Lowell, Waldo, Carla Post the Best Resource for Undecideds

I just read through the exhaustive and excellent Netroots Surrogate Debate" hosted over at Common Sense for Virginia blog.

Great stuff here, with a Netroots surrogate posting on behalf of each of the three leading candidates for Governor.

Lowell Feld for Terry McAuliffe
Waldo Jaquith for Creigh Deeds
Carla Ward (catzmaw) for Brian Moran

This is a truly outstanding dialog, I plan to refer all undecided Virginia voters to these arguments in the waning hours of the primary season.

Great stuff, from each of the surrogates and well moderated by Venu "Bigvinu" Katta at Common Sense For Virginia.

Election Eve - Big Mo with Deeds

As a McAuliffe supporter, I can't say that this is overwhelmingly welcome news, but it is what it is. With the release of PPP's 14-point lead for Deeds, it's clear that the WaPo endorsement has started a brushfire for the affible and humble Senator from Bath.


Even with these numbers I wouldn't discount the power of the McAuliffe GOTV effort which is evidence of the uncanny, excellent, and powerful campaign that Mike Henry and Terry McAuliffe have put together.

Still, you can't argue with Creigh's numbers.

Fav-Unfav
Deeds 57-14
McAuliffe 40-40
Moran 47-23

An unfavorable rating of 14 shows that those who know Creigh love him and you know what. I do, too.



It's my sincere hope that Terry McAuliffe will be the nominee, the consolation that I find in these numbers is that it feels overwhelmingly unlikely that Brian Moran will be. Moran and his thuggish campaign have made such a mess of things that if he were to take this nomination, it would be a long hard summer trying to pull the team together. With Terry, the sheer excellence of the campaign and the need to oppose McDonnell would engender the unity necessary for Virginia to take the deep look necessary to really appreciate what a great leader Terry McAuliffe is and could be in Richmond.

With Creigh as the standard bearer, the party will come into line very quickly. In some cases, it's already started. Creigh the nominee would rapidly pull together enough resources to hopefully encompass some of Terry's outstanding campaign staff, and potentially some of the Moran campaign's passionate grassroots activism.

It's not over. This is the time to work and fight with everything you've got for your candidate

Nonetheless, this is going to be an historic primary. We'll point to this one for years to come. With Creigh or Terry as the nominee, we'll do great against Bob McDonnell. If it's Moran, welcome to the summer (decade?) of our discontent.

PPP: Good News for Deeds, McAuliffe... Moran? Not so Much

With only 12 days left before the Democratic primary here in Virginia,PPP takes a look at the remaining undecideds, and their findings are surprising.

First, this is an astonishingly fluid electorate. The candidates are largely unknown:

Among the voters still undecided 66% don't know enough about Creigh Deeds or Brian Moran to have an opinion about them one way or the other, and 55% don't know enough about McAuliffe.

So, who and where are these undecideds?

Many of them are African American, which could bode well for Terry McAuliffe:

-They're disproportionately African American- 37%, compared to 27% of the overall primary electorate in our most recent survey. So far McAuliffe has had the upper hand with them so that could work to his advantage.

Most are not in Northern Virginia - bad news for Brian Moran:

-They're disproportionately not from northern Virginia. While 29% of voters total in this race are, just 22% of the undecideds hail from the metro DC area. That's bad news for Brian Moran, who hasn't been able to get much momentum anywhere else in the state, and good news for Deeds whose weakest performance is in that region.

And many trend conservative, which may favor Creigh:

-They're more conservative and less liberal than primary voters as a whole. Among undecideds 27% are liberal and 22% are conservative, while in total 34% are liberal and just 14% are conservative. This could help Deeds, who does best with conservatives and worst with liberals, and hurt McAuliffe who does the best with liberals.

There's been a lot of good news lately for the McAuliffe and Deeds camps, and not much for the Morans. The trend continues.

SUSA: McAuliffe Leads, Deeds Surges, Moran Lags

SurveyUSA: McAuliffe 37%, Deeds 26%, Moran 22%

Lowell points out that this poll reduced the representation of African-Americans and women in its sample, both groups among which Terry is enjoying very strong support.

With only 20 days to go, now is the time when voters will start waking up and when the campaigns need the most support.

Now is when Terry needs you most. Go Terry!

RTD Denounces McDonnell Wingnuttery

Here's some fun in the vein of Jeff Foxworthy

You know you're a wingnut when...

Anne Coulter calls you a right-wing radical.

When...

Rush Limbaugh denounces your free-market zealotry.

When

The Richmond Times Dispatch calls you "Right of Center".

Well, the first two may be made up, but the #3 is as real as today's RTD Op-Ed page.

Here are a few choice tidbits as Richmond's favority right-leaning rag chafes under Bob McDonnells's "conservative-sating", record driven by "internal Republican politics":

McDonnell's stances appear driven by internal Republican politics; specifically, sating conservatives who control the nominating process. The opinions were written before Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, now seeking re-election, conceded the gubernatorial nomination to McDonnell.

In another perceived sop to conservatives, McDonnell intervened on behalf of Episcopal parishes in Northern Virginia that broke with the diocese to protest the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.

McDonnell has to answer for more: his opposition to controls on smoking in public, the non-solution for roads, industry friendly re-regulation of utilities, and federal court rulings spotlighting his hostility to abortion.

Has McDonnell taken positions that allow him to reach the middle, where elections are decided?

To paraphrase his answer to a stickier question -- one best avoided in a family-oriented publication: not that he can recall.

That last dig is a wave towards the drama which earned McDonnell the monniker "Taliban Bob". Read the ugly details here.

McAuliffe's Earned Media, Support

I came across this very cute blog post by a mother who got some pictures taken of her son with Terry McAuliffe and will.i.am.

It got me thinking.

McAuliffe has run the best campaign in recent Virginia history. Beyond the fact that he's outraised his opponents in-state and out. This campaign has more field offices, more staff, better messaging, and much better events than the opposition of either party.

Moreover, Terry has both mastered the nuance of Virginia politics like the pro that he is, and has managed to master not only the media coverage, but the deep messaging as well. Every campaign has adopted Terry's "Jobs, jobs, jobs" theme, and suddenly the new guy on the block looks like he was the first one to arrive at the party.

One could argue that the sum total of all of this outstanding success can be seen in the polls, which at worst have him ahead and at best have him breaking away by double digits, but that's not all.

The total of the McAuliffe campaign's success can be seen in a mother writing a blog post about her son meeting a candidate and his famous protege. The total of the McAuliffe campaign's success can be seen in the growing consensus. It ranges from national and local media down to just plain regular folks.

It's the consensus that the Virginia Democratic primary has a leader named Terry McAuliffe, and chances are, he'll be Virginia's next Governor.

You can buy staff. You can buy great communications. But an emerging sense of leadership excellence can't be bought, that's something you have to earn.

SEIU Local to Endorse McAuliffe

Politico:

An SEIU local with members in Virginia, 32BJ, is announcing today that it'll endorse Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor of Virginia, a union spokeswoman, Julie Karant, said.

The union has 3,500 members in the state, office cleaners who maintain commercial buildings and government agencies throughout Northern Virginia, Karant said.

Macker momentum continues to build. Go Terry!