Off-Year Races: No Referendum

In two state elections, Washington is hardly an issue

In America, land of the permanent campaign, every congressional vote, every opinion poll, certainly every off-year election somehow becomes a referendum on the President and his programs. So Ronald Reagan campaigned dutifully last month for Republican gubernatorial Candidates Marshall Coleman in Virginia and Thomas Kean in New Jersey. Both party hopefuls returned the embrace. As Kean said during the campaign: "We have got to do in New Jersey what President Reagan has been doing in Washington." But there was scant evidence that voters in either state saw their contests as a sort of...