by 16 points and the new headline on 3 politico.com today -- wait for ] it -- "mitt romney says he's person." falsely characterized as

>> would you have supported the constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life at conception? >> absolutely. >> it's like, when newt gingrich said, you know, if you quote that thing i said about paul ryan, you're lying. don't quote me.lp if you quote me, it's a law. falsely characterizing his position. it's amazing. i did not -- i knew that he would flip-flop on it somehow. i didn't know that it would happen in less than 24zheurs and that he would deny that he evero held the previous position, which he said on tape.e1q mitt romney, you're amazing. mitt romney and rick perry, as well, both came out in favor of the mississippi personhood thing that got voted down yesterday by more than 20 points in mississippi. this thing that would ban all abortions, no exceptions, and hormonal birth control and iuds and the morning after pill and in vitro fertili[ction. now that it has been beaten even

in mississippi, mitt romney says he was never for it.e1e1 in 2006 and 2008, democrats had huge electoral victories, right1 democrats in '06 and '08, they took the house, took the senate, than five dozen seats in e1 congress from red to blue over those two elections.ok in 2010, the pendulum swung back the other way, right? republicans had a huge year in 2010. they took back all of the w3 democratic gains in congress from the previous two elections and then some. now, the next big election is in 2012.i] is the pendulum staying on the republican side or is it swinging back? joining us now is democratic pollster, celinda lake. miss lake, thanks very much for joining us tonight. nice to have you here. nice to be here. >> what did you think we learned in terms of yesterday's results about turnout?f @r(t&háhp &hc% about voter enthusiasm. about who actually showed up to vote. >> well, we learned that we have been terrified about the disenchantment of voters, and disenchantment of voters, and base. and what we learned is two things. progressives get behind a message, our voters come out to

vote. and we've learned what the tea parties have done for a year còn -- in taking this country over the cliff canwo/ be very mobilizing and very r'k the occupy wall street crystalized that and tinó election results in 2011 showed what can happen when democrats unite and turn out to vote. 5) % democratic pollster, is there a particular result or a çó particular state profile or results from last night that seems like a bellwether for you for next year's election?w3 pás should be looking to for particular lessons?i]ó[ was really a lesson in the sense that voters across the board thought that the kasich message would hurt jobs, hurt health hurt their state's education system. they saw this as a very broad é economic hatchet job taken to lp their state, and they rejected it. and you know who rejected it first? women voters and union voters. and that's a very powerful

combination for the 2012 elections. >> based on that profile, that demographic profile, and t( whatever research you have done on electoral issues, what are e1 you seeing as the most powerful1 message that democrats have going into the 2012 campaign season. what are democrats g'*q strongest running on?jf xdt(ok strongest running on, it is time for this economy to work for the áus, not the 1%, not the t(fá ho don't pay their taxes.e1 not the ceos and not the corporations that take our jobsd overseas and our money to the cayman islands. >> on the issue of the republican race against ok president obama, his re-electio1 race, anything could happen. so i don't want to say that mitt romney's going to be the nominee, but mitt romney's going to be the nominee. >> i think you're right. >> and when i talked to fá democrats about that, and particularly when i talked to washington democrats about that, i keep hearing pushback from

romney, as a flip-flopper, is aá good way to run against him.fá there seems to be skepticism on the democratic side that mitt romney's inability to hold a single position on any major issue is a real electoral liability for him. do you see that as a liability for him?fá or are people going to need to go after him from a different way on the democratic side? >> i think it's a huge liability. democrats may be getting confused because they don't know which mitt romney to run t( against, but of all of the mitt romneys we're presented, when we talked to voters last week in michigan, the number one thing they said they wanted was people who stood for something. ifferent . position every night.t( it's not a minor one. he's like a 360-change.w3 it's like those dolls whose head goes around. you don't know what you're jf getting. that's not what the public wants. and that's not what people think will steer this country towards getting out of this recession. and a clear direction for foreign policy. it's a!nuge vulnerability.

