The Virginia gubernatorial election of 2013 will take place on Tuesday, November 5, 2013. The incumbent governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, is not eligible to run due to term limits established by the Virginia Constitution. Virginia is the only state that prohibits its governor from serving immediate successive terms.
Bob McDonnell may still get free housing in connection with his term of office as he is likely to be indicted for corruption and sale of influence. No other team of crooks has embarrised the State of Virginia like Republicans Ken Cuccinelli and Bob McDonnell.
Three candidates will appear on the ballot for governor: Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia; Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a businessman and the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; and Libertarian Robert Sarvis, a lawyer and businessman.
For hard core republicans who are shamed by the conduct of the Ken Cuccinelli and Bob McDonnell in Richmond but are too proud to vote Democratic Libertarian Robert Sarvis is an acceptable choice. Normally Sarvis would be an also ran with no effect on the race but even right wing republicans are affected by Cuccinell and McDonnell and their hands open take any thing not nailed down approach to governing.
Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, elected to the post in 2005, decided to run for re-election as lieutenant governor in 2009, enabling McDonnell to run for governor without a primary. After the 2009 election, Bolling made no secret of his intention to run for governor in 2013, while Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli openly stated that he was considering three options: a run for re-election as attorney general in 2013, running for the U.S. Senate in 2014, and running for governor in 2013. As long as someone is picking up the tab for Cuccinelli he is quite happy. It doesn't matter what the job title is or whohe is working for, the Couch did some fine work for Johnny Williams and was rewarded handsomly.
Cuccinelli announced to colleagues on December 1, 2011, that he was indeed running for governor. Bolling responded on the same day that he was disappointed that Cuccinelli decided to challenge him. If Cuccinelli is not successful he will run for the Senate job in 2014.
Bolling withdrew from the race on November 28, 2012. He cited the Republican Party's decision to move to a nominating convention rather than hold a primary. He ruled out running for another term as Lieutenant Governor and refused to endorse Cuccinelli. Bolling considered running as an independent, but decided against it. Bolling also rejected the possibility of a write-in campaign.
Also looming are state and federal investigations over gifts McDonnell received from Jonnie Williams Sr., a wealthy donor and CEO of the nutritional supplement maker Star Scientific.
In November, Cuccinelli directed Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring to review McDonnell's statements of economic interest for possible violations of state disclosure laws.
In April, Cuccinelli also asked Herring to review Cuccinelli's own gift disclosures after he initially neglected to declare about $5,000 in gifts from Williams. Herring subsequently cleared Cuccinelli of violating the state's disclosure laws.
There are a couple of write-in candidates in the election.
John Parmele, Jr., navy retiree
Parmele announced his campaign as a write-in candidate in August 2013. Parmele unsuccessfully ran for the Virginia Beach City Council six times. In 2005, he ran as an independent for the 82nd district of the Virginia House of Delegates and lost to incumbent Harry Purkey.
Tareq Salahi, reality television personality
Salahi planned to seek the Republican nomination, but left the party to launch an independent bid. However, he failed to submit the necessary signatures to the Virginia State Board of Elections by the June 11, 2013 deadline and will not appear on the ballot as an independent. He has since transitioned his run into a write-in campaign. Salahi scheduled to have a film document his campaign by Campbell Media Group, but the production company is currently facing legal allegations.
So here we are. McAuliffe and Cuccinelli have two scheduled debates remaining -- on Sept. 25 in Fairfax County and one in October at Virginia Tech. Get involved and vote.
ACV Democratic News is thankful that Terry Mcauliffe is running and without reservation endorses him. It is nice to have a sane choice in this strange Governor's race and hopefully we can sweep the republican trash out the doors of the mansion and rise above the joke status that the GOP has cast on our State. Virginians are a decent lot of people and deserve better than what the republicans have given them.
Gender Gap Doesn't Budge In Virginia Governor's Race
Here's one takeaway from a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday: Republicans have their hands full if they hope to close the gender gap in the Virginia governor's race.
The poll of likely voters reports that Democrat Terry McAuliffe has a 6-percentage-point overall lead in his contest with Republican Ken Cuccinelli.
The survey put McAuliffe's lead among female voters, however, at twice that — 12 points. A prominent friend of the Clintons, McAuliffe is a businessman and political fundraiser who was once chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Cuccinelli is Virginia's attorney general.
Given the poll's margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, McAuliffe's lead is within the range of President Obama's Election Day 2012 performance with the state's female voters. According to exit polls, Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney by 9 percentage points in Virginia.
While the composition of the voters who turn out for a presidential race is typically different from those who turn out for an off-year governor's race, it probably doesn't inspire Republican confidence that women made up slightly more than half of the 2012 Election Day electorate.
Exit polls showed they were also more than half of the electorate for the last Virginia governor's election, in 2009.
That 2009 election, by the way, showed that a gender gap that favors Democrats isn't etched in stone; Gov. Bob McDonnell handily won the women's vote by 8 percentage points that year.
