Last night (Nov. 5) Democratic fixer Terry McAuliffe became governor of Virginia by defeating Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in a singularly unpleasant race. The Libertarian candidate, Robert Sarvis, finished with 6.6% of the vote—a more than respectable total in most statewide elections, but ultimately a bit disappointing in this one, given the almost South Parkesque awfulness of the major-party pair.
As noted earlier in this space, Sarvis had hoped to be included in the final televised debate on Oct. 24, and seemed to have met the requirement of polling at least 10% in major independent statewide opinion polls (in fact, as of the final poll before the debate, he was polling at 12%). But the decision was made — likely because of strong pressure from the Cuccinelli campaign — to hold to a cutoff of Oct. 10 for the polling data, back when Sarvis averaged just over 9%.
If it was Cuccinelli who supplied the pressure, it was a craven but politically expedient move. Trailing McAuliffe by seven to ten percentage points both before and immediately after the debate, the Cooch — no really, that’s the nickname — saw a chance to make up some of that gap by taking votes out of Sarvis’s hide rather than McAuliffe’s. Given Cuccinelli’s firm Catholic belief, I can only assume he derived this strategy from 2 Samuel 12, where the rich man shrewdly steals a poor man’s lone lamb rather than culling one from his own vast flocks. Wherever he got it, though, the result was Rand Paul coming out to stump for Cuccinelli, and bizarre arguments being made in conservative-friendly press outlets such as Breitbart about how Cuccinelli was actually the more libertarian choice.
Never mind that the Virginia AG wanted to remake sodomy into a felony crime, or that he has an anti-immigrant streak a border-fence wide, or that he used his office to threaten a lawsuit against a university scientist for research he didn’t like. The real problem is that he just comes off as insufferable even by the standards of politicians; to be regarded less favorably than Terry McAuliffe —someone whom even the Daily Show, no friend to conservative or libertarian causes, labeled “pond scum”— takes some doing.
In fact, the only thing that seemed to be more unfavorable still was the Affordable Care Act, especially with the ongoing “glitches” in implementation and the parade of lies told by Obama and his advisors coming daily to light. So Cuccinelli doubled down on his pitch to Virginia’s fiscal conservatives, billing himself as the candidate who could stop Obamacare. Though Sarvis had been gathering support in southwest Virginia — up to 20% in regional polls, and even a newspaper endorsement from the Danville Bee — some people evidently defected for Cuccinelli, and the race tightened up notably over the final week.
As a result, those in the Democrat base who may have considered voting Sarvis as a protest vote (or as a vote for his stronger commitment to marriage equality and other generally liberal social issues) ended up choking back their bile and voting McAuliffe instead. And even so, it was closer than most polls inicated: the final margin was about two percentage points, and that’s with the Democrats outspending the GOP by about $15 million.
It remains to be seen what promises McAuliffe had to make, and to whom, in order to get that money, and the state of Virginia can now look forward to the time when those favors get called in. It’s very likely that the list of beneficiaries will include favored contracting firms, green-energy boondoggles, “clean” coal miners, and the NSA shadow economy that spiderwebs through the DC suburbs. But who knows? After all, this is a man who stopped at a fundraiser on the way back from the hospital with his wife and newborn child; he has specialized for decades in connecting people with money to people power, and now he’s the one with the power. He’ll wield it while filling an office previously held by the likes of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe.
As with most elections, the best one can say about this one is that, thank God, it’s over. And there is a bright side, at least from a policy standpoint: the Republicans maintained a “solid” House of Delegates majority, meaning that it’ll be a street fight for McAuliffe to get anything done. But it also means the bitterness of the campaign trail will extend into every legislative tussle over the next four years. One can only hope that the Old Dominion sees better options come 2017.
in major independent statewide opinion polls (in fact, as of the final poll before the debate, he was polling at 12%). But the decision was made
