The 2009 gubernatorial elections provided a much-needed momentum boost for Republicans after back-to-back election cycle drubbings.

But the GOP victories in New Jersey and Virginia don't necessarily tell us all that much about how the party will fare in next year's midterm elections: Gubernatorial races generally say less about the national dynamic than they do local issues, and that's certainly true this year.

In New Jersey, Chris Christie demonstrated that under the right circumstances the GOP can be successful in a blue state. He pulled off the win by capitalizing on the state's troubled economic environment.

New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the country, and the ousted millionaire Jon Corzine did not lower them as he promised. The state's unemployment rate is the second highest in the Northeast, and like almost every other state in the country, the Garden State had a major budget crisis.

Corzine needed everything to go right - and a lot of luck - in this campaign, and it almost did.

First, there was his opponent, Christie, who was almost done in by his inability to impress with his not-ready-for-prime-time persona, some strategic messaging errors and lack of substantive, detailed plans - particularly on how he would reduce those property taxes. (Restoring rebates is not enough.)

That opened the door for the rise of an independent candidate, Chris Daggett, who began to pull votes from the Republican. But the Republican Governors Association deserves a lot of credit for driving up Daggett's negatives in the last two weeks of the campaign. The RGA deftly turned the race into a choice between the Republican (who happens to be some guy named Christie) or the fictitious Corzine-Daggett ticket.