“No individual shall be prohibited, in whole or in part, from accessing the most biting satire, poignant social observations, and tasteless commentary that the Internet has to offer. Snozzbucket dingleberry.” -Amendment 28
This is a real screen capture, but the data are not authentic. Apparently, someone at the SBE accidently put a 2 in the millions place, producing this comical result.
Still, in looking at the real returns from tonight, the result is pathetic: a thorough rejection of the Democratic ticket, with gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds the worst performer, followed by attorney general candidate Stephen Shannon and lieutenant governor candidate Jody Wagner. As is sometimes the ironic case, Deeds’s concession speech was the most impassioned bit of oratory he had given to date. At the victory party, meanwhile, McDonnell thanked God profusely for his win, while Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli quoted Dr. Seuss and vowed to protect Virginia’s “sovereignty” against federal encroachment.
Today’s election may mean many things: a repudiation of the Obama agenda; a pushback against Deeds’s negative campaigning on social issues; a resassertion of Virginia’s true conservatism; or a declaration of Virginia’s preference for balanced partisan administration between the state and federal levels. But one thing is clear: given the victors tonight, we may very well know who the next governor will be in 2013.
In Virginia, attorneys general and lieutenant governors have a habit of running for governor after their term is finished. Since Virginia is the only state whose governor is elected to a non-renewable term, it is virtually certain that Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling or Cuccinelli will seek the Republican nomination in 2013. And, assuming Obama is elected to a second term, there is a good chance they will win.
To use a phrase that both campaigns employed tonight, Virginia Democrats stand an excellent chance of being in the wilderness for the next eight years.
On Tuesday, two different political parties in two elections occurring in two states will have a similar dilemma: what happens when your party’s candidate doesn’t effectively represent your party?
First, New York’s 23rd congressional district: a special election is being held to replace Republican representative John McHugh, who resigned to become President Obama’s secretary of the Army. Running for his seat are Democratic attorney Bill Owens, Republican assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, and attorney Doug Hoffman of the Conservative Party. Scozzafava is a fiscal conservative, but is liberal on abortion and gay rights. She was endorsed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who warned that the way for a party to lose elections is to impose ideological litmus tests, no matter how ill-matched the “pure” candidates may be with their constituencies. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has spoke out for Owen and condemned “blurring the lines” between parties. As it stands, Owen and Hoffman are leading Scozzafava. It is entirely possible that come election day, this Republican-leaning district will give the plurality of its vote to Owen because Republicans could not unite behind their selected candidate.
Then, look at Virginia’s gubernatorial race: Democratic state senator Creigh Deeds was selected by wide margins in all areas of the state in the June primary against his two liberal Northern Virginia rivals. Since then, Democrats from the White House down to the grass roots level have widely viewed him as running his campaign into the ground, to Republicans’ glee. Besides distancing himself from the Obama administration, Deeds has suggested in the final weeks of the campaign that he is against the climate change legislation and the public option in the healthcare bill, presumably to shore up his standing in rural Virginia (which he has somewhat obnoxiously termed “Deeds Country”).
Consequently, Virginia Democrats have been posting on blogs that they are so disenchanted with Deeds that they will refuse to vote on November 3. Or else, they will write in “Mark Warner,” “Thomas Jefferson,” or some other popular Virginian to express their dissatisfaction. The problem is, by not turning out to vote for Deeds, all of the other Democratic candidates on the ballot will suffer, which is unfair to those who have waged competitive and competent campaigns. Not to mention, these overly-sensitive liberal Democrats would never choose Republican Bob McDonnell in a million years, but they are essentially handing him victory by refusing to vote for their party’s candidate in order to teach someone (the other seven million people in this state?) a lesson.
It’s entirely possible that other Democrats will outperform Deeds on the ballot, an indication of either the candidates’ strength or the loyalty of the rank-and-file voters (just not to Deeds himself). It’s also possible that New York’s Republicans will end up uniting behind the candidate who is most likely to win in order to prevent enabling a Democratic victory in the district. The takeaway lesson here is to remember that it is fine to disagree with candidates on principled issues, but the degree of “purity” should not prevent you from voting for the candidate who stands the best chance of implementing a vision similar to yours. It is unproductive to think that the qualities which are best for the party are necessarily what is best for the people as a whole.
As much as I hate to say it, I am not sensing a Creigh Deeds victory in this fall’s gubernatorial election.
