CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 5, 2009 – 12:01 a.m.
Virginia GOP Plans to Clean House in 2010
By Greg Giroux, CQ-Roll Call
Emboldened by the results in the race for Virginia governor, Republicans are expressing renewed confidence about unseating one or more of the state’s Democratic House incumbents in the 2010 midterm elections.
GOP strategists said the landslide victory of Republican Bob McDonnell, a former state attorney general who won 59 percent of the vote in a state that President Obama carried one year ago, is evidence of the political vulnerability of Democratic Reps. Glenn Nye in the 2nd District, Tom Perriello in the 5th district, Rick Boucher in the 9th District and Gerry Connolly in the 11th.
The election returns “should send shivers down the spines of four Virginia Democrats in GOP crosshairs next year,” the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a memorandum Wednesday morning, after a count of votes showed that out of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts, McDonnell captured double-digit victories in all nine districts that he carried — including the four that the NRCC hopes to target in 2010.
“Commonwealth voters delivered a stunning rebuke of the president’s reckless agenda and the Virginia House Democrats who insist on championing it in the face of dwindling public support,” said NRCC spokesman Andy Seré, who pointed to the losses of some Democratic state House members in the targeted congressional districts.
But Democrats cautioned against reading too much into the results of a single election in which local issues rather than national ones prevailed and in which McDonnell didn’t emphasize his party affiliation or his long history of social conservatism in a race against a weak Democratic nominee, state Sen. Creigh Deeds.
Republicans “are definitely making a mistake, looking at the Virginia races and trying to make a fact based an anecdote,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“To single out this one election,” Ferguson said, “and suddenly believe that their chances are any different, I think they’ll be sorely mistaken.”
Ferguson noted that Democrats won the state’s 2001 gubernatorial race but fared poorly in the 2002 congressional elections.
Stephen Farnsworth, an assistant professor of communications at George Mason University and an expert on Virginia politics, said that targeted Democrats “are not running against the 2009 electoral turnout.”
“The candidates who run in 2010 will not be hobbled by the very weak Deeds campaign,” he said.
Still, the results are a reminder to Democrats to energize their base voters ahead of the midterms, when turnout will be substantially smaller than the 3.7 million electorate that voted in the 2008 presidential election — though not much higher than Tuesday’s turnout of 2 million. In the last midterm, 2.4 million Virginians voted in the 2006 Senate race, won by Democratic Sen. Jim Webb over Republican George Allen.
Connolly, who represents northern Virginia suburbs near Washington, D.C., said Tuesday night that “we have to take the data we see in this election seriously.”
“It’s an uncertain and not entirely happy electorate right now,” he said. “I think we have a lot of work to do at persuading independents as to the value of the Democratic agenda, and I think we have to take seriously the threat from an energized Republican base.”
Of the four Virginia Democrats targeted by Republicans, the least politically secure is Perriello, who narrowly defeated GOP Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. in 2008. Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., carried the 5th District with 51 percent of the vote, though it gave McDonnell a more robust 61 percent vote share on Tuesday, when 140,000 fewer district voters came to the polls than last year.
Perriello’s district, which includes Southside Virginia, is about one-fourth African-American and also includes a large concentration of younger voters in and around the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Turnout was down Tuesday among those two demographic groups.
Republican State Sen. Robert Hurt is the best-known of the handful of Republicans who are challenging Perriello.
McDonnell took 62 percent of the vote in Nye’s 2nd District, which includes Virginia Beach, which McDonnell represented in the state legislature for 14 years. Obama narrowly carried the district in 2008.
The top two Republican challengers to Nye are Scott Rigell, an auto dealership executive, and Ben Loyola, an engineering firm owner.
Nye spokesman Clark Pettig said that the congressman “is going to keep focusing on creating jobs and supporting military families and veterans. He’s looking forward to working with Gov.-elect McDonnell.”
Nye and Perriello no doubt were aided by the high turnout that boosted Obama to a statewide victory last year. But both of them exhibited some crossover political appeal by outrunning Obama en route to unseating GOP incumbents.
Republicans are also keeping an eye on Connolly’s northern Virginia district, a Democratic-trending area where McDonnell won by 10 points. Keith Fimian, a home inspection company owner, is waging a rematch of a 2008 race that Connolly won by 12 points, in a district that Obama carried by 15 points.
Connolly downplayed the importance of the gubernatorial race on his 2010 race and others in Virginia.
“Every election is different. Every election is going to have its own dynamic. I certainly am prepared for a vigorous challenge,” Connolly said.
