After the traumatizing memory of my first voting experience the 2000 presidential elections I returned to the polls yesterday for the midterm elections.

I also visited Shannon O’Brien’s headquarters, thinking I was going to see a victory speech. Just like in the 2000 elections, I was wrong about the results.

‘I think this really stinks,’ said 37-year-old Boston resident Stephen Gaun, at O’Brien’s Headquarters last night. ‘We’re just going to have to work harder and harder to get this done.’

Gaun is right. Massachusetts is just going to worker harder and harder to get things done now, just like the rest of the country. Nationally, the Republicans took back control of the Senate and are still in control of the House of Representatives.

The midterm elections are not supposed to be a big deal, from what I’ve gathered anyway. But this year, it’s all I’ve been hearing about. Let’s review the choices for governor here in Massachusetts: Shannon O’Brien, Mitt Romney, Jill Stein, Carla Howell and Barbara Johnson.

I had the same problem I had in 2000 I wasn’t really too fond of the Democratic candidate, but I thought the race was too close to choose the third party candidate. I like Jill Stein I think she would probably be a good governor. But she has no experience and no real ways to implement her plans. She also stood no chance of winning and only took votes away from Shannon O’Brien.

Of course, I could have always voted for Barbara Johnson or Carla Howell, both of whom said not one thing I agree with or even one thing that made sense. In fact, they both made me angry that they even running for governor. I never took either one of them seriously and neither had any platforms to run on.

Massachusetts is facing a conservative takeover. While Democrats still control the Statehouse, voters turned to a businessman instead of a politician to lead them.

Massachusetts has had to deal with Republicans in the governor’s office since 1990, which is an extremely long time. The favorite phrase of Romney’s campaign ‘I’ll clean up the mess on Beacon Hill’ doesn’t take into account who started the mess on Beacon Hill. Both O’Brien and Romney have claimed they are reformers, but neither has a very strong track record for it.

Romney was not the best candidate for governor, but he won. He is not even my second choice for governor. He is a businessman who thinks he can apply the tactics he used in the Olympics and at Bain Capital in the state of Massachusetts. He has been a successful businessman, and he did help make the Olympics a success.

‘Romney does not connect well with the middle class, the working class,’ said O’Brien campaign coordinator Adam Mason. He called Romney a ‘child of privilege’ and said he does not have the empathy that goes along with being an elected official.

Mason’s right Romney does not even have any relationships with any members of the Legislature. He needs to learn how to apply his work in business to the government. He has promised not to raise taxes, but he can not guarantee the economy won’t force him to raise taxes. As governor, he will need to learn to understand the difference between the promises he makes and what will happen.

To succeed with the Legislature, Romney will need to work on his relationships with the other politicians on Beacon Hill. He needs to recognize that he will be working with the state legislature, in which Democrats hold a large majority. To get work done, he needs to manipulate relationships with people who do not agree with him politically or socially.

Romney has said he will work around the Legislature, not with it, which is a scary thought. Not much will get done if he continues to think this way. One of his criticisms of a Democratic governor is a monopoly of control by the Democrats. But Acting Governor Jane Swift has not been able to get anything passed through the Democrat-controlled Legislature. Romney has not given a plan to deal with this idea of stagnant relations.Romney is a candidate who has been successful in the private sector, but he is now turning to the public sector. As governor, he needs to realize how different the private sector is from the public sector. He was the head of the Olympic Coordinating Committee, which he turned into another business. He has never worked in politics and his only political experience before the gubernatorial campaign was a run for Senate against Ted Kennedy that was a disaster.

The economy is one of the biggest issues to voters this election. The unbelievably close results on Question 1, the initiative to abolish the state income tax, illustrate how strongly people think about taxes and the economy. But Romney doesn’t know how to deal with the economy and he will have problems if he tries to follow through with many of his promises.

Hancy Lamour, a 36-year-old Boston resident who attended O’Brien’s concession speech, agreed that the economy was the most important part of the election.

‘Only Democrats can keep the economy balanced,’ said Lamour, who has been out of work for the past year and a half but volunteered on the O’Brien campaign has been feeling the results of having Republican governors while in a recession, and Romney’s economic plans are probably not going to help him at all.

Romney also supported Question 2, which is the businessman’s idea of changing education. Since Question 2 has been approved, bilingual education will be removed in schools against the teachers’ wishes. He will have to work on an education plan that already has not been supported by teachers. This could be disastrous if he does not handle it properly.

Of course, I was shocked by the approval of Question 2. This was my first disappointment of what turned out to be a long night. Most of the people at the O’Brien concession left immediately following her speech, with a few people staying around to hug one another.

A member of the recently striking Service Employees’ International Union, 36 year-old Ivan Ramirez of Boston, attended O’Brien’s concession speech last night. He said he supported O’Brien because she stood behind the SEIU during the strike.

‘The Democrats usually do more for the little guys like us than the Republicans do,’ he said.

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. But Ramirez and I seem to be the only ones who know this, and we are in for a long couple of years.