While the big news of last night was the dramatic come-from-behind victory of appointed Sen. Harris Woffard over former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh in Pennsylvania, the results of several other races across the country signaled the mood of the nation.

Washington state voted on imposing term limits designed to curtail the careers of House Speaker Tom Foley, other members of Congress and state officials. It voted, as well, on a first-in-the-nation plan to legalize doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

Early returns showed 56 percent Washington state residents endorsing strict term limits that would throw all eight of its congressmen out of office by 1994.

With 6 percent of the votes counted, the state split 50-50 on a measure that would make Washington the only jurisdiction in the world legally sanctioning euthanasia.

Gubernatorial Races

Democratic Lt. Gov. Brereton Jones was elected governor of Kentucky in off-year balloting.

Republican Kirk Fordice held a slim, steady lead over Gov. Ray Mabus in Mississippi, in a surprisingly strong bid to become the state's first GOP governor in more than a century.

In Kentucky, Jones was gaining 65 percent of the vote, to 35 percent for his Republican rival, Rep. Larry Hopkins, with 99 percent of the precincts tallied. The victory by Jones, a former West Virginia Republican, extended a 24-year Democratic hold on the governor's office.

In Mississippi, it was Fordice with 282,784 or 50 percent, to Mabus' 269,898 or 48 percent, with 81 percent of the vote tallied.

Independent Shawn O'Hara had the balance. The heavily Democratic state House picks a winner in January if no candidate gains a majority.

Tinged With Race

The Mississippi campaign was tinged with race. Fordice, 57, said he opposed racial quotas, pushed a voucher system that would allow a choice of schools, favored workfare and not welfare and in one survey said he favored repealing the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Mabus counted on strong support from black voters, who make up about a third of the state's estimated 1.6 million registered voters. He depicted Fordice as an outsider and former lobbyist who didn't understand the state's needs and wouldn't make education his top priority.

Republican state legislator George Allen was elected to the House from Virginia. He led Democrat Kay Slaughter, 63 percent to 34 percent, with 82 percent of the votes tallied. Allen, the son of the late football coach, replaces retiring Republican D. French Slaughter, Kay Slaughter's cousin.

In the other House race on the ballot, Democrat Lucien Blackwell won a four-way race to succeed former Rep. William Gray III in Philadelphia, gaining more than 40 percent of the vote.