Santa Claus has been re-elected President of the North Pole by defeating the Tooth Fairy in a nasty campaign.

The margin was closer than last time around when Santa beat Frosty the Snowman, who headed south and melted from the political scene.

As Santa pointed out to this year’s voters, the Tooth Fairy doesn’t care for kids like Santa does; they can’t even sit on his lap. Campaign ads by a toy-makers’ super PAC focused on the Tooth Fairy’s greed (“What he pays for a tooth hasn’t changed in 15 years!”), while also detailing how dental work was outsourced to the South Pole.

Jobs were an issue. (“Santa employs helpers! But not the Tooth Fairy; he doesn’t create jobs like Santa does.”)

Now that he’s re-elected, Santa must deal with a major deficit; somebody must pay for all the toys that he gives away. Up north, they call this deficit problem the “polar cliff.”

So how did Santa win re-election?

The North Pole has a huge army of elves who are the middle class, the workers. Santa promised not to raise their taxes, but instead to make the top 2% pay their fair share.

That top 2% are the reindeer. They’re rich. They fly all over the world (and never commercial). They’re famous. Everybody knows their names: Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen; Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen.

What a lifestyle they have! While elves work in a sweatshop, those privileged few are always laughing and playing reindeer games. They get all the publicity. But the elves labor in obscurity–nobody knows the names of the elves.

Then there’s Rudolph, the richest reindeer of them all. He gets so much fan mail that he had to hire a secretary just to handle it. But rumors swirled during the campaign that his secretary pays more in taxes than he does.

A lot of the elves resent Rudolph because he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. He’s always bragging that just his nose alone is brighter than all the elves put together.

So the elves voted for Santa because he promised them he would make the reindeer pay, and he would give things to the elves.

For example, he promised the elves government-paid vacations so they could escape the North Pole winters and travel to cozy warm climates–like balmy Canada or sunny Siberia.

Plus, elves will get free medical treatment under SantaCare. They can even pick their own doctor if they can find one at the North Pole. (Most doctors quit and left when SantaCare was passed, complaining that their stockings weren’t getting filled but were only hung out to dry).

SantaCare also banned junk food at the North Pole, but that caused no problems because it’s about 1,500 miles to the nearest McDonald’s.

Santa also campaigned on a promise to the middle-class elves that he would protect their retirement system–Santa Security. He opposed raising the retirement age for elves; Santa promised to keep it right where it is, at the age of 265. However, the system has problems because elves are living longer. One reason is that dangerous toys are being banned and elves don’t have to make those anymore.

Santa and the Tooth Fairy had some really nasty TV debates during their campaign, but Santa came through with help from one of the moderators, Candy Cane Crowley.

But the biggest vote-getter for Santa was one of the negative ads he ran. It described how the Tooth Fairy was being investigated for sneaking into little children’s bedrooms at night.

Ultimately, Santa got virtually all the elves’ votes, and the Tooth Fairy got votes only from the reindeer. The other animals skipped voting. They were disgusted by the dirty campaigning, so they stayed home. That’s why not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The Tooth Fairy took his loss pretty hard. He was last seen heading south, muttering something about Santa’s not being a native-born Eskimo.

Former Congressman Ernest Istook is now a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation and hosts the “Istook Live!” talk radio show from 9 am to noon, Monday thru Friday. It can be heard everywhere via www.istook.com.