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McDonnell leads GOP sweep of statewide races
November 4, 2009 by Chair · Leave a Comment
Bob McDonnell led a Republican sweep of Virginia’s statewide races yesterday, restoring the GOP to power after eight years out of the governor’s office.
The double-digit victories by McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli, the party’s nominee for attorney general, reversed a recent string of defeats for Republicans, who lost races for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and 2008 and the presidential election in Virginia in 2008 for the first time in 44 years.
The coattails of the statewide candidates also resulted in net GOP gains in the House of Delegates of at least three seats and possibly as many as six.
Republicans also won the governor’s race in New Jersey, another rebuff to President Barack Obama and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the president’s hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
The two elections, along with a special election for a congressional seat in upstate New York, drew national attention because they were the first significant contests since Obama won the presidency.
McDonnell, 56, took the stage before hundreds of cheering supporters at the Richmond Marriott and thanked the people who helped him win. He also asked those who didn’t to give him a chance.
“For those of you that did not support me, I say to you: Give me a chance to earn your trust to work with you for the betterment of the commonwealth of Virginia,“ he said.
McDonnell said he will leave Virginia better than he found it.
“Working together as Virginians, we will find those new ways to solve the problems that face us and to create more jobs and new opportunities,“ McDonnell said.
The new governor will face tough budgetary decisions spawned by the recession.
McDonnell called Deeds a “good public servant” and said he looks forward to working with the Democrat, who continues to serve in the state Senate.
Deeds conceded at 9 p.m., shortly after he called McDonnell to congratulate him.
“Just because we didn’t get the right results tonight doesn’t mean we get to go home and whine,“ an emotional Deeds said at the Westin Hotel in Henrico County.
“We still have fight. We still have spirit. We still have something to say,“ he added.
Kaine, at the Westin to support the Democratic ticket, said: “The Virginia Democratic Party is strong.“ He congratulated the Republican ticket for running “a good campaign.“
Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., who also attended the Democratic gathering, said of McDonnell: “I hope he will govern as he campaigned—someone who wants to find the bipartisan, practical solutions.“
Deeds, 51, was unable to duplicate the enthusiasm of Obama’s 2008 campaign in Virginia, which drew hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls.
Despite sunny weather, turnout appeared to be low yesterday, with only about 40 percent of the state’s 5 million registered voters going to the polls. Four years ago, 45 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the election for governor.
National news media packed into the ballroom of the Marriott to cover the GOP victory party. The Associated Press called McDonnell’s win at 7:55 p.m., less than an hour after the polls closed.
Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who came down from Maryland for the victory party, said the result “will serve as a nice springboard for 2010,“ when all seats in the House of Representatives and more than 35 in the U.S. Senate are up for election.
He attributed the McDonnell victory to a convergence of two forces: “the national debate over health care and the candidate’s attention to transportation” and other state issues.
Former Sen. and Gov. George Allen, who also attended the victory party, was asked whether McDonnell’s win would make him a new star in the GOP.
“Bob will be a star because of the campaign he ran and the person that he is,“ Allen said.
McDonnell’s victory continued a remarkable political phenomenon. Since 1976, Virginians have followed every presidential election by electing a governor from the opposing party a year later.
Exit polls by the AP showed that independents, who narrowly backed Obama in Virginia last year, voted 2-to-1 for McDonnell. In addition, exit polls showed Democrats had trouble getting their base to the polls.
Yesterday’s Virginia electorate included more voters who supported Republican John McCain in 2008 than Obama.
Pundits said that in capturing Virginia, McDonnell created a model for other Republican candidates. The former state attorney general and former Virginia Beach delegate emphasized jobs creation and de-emphasized social issues.
Ralph Reed, a former director of the Christian Coalition, attended the GOP victory party.
“If the national conservative movement and the national Republican Party want to find out how to win, they need to come to Virginia and see what happened here,“ he said.
Obama came to Virginia twice to campaign for Deeds. But the president’s appearance with Deeds in Norfolk a week before the election appeared to do the Virginia Democrat little good. Polls showed Deeds losing ground in Hampton Roads in the campaign’s final days.
Both political parties poured millions of dollars into the Virginia race. McDonnell had a clear fundraising edge: He raised more than $21 million, while Deeds raised $10 million in the general election and $6 million in a Democratic primary. They also received significant support from party committees.
Deeds’ upset victory over two better-funded rivals in the June 9 Democratic primary gave him a lift in the polls but left his treasury empty. Deeds spent the summer raising money while McDonnell, who was unopposed for the GOP nomination, was on television defining himself as a moderate and a jobs creator.
Throughout the fall, Deeds spent much of his money on ads attacking McDonnell.
