Photo by dr_kim_veis [”o ].

Good morning, Washington. Another election is in the books, and there are lots of things to talk about. For the most part, the establishment sailed to easy victories, as expected — Kwame Brown, the duo of Phil Mendelson and David Catania, Jim Graham, Harry Thomas, Jr., Tommy Wells and Mike Panetta all pulled in more than 80 percent of the vote in winning races they mostly won in September, while Vince Gray took in close to three-quarters of the mayoral vote, fending off a larger-than-predicted number of write-in votes. Also in the category of non-surprising local results: Martin O’Malley held on to his seat in the governor’s mansion in Maryland, while the Virginia House race between Gerry Connolly and Keith Fimian — one of the fiercest competitions in the country — appears headed for a recount, with Connolly temporarily claiming victory with a margin of around 500 votes. So what were some of the more interesting things we saw last night?

• Turnout — Based on the unofficial results, turnout in the District topped 125,000, a healthy number which fell just short of the 137,000-plus who turned out for the Democratic primary in September.
• Write-ins — The campaign to get people to the polls and write-in Mayor Adrian Fenty was a bigger success than most were thinking it would be, as write-ins took over 22 percent of the votes away from Vince Gray. There’s plenty of chatter about what this showing says about Gray’s mandate — we’ll have more on the write-ins and what they mean shortly.
• Performance of the GOP — Well, it wasn’t great. Dave Hedgepeth, who many had tipped as a darkhorse to overtake Mary Cheh in Ward 3, only ended up getting 34 percent of the vote. The really bad news for D.C.’s Republicans? That was as close as any of their Council candidates would get. A couple of Republican Council candidates, namely Marc Morgan in Ward 1 and Tim Day in Ward 5, actually finished in third place last night — Day actually finished behind listserv diatribe queen Kathy Henderson and failed to crack even 1,000 votes.
• Patrick Mara — One Republican who did find success last night was Mara. Mara, who knocked Carol Schwartz off the Council back in 2008, claimed a big win over Dottie Love Wade in the race for the Ward 1 State Board of Education seat. Wade has strong ties with Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, but her political connections couldn’t overcome Mara’s strong door-to-door campaign.
• Missy Reilly Smith — If anyone was curious what kind of return you can expect after running incredibly graphic advertisements featuring dead fetuses on network television, Missy Reilly Smith actually managed to pull in a rather impressive 7,385 votes yesterday, a little over six percent of the vote. Smith was, by far, the most successful of the fringe candidates around town — though the 719 of you who voted for Queen Noble got some ‘splainin’ to do.
• Attorney General — Washingtonians will be voting for their A.G. now — the proposed charter amendment rolled, with over 75 percent of voters approving of the change. Let the campaigning begin!
• BOEE’s Performance — Despite several claims that this year’s results would roll in faster than they did on primary night, the wait for results last night was still excruciating in the District of Columbia. It was nearly 1 a.m. before results for all precincts in D.C. were uploaded to the BOEE website. We’ll have more on this frustrating aspect of election night later today.
• ANC — Plenty of very interesting results in ANC races around the District, including the ouster of Ken Jarboe (known as the “mayor of Capitol Hill”), D.C. State Democratic Committee founder Barrie Danneker, and controversial Shaw activist Leroy Thorpe. A hearty congratulations to neighborhood blogger David Garber, who defeated Bob Siegel in 6D07 to take that seat. Plenty of local drama to digest here: All of the results of ANC races can be found here.

If you want to recap the results as they happened, click here to read through our election night live tweeting.

Update on Rhode Island Avenue Fire: The large fire which caused a huge scene during yesterday’s rush hour displaced a total of 21 people, according to D.C. Fire and EMS. Six people were injured in the blaze, including three firefighters, but none of the injuries were serious. Damage to the building was severe — the fire has been classified as an accident, and the cause is still under investigation.

Briefly Noted: Eleanor Holmes Norton helps Bread for the City pass out turkeys…Candlelight vigil held for slain American University professor…While you were watching returns come in, the Wizards won a pretty awesome game — this John Wall cat looks like he might be good, you know…Prince William County voters, in shocking failure of democracy, deprived of stickers.

This Day in DCist: Last year, the co-owner of Coppi’s Organic was found dead in her apartment; in 2008, we were preparing for the massive 2008 election.