The toughest seat among the quartet for the Republicans to wrest away from Democrats is the 9th, a socially conservative area of southwestern Virginia that Boucher has dominated during his 14-term tenure, never winning less than 59 percent of the vote in his past dozen campaigns.
Republican officials pointed to the defeat in Boucher’s district of a Democratic state House member by a GOP challenger whose platform included opposition to a climate change cap-and-trade bill that was supported by Boucher, Perriello and Connolly. Nye voted against it.
Phil Cox, McDonnell’s campaign manager, said that in southwest and Southside Virginia “some of the federal issues coming out of Washington, D.C., like cap-and-trade, had a huge impact” on Tuesday’s results.
“The Democrats are in a very difficult spot, and we need to press our advantage on those issues,” he said.
The GOP hopes that McDonnell’s strong showing in the district — he won 66 percent of the vote, his second-best showing in the state — will entice state Del. Terry Kilgore to run. Kilgore, who was re-elected without opposition on Tuesday, promises a decision soon.
Without Kilgore in the race, though, Boucher will be overwhelmingly favored to another term. Democratic officials said that Republicans have talked for years about beating Boucher but haven’t produced results.
Comments
Virginia Election News–Media Fails to Report on Misprision of a Felony by Bob McDonnell, Government Attorneys, and Judges Obstructing the Rights of Parents. The evidence is that there is on going violations of Va. Code §§ 18.2-22, 25, 26, 481(5), 482, and, 499, by a criminal conspiracy to deprive Virginia parents of the right of access to an impartial court and jury trial to hold government attorneys and judges accountable for malfeasance by obstructing statutory rights (See, criminal complaints filed with the Virginia FBI/AUSA (http://home.earthlink.net/~treason; and http://home.earthlink.net/~malfeasance). However, to date the media in Virginia refuses repeatedly to conduct an investigation of the record of malfeasance (See, http://www.liamsdad.org/others/isidoro.shtml; and, http://home.earthlink.net/~isidoror). As explained previously, Bob McDonnell has participated in a conspiracy to deny citizens of Virginia of the right to access to an impartial court and civil jury trial to hold accountable government attorneys and judges for targeting me in retaliation for seeking an investigation of their criminal obstruction of my statutory rights as a father and Virginia civil litigator. Thus, I am preparing a federal RICO suit under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968, against Bob McDonnell et al., for"conducting the affairs of" an "enterprise" engaged in or affecting interstate and foreign commerce by means of a "pattern" of "racketeering activity," and for conspiring to accomplish the goals of a criminal conspiracy to punish me for litigating to enforce my statutory rights (see, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAkEfjcA5sQ). Our Republic and Commonwealth can not long survive the unbridled tyranny of government attorneys and a judiciary that have surreally placed themselves above and beyond the law. We must recall the sorry behavior of German judges, lawyers, and law schools use of cronyism to aid Hitler and the NAZI's to power. "By the time the gas vans came and the human slaughter factories were built in Auschwitz and the other death camps, the murder of the six million Jews and other persecuted minorities was done completely within the framework of German law." Yad Vshem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Remembrance Authority, 2004. Sincerely, Isidoro Rodriguez, Esq., Member in Good Standing of the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court
Had the gubernatorial contest been held at the same date as the House races, Nye and/or Perriello might well have been ejected from their respective seats...which leads me to this: why does a "commonwealth" that prides itself on thrift and frugality hold state-level elections (governor, AG, state H of Delegates, et al.) separately from House elections?
What a lot of silly GOP huffing and puffing. The four Dems mentioned are all a lot stronger candidates than was Deeds, and anyone with even a casual awareness of history knows that these off-off year elections for state offices don't have much bearing on races for Congress the next year. The so-called GOP "triumph" on Tuesday was more the result of terribly flawed candidates in VA and NJ than any imagined movement to the Republicans...or I guess they didn't notice which party won the TWO US House seats that night?
The Virginia GOP might be permitted their hubris on the first night after a big win. Virginia voters, like the voters of the NY 23rd CD, will reject the dogmatic obstructionism of the GOP Congressional leadership when faced directly with the issue.
What would you expect -- It's all about the Party not America. The most non caring group in the world. It is all about control and money and let's have a war. The Republican Party has lost it's way. They lack intelligence..
Isidoro Rodriguez is a funny guy. What a laugh. Ewe are just a fool. What a stupid idea. Ewe go around and type this funny stuff on comments because no respectable media will cover this. No respectable attorney will handle such crap. I have doubts of ewer credentials.
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