Uncategorized

Virginia’s Gubernatorial Primary

By Jay Newton-Small | @JNSmall | June 9, 2009 | +

Polls in the race for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Governor Tim Kaine opened at 6am this morning and somewhere in northern Virginia Terry McAuliffe was looking at the sky in lament. At exactly 6am in DC — about three miles away from Virginia’s blue-leaning northern suburbs — a violent thunderstorm rattled through. McAuliffe, who is depending on large turnout in the race, just can’t seem to catch a break — two new polls showed the once leader trailing Creigh Deeds by double digits. Here’s a story from me on the race.

Subscribe to Jay Newton-Small on Facebook
Related Topics: Uncategorized

  • Latest on Swampland

    2012 Election May 25, 2012

    The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

    More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

    From our Partners

    Obama Administration Blocks Global Health Fund To Fight Disease In Developing NationsHuffPost Politics

    Barack Obama May 25, 2012

    Audacity of Dope: Tales of a Toking Teenage Obama

    We knew Barack Obama smoked weed in high school because he wrote about it in his books. What we didn’t know until Buzzfeed posted these choice nuggets (I’m so sorry) from David Maraniss’s new book on the President’s younger years, is the giggle-worthy details of his “Choom Gang” lifestyle, which are right out of a buddy stoner flick. Obama and his friends drove around the lush Hawaii countryside, hot-boxing their VW bus and re-upping with a long-haired pizza-tossing dealer named Ray, who Obama thanked in his yearbook “for all the good times.”

  • damack

    A violet thunderstorm? That sounds lovely.

  • rustyreturns

    Do you think with the power endorsements McAuliffe is receiving, that this is potentially a resounding rejection of the politics of Obama and Hillary Clinton, Jay?
    .
    I think it would be interesting to know how the voters reactions are to this race, and why they voted the way they did. Hopefully we get to see that feedback as well.

  • sacredh

    Deeds probably does have the best chance in November. McAuliffe may be counting on having a grassroots campaign similar to Obama’s but that certainly doesn’t mean that he enjoys the same appeal. Obama took the primary last year running against Clinton so I seriously doubt that having President Clinton campaign for Terry is going to be a deciding factor.

  • Jay Newton-Small

    damack — thanks for pointing it out — I fixed. JNS

  • spob
  • buzzorhowl

    As a Virginia voter who was campaigning for Obama even during the primary season, I can’t get over my feelings from a year ago that McAuliffe was the enemy. I definitely did not want Clinton to win the Democratic nomination, and he did, so we were on opposing sides. I’ve been planning to vote for Deeds this whole time, but seeing just how much money Terry was throwing around starting pretty much immediately after the inauguration sealed it for me. He’s trying to buy himself a governorship, and it’s probably because he has higher ambitions. Good for him, but I won’t help him get there.

  • bobell

    Those “whomever”s in the last paragraph of the story should be “whoever”s. They’re subjects (or in one case, arguably, a predicate nominative), not objects. Or have we reached the point where “who” and “whom” are completely interchangeable?
    .
    Liked the story, BTW. I’m one Virginian who’s gonna vote for Deeds. Not only is he likeliest to win, he has more experience of the sort needed for the job.

  • FlownOver

    I don’t see how a McAuliffe loss would be a rejection of Obama. It might hurt Hillary’s chances in the ’08 presidential race.
    .
    Wait… what?

  • sacredh

    I didn’t mean a loss by McAuliffe would be a rejection of Obama. I should have been more specific and said that Virginia didn’t break for Hillary in ’08 and that having President Clinton campaign for Terry just wouldn’t make that much of a difference anyway. The governor’s race has little, if anything, to do with the 2008 presidential race.

  • piper1

    “in the race for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Governor Tim Kaine”
    .
    JNS, he’s term-limited, not retiring. Virginia governors are only allowed to serve one term by law (a pretty damaging law at that, but that’s a story for another day). Try to get the basics right.

  • rubypanther

    bobell,
    No, they’re not interchangeable, whom has been deprecated for a couple decades.

  • sacredh

    piper1: A little OT, but I am against term limits. One of the goals may have been to limit the possibilities of corruption, but I’ve always thought that term limits circumvented the ability of the people to elect who they wanted and made it more likely that a term limited offical would just rip and tear with a sense of urgency while they were in there.

  • piper1

    sacredh, largely agreed up to a point. A 1-term limit is clearly too short. Living in DC for the last 13 years I’ve seen some of the damage that has been done by this limitation as good men who are well-respected and competent like Mark Warner are forced to step down after a successful term.
    .
    On the other hand, there is the other extreme. The Arlen Spectors and Ted Stevens of this world feel it is their G-d given right to a Senate seat for life. Interesting that each one’s permanent “ownership” of their seat led in largely different directions- Stevens went full corruption mode while remaining a bombastic movement conservative, while Spector twists with the wind and clearly has no principals beyond his sense of entitlement.
    .
    One thing that the Contract for America had right was setting reasonable term limits for Congresscritters. Of course, THAT promise was pretty promptly eschewed as soon as the Contractors realized it would be pretty silly to limit their own nearly limitless power. What fun is taking power if you can’t keep it?

  • jcapan

    As a former VA resident with family still in the C-wealth, news that McAwful is down big is music to my ears. The least appealing dem operative in the last 10 years, IMO. Pre Dean, this was one of the main faces of the party, and it was a revolting carciature. The guy breathes sleaze. In fact, his election would be a bad omen for dems.

  • jcapan

    http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/stop-terry-virginia-tuesday-ground-zero-democratic-party
    ~
    In which the old dem party (McAwful’s) is contrasted with hopes for the new (Dean model):
    ~
    “But first things first: On Tuesday, Virginia will be ground zero in the ongoing struggle to dump the dirty bath water from the Democratic Party tub. A defeat of McAuliffe in the primary would start the ball rolling for the 2010 midterm elections for the newly regenerated community organizer wing of the Democrats to continue advancing. It would encourage other candidates to step forward throughout the country to continue to challenge and defeat those that not too long ago crucified the party on a cross of special interests.”

  • yutsano

    “Oh frabjous day! Caloo! Callay!” he chortled in his joy.
    -
    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/09/deeds-wins-in-virginias-democratic-gubernatorial-primary/
    -
    For thee, JC-san. Good news and a bit of absurdist culture to go along with!

  • sacredh

    Did I just hear the Jabberwocky?

  • yutsano

    *burble burble*

  • jcapan

    Thanks Yuts,
    ~
    Just walked in the door and you’re the first to tell me!
    ~
    Sugee!

blog comments powered by Disqus