Virginia has a limit of one four-year term for governors, which prevented McDonnell from seeking another term. That may have proved a godsend for him, seeing as he's embroiled in an embarrassing scandal related to gifts he and his family accepted from a wealthy supporter with business interests in the state.
The poll had more promising news for McAuliffe on the gender front: He's essentially tied with Cuccinelli among male voters.
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in an interview: "You have to keep in mind that because of the polarization we have in society along race and gender, there's a path both parties use to win elections.
"It's kind of a formula. Democrats win when they break even with men and run up big leads with women. Republicans win when they break even with women and run up big leads with men. So this [Virginia governor's race] is the Democrats' way of winning elections these days. If they don't win big with women voters, they have a big problem."
Cuccinelli is likely hurt by the Republican Party's typical weakness with female voters, though his issue positions and actions probably haven't helped and have given his Democratic opponents something to work with.
For instance, Cuccinelli was one of only three state attorneys general who didn't sign a letter asking Congress to renew the Violence Against Women Act. Virginia Democrats haven't let this go unnoticed.
Cuccinelli has also been one of Virginia's highest-profile anti-abortion opponents. That, too, has led McAuliffe's campaign and other Democrats to point out that Cuccinelli is hostile to women.
Cuccinelli's campaign has fought back against these efforts. For instance, it has highlighted his role as a University of Virginia student in starting a public awareness campaign to fight sexual assaults.
Cuccinelli's campaign has grabbed at straws and criticized McAuliffe for not joining other Democrats to demand that San Diego Mayor Bob Filner resign after accusations by more than a dozen women that Filner made inappropriate and uninvited sexual advances toward them.
Judging by the continuing gender gap, however, none of this appears so far to be working for Cuccinelli.
Ken Cuccinelli is Dragging Bottom
Republicans can’t believe this is happening: Democrat Terry McAuliffe has taken command of the Virginia governor’s race.
More than a dozen interviews last week with longtime Republican insiders around the Commonwealth yielded near-unanimous consensus that their candidate, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, lost significant ground over the summer and would lose if the election were held today.
The only real point of disagreement is how wide a margin it would be.
“It’s going to be a bath,” one prominent state Republican who wants Cuccinelli to win went so far as to say. Like several others, the person sought anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race.
Cuccinelli’s advisers insist it’s too early to write him off. “This is still a race,” Cuccinelli strategist Danny Diaz said Friday.
But a contest that looked winnable for Cuccinelli for much of the year has broken against him. Here’s a look at how it happened.
1. The gifts scandal
Gov. Bob McDonnell was expected to be a big asset for Cuccinelli. Instead, the Star Scientific scandal has turned the incumbent into a major liability.
The constant drip-drip of revelations by The Washington Post — of gifts and loans totaling more than $124,000 from the dietary supplement maker’s CEO, Jonnie Williams, to the governor and his family — was bad enough for Cuccinelli. But the candidate couldn’t easily distance himself from the scandal because he, too, accepted some $18,000 worth of gifts from Williams — and failed to disclose a chunk of them, as required by law.
What’s more, Cuccinelli refused to repay the gifts until last week, when he cut a check for $18,000 to charity. A Democratic prosecutor in Richmond cleared the attorney general of criminal wrongdoing for the disclosure lapse. But attack ads highlighted his refusal to return the gifts, and internal polling showed a spike in voters expressing concern.
“Had he done that initially, I don’t think this would have been an issue,” said a GOP operative.
His campaign hopes that Cuccinelli can now shift the focus to other issues. But if he loses, Star Scientific will be high on the list of reasons he cites.
2. A divided GOP
A significant number of Republicans remain on the sidelines in the race. A nonpartisan poll released last week by Purple Strategies, which had Cuccinelli trailing by 5 percentage points overall, found that only 77 percent of self-identifying Republicans currently support him.
Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who dropped out of the race for governor after the state GOP changed its nominating procedure to ensure Cuccinelli would win, said Friday he still isn’t comfortable endorsing Cuccinelli.
“Clearly, this is not just the most conservative, but the most ideologically-driven ticket that the Republican Party has ever put forth,” Bolling said in an interview. “There are a lot of Republicans, like me, very concerned about the direction of the party. We believe for the Republican Party to be a viable party in Virginia, we’ve got be a more mainstream party and communicate a more mainstream message.”
The McAuliffe campaign has capitalized on the GOP dissension, rolling out more than 30 Republican defectors over the past few months, including former Gov. Linwood Holton and several onetime state delegates. Also endorsing McAuliffe are former Republican National Committee finance chairman Dwight Schar and former GOP strategist Boyd Marcus
And the Democratic establishment has united around McAuliffe, which was not assumed at the start of the year. No Democratic challenger emerged, and while few leaders on the left are crazy about the former Democratic Party fundraiser and businessman, they do support him.