On Aug. 30, The Washington Post reported on a graduate thesis that McDonnell wrote 20 years ago while attending Regent University in Virginia Beach. In the thesis, McDonnell appeared to demean working women. He disavowed those views.
The thesis seemed to give Deeds momentum, and the polls tightened, albeit briefly, before McDonnell extended his lead.
McDonnell and Deeds agreed the state needs more and better transportation, but they offered different prescriptions. McDonnell, who opposes tax increases, offered a dozen funding mechanisms. He would sell bonds, impose tolls to be paid by motorists entering Virginia from North Carolina on Interstates 85 and 95, and privatize the state-run ABC stores.
McDonnell also spent much of the campaign trying to tie Deeds to cap-and-trade environmental legislation and pro-union legislation on Capitol Hill that is unpopular with many Virginia voters.
By: Tyler Whitley – Times Dispatch
Bolling for LG; Cuccinelli for AG
October 26, 2009 by Chair · Leave a Comment
In both races, it’s hard to see through the mud, but the GOP fields the better set of candidates.
When it comes to the race for attorney general, both candidates are well qualified and rightly recognize the office’s primary role as promoting public safety. Democrat Steve Shannon and Republican Ken Cuccinelli would do a standup job working to protect Virginians by targeting gangs, child sex offenders, drug dealers and other scum.
And while we’d be satisfied with either man as attorney general, we give a slight edge to Cuccinelli for his proactive solutions, legal expertise, fighting disposition and (gasp!) strong conservative moorings – something the state’s Democratic strategists, to their own detriment, take joy in mocking these days.
Indeed, Shannon’s recent formula for this contest has been to paint his foe as an “ideological crusader” whose 10th Amendment interpretation and personal stance against the expansion of federal government should somehow be linked to the days of racial segregation and Civil War.
Good grief.
It seems Shannon can’t beat Cuccinelli on the issues, so he might as well try a Hail Mary. Thankfully, polls show voters aren’t falling for his last-minute, desperation heave.
In the lieutenant governor’s race, it’s hard to sort fact from fiction: Did incumbent Republican Bill Bolling really miss all those commission meetings? Was Democrat Jody Wagner really asleep at the wheel when she “underestimated” the recession’s impact as state secretary of finance?
Neither sin really affects the two main roles of lieutenant governor: presiding over the Senate and succeeding the big cheese in case of emergency. That said, for the past four years Bolling has proven he can do the former, and his ties to GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell – who will likely be elected – make him the natural choice for the latter.
- Culpeper Star-Exponent by Staff Editorial
McDonnell has double-digit lead in Va. governor’s race
October 26, 2009 by Chair · Leave a Comment
Republican Robert F. McDonnell carries a double-digit lead over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds into the final week of the campaign for Virginia governor, according to a new Washington Post poll.
The Republican, briefly buffeted in the polls by voters’ initial reaction to the publication of his 1989 graduate school thesis, has rebounded to big advantages on the top issues, particularly taxes, and is now seen as the more effective leader, more honest and more empathetic.
McDonnell is also buoyed by support outside of Northern Virginia, where he is currently outperforming all other top-of-the-ticket Republican candidates this decade. Statewide, McDonnell now leads Deeds among likely voters by a 55 to 44 percent margin. McDonnell, who narrowly defeated Deeds in the race for attorney general four years ago, has been above 50 percent in all four Post polls in the campaign.
About three in 10 Virginia voters say their vote will be based in part on their perceptions of President Obama, who is scheduled to campaign in Norfolk with Deeds Tuesday. But as many say they will be motivated by their desire to express support for the president as to voice opposition to him, partial evidence that Obama himself may not be able to decisively sway the race.
Seven in 10 say the president — who remains relatively popular with an approval rating of 54 percent among likely voters and 57 percent among all those registered to vote — won’t be a factor in their vote one way or the other. These findings suggest that the Virginia race may not be the early referendum on the Obama presidency that it is often held up to be.
“Sometimes people talk about sending a message — with Virginia being in this odd off-year election cycle,” said Keith Fredlake, 32, of Gainesville, a McDonnell supporter. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think Obama’s really put a lot of stock into Virginia, and I don’t think it will hurt or help.”
The poll shows that Deeds has been unable to shift the dynamics of a race that in recent weeks appeared to be slipping away from him. Despite a concerted effort to reverse a widespread voter perception that his campaign has been largely negative, more than six in 10 in the new poll see the Democrat as running a mainly negative effort. By contrast, most see McDonnell’s campaign as a predominantly positive one.
Deeds has also been unable to excite his supporters and close the dramatic enthusiasm gap McDonnell has held from the outset. About a quarter of Deeds’s voters say they are supporting him “not too” or “not at all” enthusiastically. More than nine in 10 of those who back McDonnell are “very” or “fairly” enthusiastic about the Republican.
