Today WAYLA reports on local politics from Virginia.
Yesterday, state Senator R. Creigh Deeds overcame Brian Moran and former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia.
It was truly remarkable because Deeds was definitely the dark horse for most of the race. Only recently did he surge ahead of his more well known opponents. In the end he crushed them - he earned about 50% of the vote to McAuliffe’s 26% and Moran’s 24%.
Several factors went into his victory.
1) Moran attacked McAuliffe to death, and took himself down in the process...
Just take this Moran ad attacking McAuliffe for his days as a businessman:
"The press on Terry McAuliffe's insider deals: McAuliffe has made a fortune investing, sometimes in companies that went bust, laid off thousands and drained employee savings. Barack Obama ran against exactly the kind of big-money politics that McAuliffe represents."
That’s a pretty serious attack, and it was definitely going to hurt McAuliffe considering the economic pain Americans are feeling. Yet, it also made Moran look like a pretty hardcore mudslinger - something that most voters are usually turned off to.
It created a void for Deeds to fill.
2) Deeds was able to take votes from Moran and McAuliffe in Northern Virginia...
This was huge. Not only was Deeds able to secure 800 of the 830 votes in his rural home county, but he was able to make huge gains in the DC suburbs - the Moran and McAuliffe turf. The unofficial results from Fairfax County, for example, show Deeds won with about 49.5% of the vote compared to 29.1% for Moran and 21.4% for McAuliffe.
Many in the press attribute this to Deeds’ endorsement from The Washington Post about three weeks ago. It’s the paper they read in the DC suburbs in Virginia and it came out at the perfect time - just as Deeds was picking up momentum.
3) The fact that McAuliffe is a political super-star hurt him in the end...
Make no mistake about it - McAuliffe’s name recognition, fundraising advantage, and relationship with the Clintons were huge benefits at first. With national connections and their donor lists, McAuliffe raised about $7 million over the course of his campaign - compare that to Moran’s $3.8 million and Deeds’ $3.4 million.
Additionally, McAuliffe had no problem getting former President Bill Clinton to stump for him and cut a radio ad. While it all helped McAuliffe initially - see the graph posted on Friday - he could not maintain his lead.
This simple reason is that he never took a real interest in Virginia politics until he saw the governor’s seat open up, and Virginians recognized that. Furthermore, he had the same problem that his ally Hillary Clinton had when he was her presidential campaign chairman - she represented old politics at a time when Americans wanted a fresh face. Virginians did not want a Clinton-era figure in their governor's mansion.
Besides, as many of us know, campaign people like ourselves (and McAuliffe) make terrible politicians. We know the game so well we don’t look like real people to the voters, and they don’t want to vote for a politician like that.
Instead, Virginians chose an “aww, shucks” candidate from rural Virginia. He was more conservative on social issues than McAuliffe and Moran - which should have hurt him in the metropolitan area around Washington - and was generally seen as more folksy and likeable.
All in all, many Virginians believed that Deeds would be more in line with the Warner-Kaine tradition of Democratic governors in the Commonwealth. Warner and Kaine were popular because they were moderates in an extremely purple state - specifically among Democrats because they could rely on these candidates to win against more far-right Republicans. Electability was probably the number one factor in Deeds’ victory.
On to the General Election!
McAuliffe and Moran immediately endorsed Deeds. That’s important because Deeds is going to need to raise money from their donors fast to catch up to the well-financed Republican, Bob McDonnell.
Meanwhile, you can already tell the Deeds and McDonnell campaigns have begun doing their Tully charts, figuring out the best message to use for the general election. In his victory speech last night, Deeds told supporters "we move into the general election, where Virginia either moves forward in the legacy of Mark Warner and Tim Kaine or backward toward the disastrous economic and social agenda of Bob McDonnell and George W. Bush."
The Republicans haven’t really found their argument against Deeds yet, but we can expect to see it develop in the next few days. Over the course of the primary, the Virginia GOP largely attacked McAuliffe, figuring their old foe would sweep up a nomination. It seems that the recent Deeds surge caught them off-guard.
So who do we think will win?
Some are already pointing to another race Deeds and McDonnell fought against each other - the 2005 race for Virginia Attorney General. McDonnell won the election by just 323 votes out of about 2 million - and he had a 2-1 cash advantage over the Democrat.
A recent survey of Democratic primary voters found that 59% will definitely support Deeds in the November election - including 55% of Republicans who crossed-over since McDonnell was unopposed in the Republican primary.
Meanwhile, a SurveyUSA poll last week found that if Deeds was the nominee, he would be tied with McDonnell with 43% each.
So at this point in the campaign it is just about impossible to say who will win in November, but because Virginia has been such a critical state for Democrats in recent years (and the fact that virtually nothing else is happening in campaign politics in 2009) we’ll be keeping a close eye on the Commonwealth in the months to come.
It's Friday, June 5, 2009. Here's what we're looking at:
Because there was so much talk about Obama's speech in Cairo, we decided to post the full video of his address. You can also read the full text by clicking here.
Rather than an entire new post on the subject, we suggest you read an earlier post we made when Obama addressed the Turkish Parliament: Obama, America, and Islam.
And despite attacks on Obama from Osama bin Laden, Obama has been careful not to mention him as a way of isolating him, according to an article in Politico.
Back home, a recent Pollster.com graph shows just how big of a shift has come in the Virginia Democratic Primary for Governor. With only a few days before the election, Deeds has made huge strides on both candidates - but particularly McAullife.
It’s Friday, May 29, 2009. Here’s what we’re looking at:
Two new ads are out today. The first is a radio ad for Virginia’s leading Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe. It features President Bill Clinton speaking highly of his old friend and is going to be played on black-oriented radio stations. Of course, President Clinton didn’t keep very strong ties to the black community during his attacks on Obama in the South Carolina primary last year - but perhaps by now they’ve forgiven him.