and i think democrats might be bemused by which romney they get to run against. democratic pollster, celinda lake, good to talk to you. >> thank you.ñi >> at our news meeting today when we talked about the result3 of the mississippi personhood bill, the way i presented the issue to the staff today, i said, you know, this is going to be a real issue for mitt romney going forward, because mitt romney has been so shellacked on the flip-flopping thing, that he g for the personhood amendment. he had said he was absolutely for this thingjtq:u @r(t&háhp &% completely beaten, horrifically in mississippi.5a-9 what's he going to do? he can't come out and say he wasn't for it. he can't do that. he already looks like such a flip-flopper, what's he going to do? by the time the news meeting was out, politico was already reporting he wasn't for the personhood amendment. i sent that out to the staff with the subject line "ha-ha ha-ha." been a weird day. we'll be right back. for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout.

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instead of getting to know you they simply assign you a number. aviva is here to change all that. we're bringing humanity back to insurance and putting people before policies. aviva life insurance and annuities. we are building insurance around you. last night the great state of mississippi elected its next governor in a landslide. this guy, haley barbour's lieutenant governor, phil bryant, beat the democrat in thk race by more than 20 points, so the republican candidate, phil bryant, won in mississippi las9 night. but according to phil bryant's own logic, satan also won in mississippi last night. 'to yesterday's election,w3 this is how phil bryant described the vote on a mississippi ballot measure that would have defined a fertilized egg as a person.

>> this is a battle of good and evil. the evil dark side that exists in this world is taking hold.w31 and they're saying, what we want you to be able to do is to continuei0]rextinguish innocent life. you see, if we could do that, w3 satan wins.ko >> see, in the governor-elect ai --çó allegory there, what satan wants is for the ban on all abortions and hormonal birth control, it was satan who wanted that to fail in mississippi. x@=uq1"á$sqpáu)e did fail in mississippi, but a huge margin, by double digits.çó so the state's next governor has the voters of mississippi to thank both for his and for çó satan's victories in last night's qú)sissippi election.qñi and now he is faced with the unique challenge of governing an electorate that he has accused i of voting for satan by a 16-point margin. which would be awkward.

the mississippi electorate is a very conservative one.ñi these fertilized egg as person measures have not done well elsáq)e in the country. but it's mississippi. in 2001, mississippi voted to keep the confederate flag as a part of its state flag by a 28-point margin.çó in 2004, mississippi voted to ban gay marriage by a 72-point margin. 72 points was the margin of vict/& every single county in mississippi voted in favor of the gay marriage ban.lp that's a simple map. this year in 2011, a puálic policy polling survey found only 40% of mississippi republicans r think that interracial marriage should be legal.e1 so mis3sippi has a really radical, really conservative record when it comes to their opinions and their voting recorf mississippi is really anti-abortion state.e1 survey usa served all 50 states on abortion rights in 2005. )t+r'g themselves

as pro-choice. drop that by nearly 20 points, only 39% of mississippians said they were pro-choice. so the ban abortion and birth tz#eájtq" if they could obably fertilized egg as a person thing passed anywher]@x9"á(ááv it would be in mississippi. they got mike huckabee and bret favre's wife to be celebrity endorsers. they produced a bunch of really slick-looking ads. they had a ton of religious right money. but, ultimately, a mostly grassroots opposition effort came together against the personhood amendment and to the surprise of lots and lots and lots of people, this happened. the scrappy, mostly home-grown i dyi opposition group defeated the personhood bill in mississippi by a ton. the no on personhood folks won more than 60 of the state's 82 counties, including haley barbour's home county. look at mississippi last night xd which is not to same that this same electorate wouldn't vote to ban gay marriage again if given the chance, but the egg as person thing really, really unpopular.