The results also suggest that Deeds, a moderate who has alternately praised and distanced himself from Obama, has neither energized the president’s most fervent supporters nor won over his skeptics.
McDonnell is now in a position of significant strength with widening advantages on central issues as the campaign enters its final days.
McDonnell holds double-digit advantages when it comes to dealing with the economy (plus 17 percentage points), transportation (16 points), taxes (25 points) and has overtaken Deeds as the one more trusted to handle issues of special concern to women (7 points). On taxes, which has been a focal point of the campaign in recent weeks, McDonnell has stretched his lead significantly, and now holds a better than 2 to 1 lead over Deeds among independent voters.
Deeds has said he would be willing to sign a tax increase to pay for road improvements if approved by a bipartisan majority in the General Assembly, a prospect opposed by 55 percent of likely voters, including a growing number outside of Northern Virginia. McDonnell and the Republican Governors Association have spent millions on what now appears to have been a devastating ad campaign about Deeds’s stance– and over his failure to clearly explain his position on the issue while answering questions from reporters following a debate in Fairfax in September.
“I do think we need someone new in there who won’t continually raise taxes,” said Richmond resident Janice Baldwin, 57, who is voting for McDonnell. “Taxes eat us out of house and home. Every time you turn around, if you’re not taxed for one thing , you’re taxed for another.”
Overall, most voters see McDonnell as “about right” ideologically, while nearly half now see Deeds as “too liberal.”
McDonnell now holds big leads as the one who would be a more effective leader (21 percentage point advantage), the more honest and trustworthy (+14) and the more in-tune with people’s problems (+11). On all three of these attributes, the candidates were about even in mid-September.
In bottom-line vote preference, independents now favor McDonnell, 61 to 36 percent, and women who consider themselves political independents are solidly behind the Republican. Independent women, who split about evenly between the two candidates in the weeks after the publication of McDonnell’s master’s thesis, now favor McDonnell 57 to 40 percent.
McDonnell also has successfully scrambled voting allegiances, winning nearly a quarter of those who voted for Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine four years ago, while holding onto almost all of those who say they opted for Republican Jerry Kilgore.
For Deeds, one potential way to stage a come-back in the race’s final week lies in changing the makeup of the probable electorate by convincing core Democratic constituencies to vote. Voters who backed Obama in 2008 are significantly less apt to say they will participate this time around than are those who supported his Republican challenger, Ariz. Sen. John S. McCain.
Obama’s visit to Norfolk Tuesday illustrates the challenge: Just 49 percent of voters in the southeastern part of the state who supported Obama last year say they are certain to vote next week, compared with 73 percent of those who backed McCain. But two-thirds of all registered voters in the southeast approve of the way the president is handling his job.
Deeds has made a late effort to reach out to Obama voters in Northern Virginia, including a weekend swing through the region’s most Democratic leaning communities a week ago and visits to retirement communities in Fairfax County Monday. Democratic organizers last week sent an e-mail signed by the president to his supporters in the state urging them to back Deeds. That combined outreach may have helped in recent weeks, giving some hope to Democrats that Obama’s rally could do the same in the Tidewater region. In early October, just half of Northern Virginia Obama voters were likely to vote; now more than seven in 10 are apt to turnout next week.
That shift has contributed to an improvement for Deeds in the critical Northern Virginia region, where he now holds a 56 to 43 percent lead in the left-leaning Washington suburbs. However, that lead is swamped by significant and growing deficits in every other region of the state.
McDonnell appears to be in a particularly dominant position in the state’s rural west, an area the Democrat had labeled “Deeds Country” because it includes his Bath County home. Though Deeds has devoted considerable resources to the region, he now trails there by 63 to 36 percent.
Obama’s approval rating is at its low point in this part of the state — 46 percent of registered voters in the western areas give him positive marks — where opposition to the proposed changes to the nation’s health care system peaks at 58 percent.
Statewide, 53 percent oppose the current efforts at health care reform, while 43 percent are supportive.
For more than 30 years, Virginia voters have selected a governor from the opposite party as the sitting president, but most of the state’s voters say that is not an intentional choice: 71 percent say it does not make a difference to the state whether the governor’s party affiliation matches up with the president’s, with the rest about evenly split about whether it is better or worse for the state to have the two be of different political parties.
The poll was conducted Oct. 22 to 25 by conventional and cellular telephone among a random sample of 2,132 adults in Virginia, including 1,206 likely to vote in the Nov. 3 gubernatorial election. The results among likely voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
-Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and Washington Post Staff Writer Anita Kumar contributed to this story.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102602414_pf.html
