While the Kentucky governor's race and the Democratic takover of the Virginia Senate were the top-line news from yesterday's offyear elections, other results were of interest as well.

As expected, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour was re-elected over Democrat John Arthur Eaves, but Democrats did take back numerical control of the state Senate (not the same as organizational control, since some Democrats have caucused with Republicans in the past).

In New Jersey, there were no major changes in the composition of the Democratic-controlled legislature. But the big surprise is that a stem cell research funding ballot initiative strongly backed by Gov. Jon Corzine was narrowly defeated, with fiscal rather than moral concerns apparently driving the results.

In Utah, the big news was the overwhelming defeat by voters of a school voucher plan enacted earlier by the Republican-controlled state legislature. And Democrat Ralph Becker was elected mayor of Salt Lake City by a landslide.

And in the least surprising news, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was easily re-elected.