Don’t get me wrong—it would be nice to see Deeds win. He is a hard working, mild-mannered state senator who trends liberal on energy, the environment, transportation, and gay rights, while hewing to the right on gun issues. But right now he is suffering from the same condition which felled both of his challengers in the Democratic primary: slamming his opponent on issues of character while failing to identify with the electorate.
Right now, the number of Virginians (which is by no means universal) who know of Deeds probably have two facts stuck in their minds about him: he’s the guy who didn’t write the sexist/homophobic master’s degree thesis twenty years ago; and he’s the guy who doesn’t have a transportation plan. Let’s look at the first point, the McDonnell thesis. The Washington Post has done a dutiful job (though lately, it borders on the partisan) in explaining and measuring the reaction to the thesis among voters. Last week, they even convened a panel of women to discuss what Bob McDonnell wrote.
Accordingly, Deeds has made this a central focus of his campaign. But this is far from a “macaca moment”. In fact, when one looks at McDonnell’s legislative record, it’s not unsurprising at all that he railed against “fornicators” and working-mother households and welfare. So, to some extent, Virginians knew what we were getting with the former attorney general. What is impressive about the episode is how McDonnell handled it: by convening a conference call of reporters and answering questions until there were no more.
Contrast this with the way Deeds handled the other issue surrounding his campaign, that of transportation. His position for several weeks has been that a.) he will not raise taxes to the general fund (schools, public safety, health and human services, etc.); b.) the state needs “new revenue” for transportation; c.) he will sign a bill if elected that will raise said “new revenue”; and d.) he will not use money from the general fund to pay for transportation, as McDonnell’s transportation plan requires.
So, essentially he is saying he wants to see a tax increase for transportation. The problem is, for nearly three painful minutes after a recent debate, he could not bring himself to say that in front of reporters:
This has led Republicans, not unreasonably, to accuse Deeds of not having a plan. In today’s Washington Post, Deeds wrote an opinion piece in which he came as close to being explicit as he has been thus far, writing “I’ll sign a bipartisan bill with a dedicated funding mechanism for transportation—even if it includes new taxes.” The article was entitled “My Transportation Plan,” but unfortunately it was merely a transportation wish list. Deeds wrote that he would like to “expand freight and passenger rail,” “utilize bus rapid transit” and “promote smarter land-use planning.” There are no numbers and no mention of how he would get this done—whom he would work with, where the funding would come from, where this development would occur, how jobs would be created, etc.
Even in a recession, and even in a conservative state like Virginia, I would hope voters would understand that raising taxes to preserve vital government services should not be an automatic campaign killer. As much as I disagree with elements of McDonnell’s plan, the fact is that he has one. And it’s more or less crystal clear. And it’s not that bad—proposing, for example, that thirty percent of sales taxes (actually, it says .30%, which I assume is a typo) in Northern Virginia be retained in that region. I realize that Deeds does not want to box himself into a corner if elected, but there are ways to formulate a plan now while still being open to tweaks or alterations once in office.
There are a lot of factors at play here in the gubernatorial election, not the least of which is Virginia’s trend of favoring a division of power between federal and state governments, and again within the state government. Deeds ought to stop saying that he will be like popular Democratic governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and develop a set of policies that will prove it. Because right now, the man who is positioning himself as heir to the business-like approach of the past eight years is Bob McDonnell. And it’s working.
With Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, Virginians knew that we were getting a social conservative-cum-moderate whose onetime fixation on limiting abortion rights now translates into a focus on ending transportation gridlock and bringing jobs to the state. But over the weekend, The Washington Post explored a whole new dimension of the former attorney general.
McDonnell’s master’s thesis, written at age 34 for Regent University (which was at the time called the Christian Broadcasting Network University), laid out a fifteen-point action plan for Republicans to follow to claim the moral and electoral high ground on family values. Most of them were explicit statements of deep conservatism: pass anti-abortion laws and right-to-life constitutional amendments at the state level; make respect for parental authority and views on covenant marriage (in which it is more difficult to receive a divorce) a prerequisite in considering judicial appointments; gradually transfer responsibility for social welfare programs to community-based groups; use vouchers for housing, education, and medical care; repeal welfare by eliminating “conditional federal funds for family programs.”
Two of the points deserved to be quoted entirely. Number 8: “Fight any attempts to redefine family by allowing special rights for homosexuals or single-parent unwed mothers.” Number 9: “Fight the use of federal funds for state sex-education programs or school-based health clinics giving abortion referrals, contraceptives, and family planning.” He also lamented the fact that Judeo-Christian traditions were not being taught in schools, that women entering the workforce are a detriment to families, and that “government…should prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, and fornicators.”