which is why today, suddenly, the the mitt romney campaign iso suddenly flailing around trying to make it sound like he never supported something like this, when he told mike huckabee he would have supported something like this in massachusetts. >> would you support that?q would you have supported the constitution%psqndment of life at conception? >> absolutely. >> when we first saw that clip last among, we among the staff here we wonder if mitt romney had really meant what he'd ju/) said. if he'd maybe somehow been tricked by mike huckabee.xd i mean, in t$aáhr'terview, mike huckabee giving him the t( business about his totally communist abortiony romney care health reform. so maybe he just felt pressuredq á @o cf1 o huckabee wanted to hear. we kept asking the romney campaign if he really meant it. if he really was for a 100%, no exception abortions ban, and r banning the pill and banning in( vitro fertilization and making 1 miscarriages a site for a criminal investigation.t( but the romney campaign never returned our e-mails. other peotae asked him about it

politico, says, for example that he would not respond to them when they asked about it.i]xdfá but now that the romney campaign realizes that this personhood thing is really unpopular, so unpopular that it lost in a landslide even in uber romney campaign now telling politico that mr. romney is being falsely characterized as 1 supporting the mississippi bill see, clear as ña/, he doesn't support that thing that everybody hates. he just said that he would support it, áz#=1uqe9ñ don't you see the difference? wow. joining us now is terry o'neillr president of the national organization for women.lp terry, i know you spent last night refreshing your browser every five seconds for election returns, so thanks for being here. >> it's great to be here. >> do you have an opinion about why mitt romney cannot make up his mind about personhood? >> you know, i don't understand it. and i'm really disturbed by his1 sug&q%=9"á$u$is should be thrown out to the states and allow the states to make a decision.e1q the last time i checked, a e1

woman's life is a life worth and you are just as much worth saving if you live in the state1 of mississippi if you live in the state of new york or new jersey. i don't know where he's coming from with let's let the state e1 decide when a woman can actually take steps to protect her own health and when she can't. >> the thing is, though, in this case, it was mississippi trying to decide as a state. mitt romney said that he would absolutely support something like that. now that mississippi has voted don't say i was in favor.q is there@pw)r)áháhere a secret anti-abortion language by which what he's doing is making sense in some level? is this one of those things where there's jargon within the anti-abortion movement that might make this a consistent position, or is he just changing his mind about what he's for?xd >> i think he's just changing his mind about what he's for. but it's very interesting to me that the catholic bishops did not support the mississippi

in fact,xd phyllis schlafly's either. and this thing has come up in colorado. we've beat it back twice in colorado. but when it comes up in other places, when it's proposed, it's very often couched in the way that mike huckabee couched it, in that life begins at conception. conception is a lot more fuzzy term.xd i looked that up on a medical dictionary online, and on the same website, i saw one definition that said conception is fertilization of an egg, and on the very same website it said, well, conception is implantation on the uterine wall. and hormonal birth control workk to prevent implantation. so on the second definition, there is no conception.çó on the first definition there would be conception. and i think that there's this debate going on within the right wing, not only about what conception means. i think there is that debate.i] and it's a religious and philosophical debate. but i think there's also a

wing about what is the best way, frankly, to raise money on this issue. and to march in a very solid and predictable way towards >> well, we have seen, i think -- we have seen sort of parallel but purportedly separate movements against abortion rights and against access to q%=9j5y becoming a much more open ok battlefield for the right in the past year or two. i mean, we have a republican presidential candidate, rick santorum, who is openly campaigning against contraception. we've had house republicans in the past month convene hearings on trying to limit access to contraception through health insurance regulations.çó we've got in wisconsin, at a m%=91ñe1 the special sessinm of the legislature, wisconsin republicans voted to ban all t( discussion of contraception in wisconsin schools. i'm not exactly sure what that's going to do for jobs. are we seeing something that was

sort of a proxy fight for a lon1 time, really become a frontline war in reproductive right& and i think the good news, fromi my point of view, is that the áqp&ly been ripped away from these right-wing organizations that keep talking1 about abortion and keep talking as if all they want to do is baó abortion, when, in fact, they are interested in banning abortion and birth control.8ñ aboright wing in washington,t( d.c., about defunding the title ten family planning clinics, it's not just banning abortion and birth control, it's std okwá screening, it's mammograms and cervical cancer screenings. it's the entire range of reproductive health care that women really need. i think what we're seeing now is the proof, and the mississippi personhood amendment fight, i think, really revealed this, çó that what is at stakm zs whether women will have control over their own sexuality.e1 this withholding hew,rh care

