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Today´s news includes an assortment of intriguing tidbits about Tuesday´s election and how it played out vis-à-vis U.S. business and the environment. A sample:

►California´s Proposition 87, a bid to tax oil production in the Golden State and use that money to fund the development of alternative energy, was rejected after one of the most expensive referendum campaigns in U.S. history. Lotsa bigwigs slung humongous piles of cash around in this one. Here is Reuters´ report on the California Prop 87 vote, and here is the San Francisco Chronicle´s.

►The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Washington´s Initiative 937, which would require large electrical utilities to meet conservation targets and use renewable resources, held a narrow lead at press time and looked like it would probably squeak through.

►Bloomberg suggests that the new crop of congressional Democrats will make it tough for the Bush administration to forge further free-trade pacts: "Bush is committed to a new multilateral trade round and to signing regional free-trade pacts, a goal shared by a number of Senate Democrats. Prospects for trade expansion are clouded, though, by the arrival of a group of populist Democrats who question the payoff of globalization and want stronger worker and environmental protections written into future trade accords."

►The Los Angeles Times credits the support of a handful of environmental groups for the surprising unseating of incumbent California GOP congressman Richard Pombo by his Democratic challenger, Jerry McNerney.

►Lastly and certainly not leastly, be sure to take a look at the above-linked article by Waste News Government Affairs Editor Bruce Geiselman, which includes some interesting comments about the election results from leading environmental officials, including Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.