McDonnell has quickly asked Virginians to judge him on his record as a legislator and as attorney general, rather than a strongly-worded piece of academic literature. In response, his Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds, put out a fact sheet laying out McDonnell’s record. It includes such instances of voting to extend conscience protections for pharmacy workers dispensing contraception; voting to ban college health centers from distributing the morning-after pill; voting against improving child care training and access to child care for low-income families; voting against a resolution in support of eliminating the gender pay gap; and voting against allowing for local distribution of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families grants.
To be fair, McDonnell’s apparent sexism and homophobia is not indicative of a typical Virginia Republican. Democratic Sen. Jim Webb caused a stir in his 2006 campaign when it was revealed that he had written an essay entitled “Why Women Can’t Fight” at age 33. He succinctly argued that given the horrors of war and the raw endurance needed to train for it, women had no place in the military. I did not entirely agree with that conclusion, and neither did Webb in 2006. Normally, such literature would deal a heavy blow to a person’s candidacy, especially if he were a Republican.
But, given that national attention was focused on the “macaca” gaffe of Webb’s opponent, George Allen, Webb emerged relatively unscathed. Since the election, nothing in his voting record—including his support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, and the new GI Bill—has shown Webb to be against protecting and expanding the rights of women.
This begs the obvious question: if McDonnell is elected, will he govern pragmatically and economically like former governor Mark Warner? Or will he let his anti-tax, anti-social welfare, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual agenda define his administration? Either way, if McDonnell keeps hammering the moderate-to-conservative Deeds because of his supposed support for the Obama administration’s “liberal” policies, Deeds has every right to question just how centrist McDonnell will be if elected.
Last week, Left of the Hill lamented the fact that both of Virginia’s candidates for lieutenant governor are busy sniping at each other’s records instead of laying out their agendas to the voters. Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling attacked the Democratic nominee, former finance secretary Jody Wagner, for “flawed revenue projections” and “budgetary gimmickry” in light of the recession—a totally bogus claim considering that the great majority of states continue to see their revenues decline precipitously as the economy deteriorates. Wagner responded that Bolling refused to support a bipartisan tax increase in 2004, when he was a state senator—which is a relatively unimpressive claim and lacks context.
I agree that there is a problem (candidates going negative) but I would like to offer a different solution. Not only do I not think that lieutenant governor candidates should not campaign on a particular message, but I feel that they should not have their own agendas at all. Virginia, like 19 other states, elects the governor and lieutenant governor separately (in addition to the attorney general). The candidates can campaign together, of course, but their political futures are not linked. And after the voters have made their selections, we could end up with a scenario like what we have now, with a Democratic governor and a Republican lieutenant governor and attorney general (or any combination).
Where the train comes off the rails is in the division of time, energy, and attention that must be given to the lieutenant governor’s race at the expense of the two more important races. Considering that we elect state officials the year after a presidential election—and especially this year with a robust primary campaign—the voters cannot be expected to focus on so many names and offices (turnout was 44 percent in 2005). The lieutenant governor’s campaign is a distraction, and the candidates should not pursue plans that they will doubtfully ever be able to implement. Rather, they should be campaigning on behalf of their principal, and attacking the other party’s candidates for governor and attorney general.
Of course, the qualifications and the record of the lieutenant governor candidates should be scrutinized. Attacks on them should be fair game, if not entirely productive. But given that the governor only has four years to carry out his agenda, it is highly unlikely that he will step down halfway through and surrender power to the lieutenant governor, especially if it be someone of the opposite party.
The lieutenant governor of Virginia (whom I suspect is similar to many states’ lieutenant governors) has only two constitutional duties: breaking tie votes in the Senate and succeeding the governor if he could not fulfill the duties of his office. Of course, I’m sure there are numerous unofficial duties, like reading to schoolchildren, going to police officers’ funerals, and making photocopies when the temp is sick; but the fact that each of the lieutenant governor candidates has posted a snazzy video on his and her websites laying out the “vision” for the commonwealth is at best amusing to the small fraction of people who are interested, and at worst completely irrelevant.
The only vote I think a lieutenant governor candidate should be subject to is during the primary. (I would not want to give gubernatorial candidates the power to choose their own running mates as presidential candidates do.) But after the parties choose their ticket, the lieutenant governor’s campaign should merely be an extension of his or her running mate. The two candidates should have the same message, be using the same line of attack, and pool their resources. Virginia is too big of a state to process the platforms and personalities of six different candidates, plus the myriad candidates for senator and delegate.