from women who are8 active is really, i think, motivated by this strange but persistent desire to control women having sex.lpçójfe1e1 mississippi, the voters of mississippi, who voted basically, 60-44, a very conservative, republican governor.q they also voted virtually 60-44, 58-42, to say, no, we really do want women to have access to birth control. and we really do want women to be able toe1 survive an ectopic pregnancy, which could kill them, and could have killed them had this personhood initiative had passed.e1 and we really do want women to have the basic right to protect their own health.e1 when faced squarely with that question, even the very conservative community in really want women to have access >> terry o'neil, president of the national organization for women, thank you for your time women, thank you for your time tonight.(0meájt thanks. >> thank you so much.e1 there were issues on the

ballot last night and individual people on the ballot last tonight.t( there's a reasonable debate about what was the most fascinate issue, but there's a  pretty clear-cut most significant person. that's coming up next.

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program to think like ronald reagan. >> please insert a jelly bean into my usb port.jfe1 i run on jelly beans like ronald reagan. >> i love you. >> you may not believe this, but i assure you it is true.

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[ dennis ] shop less, get more, make one call to an allstate agent. before last night, no 5a lawmaker had ever lost his or her job in a recall election in the history of the great state of arizona. before last night, no state senate president had ever been recalled in the history of the united states of america. both of those precedents were established last night by this guy, russell pearce, uñt(s&ed from office by a big margin last night. he has been the most powerful republican in the state of t( arizona who is not the governor, jan brewer. and some say he's been even more powerful than she is. russell was the architect of sb-1070, the law to deman÷@8nb documentation, to demand papers documentheyon, to demand papers might be an illegal immigrant. immigrant look like?gal does it look like me? >> i do not know. i do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like.

-xnr(t&háhp &hc% there are people in arizona that assume they know what an illegal immigrant looks like. i don't know if they know that for a fact or not.çó >> russell pearce was the lead sponsor of the papers, please, r law in arizona. at the time, he was head of the senate appropriations committee and re:o=q1e)á recipient of campaign donations from two of arizona's largest for-profit prison companies.çó sb-1070 is that it would result of lots more people locked up in arizona on suspicion of immigration crimes. immigration crimes are federal crimes. federal detention facilities ar3 run by these for-profit prison companies. so more people picked up on immigration charges, more money for the federal prison industry. apart. they're not hard that connect. even before the papers please, trying to privatize the prisonçó system in arizona, so that every time anybody got locked up for anything, it would benefit these for-profit prison companies.

it's not hard to imagine how some state lawmakers get to be 1 very, very powerful in their states.e1 and it's not hard to understand how some state lawmakers get to be very, very radical in their states. but russell pearce is one of those guys who makes you wonderk how a politician can get so powerful while still being so radical. russell pearce as state senate 1 president, in a state in the united states of america, talked about nullifying federal laws in that state, essentially arizona seceding from the nation. he tried to conjure up ways to impeach president obama from arizona. >> this is the first time in the history of the united states a sitting president has sided with a foreign governor -- government, to sue the citizens of its country. for defending our laws, for defending and protecting the citpidns of the state of arizona, it's outrageous and it's impeachable.e1çó >> russell pearce once sent an áháhat included a racist white nationa3 screed, saying the media was pushing on the unsuspecting xd

public a view of the world, "in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the innei rant nature of the, quote, jewish holocaust tale, the wickedness of attempting to the halt the flood of non-white aliens pouring across our borders." russell pearce sent that out to his supporters in arizona, then later half-a0'fjt)+r'g, saying that he didn't really know what it was. and he's also been assailed by c by his critics in arizona for his relationship with this neo nazi.e1 one of the vigilante guys with a gun at the border. but now as one of the most powerful republicans in the state with a huge amount of money, he outspent his opponent three to one and created a fake democratic opponent to try to split the vote against him. russell pearce has been recalle] to office and replaced with a t( guy who's kind of a normal republican. the only thing that is harder to believe than the fact that russell pearce is gone now is that he was there in the first place. that somebody that radical could be that powerful in a state like