Democrats have a lead on the generic ballot in the state, which is trending blue and was carried twice by Barack Obama. That puts the onus on Cuccinelli to solidify support from his party.
Cuccinelli advisers dismiss Bolling as a sore loser and many of the others who actually endorsed McAuliffe as Republicans in name only. They insist they have intense conservative support on their side and believe that big parts of the Obama coalition will stay home rather than turn out for McAuliffe.
“Ken’s voters are more likely to show up,” said a Cuccinelli adviser. “We’re pretty confident we’ll get what we need in an off-year with Obama sucking wind.”
3. Northern Virginia has been neglected
Several Republicans complained that Cuccinelli has not spent nearly as much time campaigning in Northern Virginia as McDonnell did four years ago. A review of all his public events during the month of August shows only a handful of publicly announced appearances in the D.C. suburbs. He made far more stops in places that should be reliably red.
Cuccinelli lives in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County and won election to the state Legislature from Fairfax County. His aides said his recent public schedule does not reflect the depth of his roots and other off-the-books appearances. They have told Republicans that Cuccinelli will have a more public profile in the D.C. media market during the homestretch.
But Cuccinelli‘s controversial views on abortion, gay marriage, skepticism of global warming and advocacy for the rights of fathers don’t play well in Northern Virginia, especially with women. He has tried not to emphasize those issues but also not backed away from his stances.
Operatives say that Cuccinelli has never created an identity beyond being a rock-ribbed social conservative. McDonnell was a strong social conservative in 2009, but he ran on the mantra of “Bob’s for jobs.”
4. Terry McAuliffe is head and shoulders a better candidate.
When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dips her toe back into political waters this month, she'll get a fresh reminder of the deep wells of acrimony against her that conservatives are ready to tap.
In her first political event since leaving the Obama administration early this year, Clinton is slated to host a fundraiser on Sept. 30 for Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally who's now running for governor in Virginia. In response to Clinton's move, the "Stop Hillary" PAC is planning its own campaign.
The political action committee -- created for the express purpose of stopping Clinton's prospective presidential campaign before it even begins -- is launching a campaign on Tuesday to back McAuliffe's competitor, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. The group is emailing, mailing and calling its supporters across the country, asking them to either financially back Stop Hillary PAC or Cuccinelli's campaign directly. Once it's rallied that grassroots support, Stop Hillary PAC plans to make a donation to the Cuccinelli campaign.
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"Our mission from the beginning has been to stop Hillary anywhere she goes, to counter her in any way possible," Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for Stop Hillary PAC, told CBSNews.com. "That's what we're doing right now."
Marquis said the PAC is rallying support both in and outside of Virginia because "people across the country are concerned about the Hillary and Bill liberal machine," and Clinton's support for the McAuliffe campaign is "one example of the machine at work."
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"People in Arizona, people in Nevada, or in Ohio, they understand the implications this might have on the greater political landscape," he added. "Another Democrat governor in a purple state is impactful, no matter how you look at it."
The email the group is sending out Tuesday says, "We simply can't ignore some of these important state-by-state power plays Hillary is making. Hillary and her allies are most certainly using them as an opportunity to strengthen her grip over key 2016 battleground states. States she will need to steal the White House."
Clinton has yet to say whether she'll run for president in 2016, but polls show she's the candidate to beat, and her supporters have already organized in the key early-nominating state of Iowa. Polls conducted over the summer showed Clinton has, for the most part, maintained the strong public approval rating she's enjoyed since 2008. Her approval rating has, however, fallen slightly this year, potentially because of her association with the Benghazi, Libya controversy. It's likely to fall further as she reemerges as a political figure and conservative groups like Stop Hillary PAC step up their attacks.
The Virginia gubernatorial candidates, meanwhile, have their own concerning polling numbers.
GOP's McDonnell a liability for Cuccinelli in Va. Gov. race.
"The Virginia governor's race pits two of the least well-liked candidates that we can recall competing in a single election," the bipartisan firm Purple Strategies reported after polling Virginians on Sept. 6-10. Their survey found that just 24 percent of Virginia voters have a favorable view of McAuliffe while just 29 percent have a favorable view of Cuccinelli. The poll showed McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli by five points, 43 percent to 38 percent.
Both candidates have suffered from negative business associations. Cuccinelli last week announced he's donating $18,000 to charity to make up for the $18,000 in gifts he received from Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams, whose gifts to Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Va., are currently under investigation.
Marquis said there's "no doubt it's going to be a tough race" but that he believes Cuccinelli still has a shot at winning. The Stop Hillary PAC, meanwhile, is far from the only outside group trying to influence the race. The conservative group Citizens United spent $284,000 attacking McAuliffe, Politico reports, while organizations like NextGen Climate Action and the National Education Association have supported McAuliffe.
National figures are lining up behind the candidates as well. While Clinton is holding a fundraiser later this month for McAuliffe, First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have already appeared with the Democratic candidate. Cuccinelli has recruited high-profile Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., to help him campaign.
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