Meanwhile, one of McAuliffe’s primary opponents, Brian Moran, has posted one of McAuliffe’s new mail pieces on his website, evidently to show McAuliffe being a dirty campaigner. The piece lists four unnamed candidates for governor and lists their opinions. Then the recipient scratches off to see the candidates’ names - like a lottery ticket. Frankly, it’s a pretty innovative mail piece.
The second ad is a TV spot for at-risk Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), trying to convince voters that his work as Senate Finance Committee Chairman wasn’t all about bailouts.
Next up, the Obama Administration has been using New Media as an integral part of their transparency efforts. The Open Government Dialogue website functions as a suggestion box for citizens to brainstorm ideas to improve policy. The most supported suggestion: it comes from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). He says the White House should give Congress a mandatory 72-hour review period before approving any spending bills - a coy protest of how Congressional Democrats pushed through the stimulus bill.
Other top suggestions include encouraging local governments to adapt such transparency efforts, prosecuting Bush-Era officials, and - you guessed it - legalizing marijuana.
Finally, the Torture Debate takes a new turn today in Michigan where President George W. Bush finally defended the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques himself at a rare public appearance. Speaking to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, he also noted that our national security is at risk when “Ideologues…recruit when they find hopeless people. If you’re hungry, diseased, impoverished, you’re more easy to recruit.”
In the race for Virginia’s governor, three Democrats will face each other in a June Primary while the GOP has their candidate all but officially nominated.
Who Are the Candidates?
•Terry McAuliffe - Democratic political consultant, former DNC Chair, and campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign
•R. Creigh Deeds - Democratic State Senator and the 2005 nominee for Attorney General
•Brian Moran - formerly a Democratic House of Delegates member and the House Democratic Caucus Chair, also the brother of U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)
•Bob McDonnell - formerly the Republican Attorney General
What’s Happening?
Recently Governor Tim Kaine convinced the three Democratic candidates to sign a petition to expand unemployment benefits so the Commonwealth could tap out the appropriate stimulus money. The GOP-controlled House of Delegates recently shot down a bill to do so.
Republicans are calling it a political stunt for an election year. But even if it is, it will probably work. With underemployment increasing as fast (if not faster) than unemployment, Virginians will appreciate the effort Democrats are making to look out for them.
Of course, the Democrats have a lot of ground to make up.
According to a recent poll released by Daily Kos and conducted by Research 2000, if the election were held [last week] McDonnell would beat each of the Democrats in a General Election.
If the general election were held today, the poll shows the results would go like this: McDonnell 37% Moran 36% McDonnell 40% McAuliffe 33% McDonnell 38% Deeds 31%
Part of the reason for McDonnell’s lead is that the Democrats are all attacking each other - they have to: it’s a Primary. And it’s a wide-open Primary. The same poll also tracked support among the Democratic candidates for the Primary…
Moran is ahead with 24%, McAuliffe (who was leading in February) is behind with 19%, and Sen. Deeds is in last with 16%. That means 41% of Primary voters are still undecided. There are still two months before the Primary comes to a close, but that will be plenty of time for McDonnell to stay ahead of the divided Democrats.
What is the Party Doing?
The Democratic Party of Virginia is certainly concerned about keeping the Governor’s office, but they’re also becoming increasingly invested in taking the House of Delegates - one of the last places of GOP control in the Commonwealth.
The extent of their pressure on McDonnell appears to be press releases.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Governors Association has put some money into the race. They gave $100,000 to Common Sense Virginia, an anti-McDonnell PAC. That group is using the money for web ads.
Common Sense Virginia today is rolling out online commercials attacking the all-but-official Republican gubernatorial nominee for his views on women’s issues…
…With three Democrats battling for their party’s nomination for governor, McDonnell is using the preliminaries of the 2009 campaign to reposition himself as a moderate interested only in practical solutions…
…The ads will run for at least two weeks. They’re being posted on sites popular with women. Among them: Martha Stewart Living, Every Day with Rachel Ray and Women’s Entertainment Television.
But using new technology is not always useful. Common Sense Virginia clearly put a lot of time into their website, which is simply not the most effective thing they can do in their efforts to beat McDonnell. Meanwhile their web-ads are too long and require the viewer to do a lot of reading.
And for the few people that will see it, they won’t help but notice the majority of the comments under the video and on the PAC’s YouTube page.
jtvagop (1 week ago): So the attacks on McDonnell's religion have finally started. You should be ashamed of Your intolerance. … perfidious2 (17 hours ago) : your ads are false and all of virginia knows. … fishbait888 (17 hours ago) "the common sense virgina ad is totally false" -the post
BOB MCDONNELL FOR GOVERNOR!
Conclusion
At this point it seems that Virginia Democrats are either lacking the organizational skills or resources to mount an effective campaign against Bob McDonnell. Luckily there is a good five-month period between the Primary and General Elections for the nominee to do the grunt work. And McDonnell has planted the seeds of his defeat himself by opposing the stimulus package.
But if the current lackluster campaigning continues, Virginia’s Blue Sweep cannot continue in Virginia. GOP backlash to Democratic priorities has already been seen this week in Tea Party protests across the country. The Republican base is mobile and active, even in less exciting times on the political calendar.
In fact, Democrats everywhere need to get the donors and volunteers active again - and soon - to counteract this backlash. Perhaps nowhere is a more critical starting point than the Blue Sweep’s poster child - Virginia.
Yesterday, state Senator R. Creigh Deeds overcame Brian Moran and former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia.