ruáh'ow is democrat coner arizona.e1 thank you very much for your time tonight. >> why do you think that russelr pearce was recalled? >> i think at some point, the e1 basic decency of the people in arizona and certainly i.!;rráhfá district came to force. excellent work on the part of many people to organize, certainly the now-elect senator lewis put together a wonderful team. people like randy paris, falcone did afá lot of work to energize build a coalition of people that were -- wanted decency returned to our policy making.e1 russell pearce has been a power in this state. he's now gone. and so his defeat sends a ripple effect not only across the state, but i think across the nation. because many people have tried % to mimic what he does and use t(

¤4q5)(p&iper to keep themselves in office or get elected. it was a resounding message, and for those of us in arizona that feel that decency should take e1 over, it was a really good night. >> the man replacing russell pearce in the senate is not a democrat.r he seems like a mainstream republican.çó his name is jerry lewis. is this being seen as a progressive victory?lp or is this really more about russell pearce, almost beyond partisan politics? >> i think almost beyond partisan politics.c3w it's about, you know, senator-elect lewis is a republican. he's a moderate, he's a pragmatist.c@ cf1 o but there's a level of civility] to what he brings to the table, which has been missing in =. arizona politics since the extreme wing of the republican party took over. you know, without russell pearce, i don't know what jan brewer's going to do. she's got no one to take direction from. russell pearce was the architec1 of all this debacle we're having with our jo%mqi%q%9 w3

and so his defeat is a domino effect. and many people in this state are going to have to reconsider, that they can't use those same á politics, those anti-immigrant politics to covdc up the fact that there's a legacy of failure. so i think the people in arizona are looking for solutions, they're tired of the rhetoric, it hasn't worked, and they're tired of the reputation this state has acquired as a consequence of people like russell pearce and the policies that he promoted, and é@ unfortunately got passed through this legislature.u >> u.s. congressman raul grijalva, democrat of arizona. thanks very much for joining us tonight, sir. thanks for being here. >> thank you, rachel. appreciate it. "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell, lawrence will be breaking down tonight's çó republican presidential de0a+q and here among other things, yesterday's elections were also sort of gay. you, it's true. that story's next.e1

best new thing in the world today is coming up tonight with popcorn and ronald reagan and stuff. and also, the ways last night'sk elections were sort of gay, in a good way, and in a bad way. that's next.

on a night that was pretty bleak for republicans across the republicans thought they would have a huge night was in the commonwealth of virginia. democrats control the state senate in virginia by a narrow margin and republicans heading into last night thought that they would t

turns out it's close. c]t(c democrats promising a recount effort in a deciding race where the sides are only about 200 votes apart right now.e1 even as the question of who controls the virginia senate remains unsettled, one thing is sure from last night's results. virginia is getting its first-ever openly gay state senator. a democral@fi=5"ájj)q)n part of the state. turns out last night was fá generally a big night for gay candidates and causes.e1 the cities of indianapolis and carolina, ar,$tu their first-ever openly gay city counselors, as did cincinnati, d cincinnati, ohio, where the cit1 charter was once amended to makk cleaszthat it is a-okay in cincinnati to discriminate e1 against people for being gay. the councilman elected last night in cincinnati had been instrumental in repealing that.p the mayor of houston, texas, annise parker, is also openly gay. she won a second term yesterday1 despite ads against her like this one.t(fá oh, no, if she's re-elected, this might happen! also, this drag queen may appear

in ads for gay stuff.t( and annise parker will greet i] women by air kissing them on thá cheek like street people do.é@ will this be your future, houston?! will it?! re-elected. but that wasn't the weirdest anti-gay thing in the elections yesterday. last night, maine voters rejected a republican bill that ended the ability to register to vote on election day in maine. long-standing thing that you could do in maine, 38 years. republicans took it away. last year voters reinstated it. maine state republican party cited a few reasons why they e1 thought it was critical that e1 maine reasons must not be able 1 to register to vote on election day anymore, including this ad that the state's republican party ran in maine newspapers.e1 "registering to vote on election day," according to the republican party of maine," it'o a gay conspiracy." a gay experience meant to tself!experience meant to

