Tuesday night was an after-thought election for a couple of
governors, some mayors, a bunch of local school boards, some ballot
issues and assorted municipal offices. The 5 at-large members of my
district school board all ran again with no opposition. There was
nothing else to vote on. It was a pretty desolate ballot.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I looked upon the day as
insignificant. There’s a sure-shot Democrat in the New York mayor’s
office once again. A tall, interesting guy with a UN family named Bill
De Blasio. I’ve profiled hizzoner in an earlier submission and he’ll be
good for America’s largest city.
I’ve specifically eyed two other races as well. The two governor’s
races. One a runaway, the other fairly close. There’s New Jersey where
short-fused, Lap-Banded and serial BS’er, Chris Christie again fooled a
substantial majority of voters into ignoring his utter disdain for
unions, teachers, gays and all manner of poor workers and minorities
through heartless budgeting and a veto of the Jersey legislature’s
minimum wage bill, later approvingly reversed as a ballot issue the same
day of the Christie re-election.
Oh, and Christie hates the Affordable Care Act and has taken a pass
on running the state health insurance marketplace. In a late-evening
appearance before supporters, Christie told the crowd “I stand here
before you as your governor, blah, blah, blah; thank you New Jersey for
making me the luckiest guy in the world.” He then claimed that he was
going to be a two-term governor of New Jersey, with a STRAIGHT FACE!
CNN pundits were falling all over themselves virtually declaring
Christie THE force to be reckoned with in the 2016 presidential race.
Hardly! By that time, people will have cut through his bogus “everyman”
persona to the guts of his actual narrow right-wing political agenda.
All the aforementioned notwithstanding, Christie had, as predicted,
stomped Democratic opponent, state Senator Barbara Buono into the
ground. Buono is a pleasant enough 60-year-old (9 years Christie’s
senior). As a state Senator, she’s butted heads repeatedly with the
governor over numerous bills involving the legalization of marijuana,
all vetoed by Christie. Despite a glittering legislative CV, she just
failed to connect with the voters. Christie was aided greatly by the sad
serendipity of Hurricane Sandy.
But, who cares? Christie is running for president, not governor. He
just needs a high-profile stopping off place to park his still
considerable carcass before his inevitable run to oblivion.
No, it’s Virginia I’ve had my eye on. The Terry McAuliffe/Ken
Cuccinelli gubernatorial race had all kinds of political overtones.
Virginia is tilting moderate even though the state last elected a
Republican governor and features an overwhelming 32-11 repugican
majority in the house with 2 vacancies and, oddly enough, an equal
number of state senators with both repugicans and Democrats seating 20
each. But those numbers can be misleading. Registered Democrats
outnumber repugicans but some 44% of Virginia voters consider
themselves moderates. The McAuliffe victory was aided mightily by
moderates, Clinton coattails, his opponent’s tea party ties and most
importantly the DC House repugicans moronic partial shutdown obsession
that brought great pain to the northern part of the state in particular.
Terry McAuliffe is a newcomer to elective politics, but an old hand
at occupying various powerful positions within the Democratic Party. I
met McAuliffe in his DC office as head of the Democratic National
Committee while attending a “Take back America” confab some years ago.
He at least feigned interest in what I was saying, but for someone who
runs in the highest Democratic circles that included a close
relationship with Bill and Hillary, I’m sure he looked forward to
getting back to his telephone fundraising that he was in the middle of
at the time.
Speaking of which, in stark contrast to many Democratic races,
McAullife was wiping the floor with his opponent in the money
department. He pulled in about twice as much as the Teapublican with $35
million in his campaign war chest, compared to Virginia Attorney
General Cuccinelli who had to make do with about half that much at $18
million.
Pre-election, polls had consistently come down on the side of
McAuliffe, but by slim enough 4 to 6 point margins to keep the Democrat
awake at night. The race was supposedly a referendum over the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, with both President Obama and Vice
President Biden dropping in for campaign visits. Biden promised that ACA
would give an additional 400,000 state residents health care.
The Virginia race could serve as a barometer for things to come in
the upcoming election seasons. It was a nasty campaign. McAuliffe was
characterized as dishonest, Cuccinelli as a wingnut radical (which he most assuredly is). The
glamour contingent of both parties journeyed to Virginia endorsing their
candidates with gusto. In addition to the Obama/Biden combo, the
Clintons and president shored up their guy’s efforts while Rand Paul,
Marco Rubio and Scott Walker, radicals all, made appearances in support
of Cuccinelli.
The McAuliffe campaign claims volunteers knocked on 1.8 million doors
in spreading the progressive gospel. Sadly, though somewhat of a
necessity, he pandered to the wingnuts in promising “fewer, smarter”
regulations. Corporate-speak for don’t sweat it rich boys, I’ve got your
back. He made his strongest pitches in the areas of education, staying
competitive in a global economy, veterans issues and not running away
from the Affordable Care Act. He headlined his campaign, “Putting Jobs
First.”
You can go here for a campaign outline for victory. At least if you’re running for governor of Virginia.
With McAuliffe’s win, however close, against a tea party candidate, a
chink has been exposed in the teapugican armor. A Democrat can run as a
strong supporter of the Obama health care plan and win. The Cuccinelli
loss notwithstanding, there is still life in
the old tea party after all and the radical element in American politics
will still be very much a factor in ’14 and ’16. The great news,
anti-woman Cuccinelli loses and a new pro-woman guy replaces a complete teapugican anti-woman boob, he of trans-vaginal ultrasound fame, Bob
McDonnell. Mac’s real legacy might be criminal action against him for
taking oodles of questionable money and gifts from all sorts of sources.
The Democrats also finally realized that a bunch of well-positioned
negative ads could actually win them a race just as such ads changed the
face of Congress for the repugicans in 2010. And the money didn’t hurt
either. That’s how you pay for the negative ads.
So there are the keys to Democratic victories in elections to come. A
couple of million door knockers, multiple millions in campaign funds,
nasty, but accurate ads, a reasonable collection of issues and solutions
and a collective prayer that teapugicans continue the witless practice
of voting dozens of times to repeal the ACA. The Huffington Post cites
the Congressional Research finding that it costs $24 million a week to
operate the House. Repeal attempts have taken up 80 hours of House floor
time or $48 million; a year of food stamps for over 31,000 people.
The
exhibition was laid out with the deliberate intention of encouraging a
negative reaction. "The pictures were hung askew, there was graffiti on
the walls, which insulted the art and the artists, and made claims that
made this art seem outlandish, ridiculous."
British artist Robert Medley went to see the show. "It was enormously
crowded and all the pictures hung like some kind of provincial auction
room where the things had been simply slapped up on the wall regardless
to create the effect that this was worthless stuff," he says.
WTOP posted an article on the protocols for hosting a party i
