At my website, joetaranto.com I'm using the JQuery click function on html anchor buttons to animate a "billboard". The problem is I'm using the css hover command to set up background color changes on the navigation controls (buttons) and once a button is pressed and the subsequent click function is run the navigation controls lose their css hover. This behavior can be seen by going to the website and mousing over any of the navigation buttons. You'll see the background color change. Now click on one of the buttons which will animate the "billboard" and the hover on any of the buttons is now gone.

In particular I run this command to un-highlight all the buttons so the user can know which button he's on and this just kills the css hover.

$(".buttons a").css('backgroundColor', '#e6e6e6');

I've tried

$(".buttons a:hover").css('backgroundColor', '#e6e6e6');

but that doesn't seem to work. I know I can use JQuery's .hover command but I'd like to keep this in css.

Thanks!