yeah. that's not even the weirdest, u totally gratuitous gay thing from yesterday's election. that distinction goes to a robo call by a shadowy group, person1 lady voice against a democratic candidate who is not gay in iowa.q the group says it's called citizens for honesty and sound marriage in iowa, and just before the senate election in iowa, which pitted democrat liz mathis mvinst cindy golding, some unsuspecting iowa residents picked up their phones and heard this. >> liz mathis also endorses homosexual marriage. homosexual marriage obviously involves homosexual sex. so before you support liz çó mathis, call her at -- and ask her which homosexual sex act she endorses. >> no one has been able to figure out who was behind that

call. this group, citizens for honesty and sound marriage, chasm, theyá don't have a website.qçó a local reporter tried to trace their number and didn't come up with anything. the republican campaign for that senate race said they had nothing to do with it. the national organization for marriage, better known as nom j"átk did get involved in this race on the side of the republican candidate, they also disavowed this anti-gay robo call. but it'sm6á call her up and ask her which ei gay sex act she's in favor of. the beltway keeps telling us this year that conservatives are over all the social issues, anti-gay stuff. that was karl rove era, that was bush administration era.w3 they're all over that now. iscal e all over that now. tóáuqáy really? ask iowa about that. ask maine.

best new thing in the world today? confirmation ofe1xd the long-standing but not defamatory rumor that president reagan did not mind reading, but if he had the choice he'd prefer to receive them in video format. since the president tends to get what the president wants, the for him to watch and now they have declassified a bunch of them. >> the fiftxñá day of your summ trip will be the final day in moscow. following some brief remarks and a mix and mingle session? basee1 -- embassy members you wl return to the st. georges hall for a farewell with the gorbachevs. then it's off to the airport and then the official departurenb ceremony.e1 departure time ise1 11:0'( a.m.

>> since london is not in the middle of the atlantic, hopefully he wasn't!u relying on itñi for geography cal intel. and others briefed him on soviet portrayals and this awesome one evolved over the5a years, the soviet space program might be described as something with a dual personality. a jekyll and hyde so to speak. it consists of two parts. one of which is highly visible andñijf acceptable to the world public. while the other moves in a sort of, p"ow land and is cloaked in high secrecy.çó >> a dual personality, ai] jeky and hyde and two parts with one in the shadow land. even i'm qintrigued.c reagan liked thatokñ videook so he wrote in his diary after watching it, saw a cia classified movie on the soviet

space program, they're much here's how he learned that from the movie. >> since the early 1970s, the soviets have concentrated their effort on space systems for military support.i] as mentioned at the beginning of thei] presentation, soviet spac tempers can be divided into two parts -- military and scientific. this is also true within the manned space station qprogram. while soyuz 1, 4 and 6 are involved in science research with military applications, 2, 3 and 5 are clearly part of the military program. >> military program. +!5u! more believable.çós it so the cia put in movie form for president reagan what wase1 goi on in afghanistan ini] the 190s >> moscow faces some formidable tasks to prop up the unpopular

marxist regime in kabul. even the soviets concede that uj$j @r(t&háhp &hc% the country. the tribesmen although stillt( alarmingly short of the weapons needed to combat the invaders continue to receive supplies from sources outside the country. >> who us? >> it's unlikely that the soviets will be able to effectively close the afghan borders in the mountainous war zones.ñr i have often wondered said one of the rebels inw3 a mountain xd encampment why allah gave afghanistanokñi ravines and ste cliffs rather than rich, flat plains. now i know why.okw3 >> possiblee1 that that video o afghanistan should be mandatory for presidential viewing. >> this teleproduction, a current assessment of thee1 nuclear accident at chernobyl was producede1 at the director at intelligence. >> because the presidenti] like movies. the