A View from the Cheap Seats

Back on the Square...

2010-01-13T20:42:11Z

Where were we? Ah yes, politics...

The Cheap Seats have been vacant for a while, but for good reason. Virginia's political scene goes dark for the most part in November and December, as the newly elected officials try to get a handle on their new jobs and the challenges they face when they take office.

Consequently, much of what happens during the winter doldrums is inside baseball, and not something most average Virginians care that much about.

But when January rolls around, things happen. Things happen fast. Which brings us to today, the first day of the General Assembly's 2010 session.

The mood here is decidedly different than years past. Instead of ebullient speeches and high spirited debate on the first day, members quietly got down to business, organizing themselves and adjourning to work in committees in less than two hours.

Budget cuts are coming, and nobody is happy about it. School systems all over the commonwealth are going to see less money than they did the year before, and there's likely to be few if any $50,000 or $100,000 contributions to nonprofits flowing from state coffers.

City and county governments will end up with less, too. In short, all of the things legislators love to come home and talk about aren't going to happen this year. In fact, this might be a year when legislators are more inclined to keep a low profile when they're back in their districts.

Even electoral triumphs brought little of the usual chest-thumping opening days often see. Republicans are preparing to take the Executive Mansion back this weekend, while Republicans added to their numbear in the House and Democrats padded their margin in the Senate by one seat.

But most if not all of the talk was about working together to solve problems. Said simply, the start of this session felt more like a trip to a dentist's waiting room than a legislative opening.

Everyone in the room knows painful stuff is about to happen, and there's little they can do about it.

Election Night 2009 Live Blog

2009-10-31T05:00:09Z

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=8f802ebfe0" &amp;amp;gt;Election Night 2009&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Shannon swings for the fences

2009-10-20T18:51:37Z

Del. Steve Shannon, D-Vienna, isn't pulling any punches in his race with Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax, in the race for attorney general.

The Democrat, trailing significantly in a number of polls, went on the air today with two ads that are easily the hardest-hitting of any statewide ads in this election cycle.

Both ads criticize Cuccinelli's vote against a measure that would have required clergy to report sexual abuse of children if they learned about it.

The Democrat carries the attack further on a campaign website.

Cuccinelli tried to limit the bill's scope to clergy who failed to report child abuse by their peers. Cuccinelli unsuccessfully tried to restrict a 2004 bill to reporting of suspected abuse by other clergy, not by family members or other individuals. The bill's sponsor argued that most denominations and religious groups supported the bill, with the exception of the Virginia Assembly of Independent Baptists.

Shaun Kenney, one-time communications director for the Republican Party of Virginia and prolific blogger, takes issue with Shannon's ads. Cuccinelli wanted an exemption in the bill to avoid putting Catholic priests in the untenable position of either "breaking the seal of confession" or defying state law. (h/t: Tertium Quids)

Kenney says the ads are an anti-Catholic swipe at the Republican's faith. From the post.

Here's the kicker: This anti-Catholic attack ad comes just days after Steve Shannon refused to fill out the Virginia Catholic Conference survey -- joining the Deeds, Wagner, and 40 other state Democrats who tossed aside the questionnaire.
Anti-Catholic hate? I see it, and 642,000 other Catholic Virginians tired of being kicked are seeing it too.

But wait, there's more. Ben Tribbet, aka Not Larry Sabato, points out that Shannon is himself Catholic -- a fact borne out by the state legislative website -- making a charge of anti-Catholic bias absurd.

Election Day is two weeks away.

Two-minute drill

2009-10-13T19:16:36Z

It's a position no team likes to find themselves in: it's the fourth quarter, and you're down by a touchdown and a field goal. There's not a lot of time left on the clock, but you've got all three time-outs.

Virginia's entire statewide Democratic ticket is in a similar state. Three weeks out from Election Day, Creigh Deeds, Jody Wagner and Steve Shannon are all down by a significant amount according to recent polling.

So what's the plan?

If you ask Bob Holsworth over at Virginia Tomorrow, Team Deeds needs to spend more time reaching out to the Democratic base that turned out for Tim Kaine in 2005 and Barack Obama in 2008.

From the good doctor:

The most likely place for Deeds to pick up voters is among Democrats who are presently indifferent to the campaign. And if Deeds gains some momentum, maybe independent voters will take a second look and be impressed by the personal story that Deeds' ads are now conveying.

The pollsters over at Public Policy Polling would seem to agree, especially in the area of African-American turnout. As Tom Jensen opines:

It's going to be very difficult for Deeds to win unless the black percentage of the electorate is in the high teens. At 12% his chances are zero unless Bob McDonnell is caught with Edwin Edwards' proverbial 'dead girl or live boy.

Offhand, I can think of one major player who would easily motivate African-American voters. But would an appeal to African-American voters in Virginia's urban areas help Deeds with one key demographic, only to hurt him with others? Possibly, if Rasmussen's latest poll is right.

From the poll:

If President Obama comes to Virginia to campaign for Creigh Deeds, does that make you more likely or less likely to vote for Deeds?

23% More likely
43% Less likely
32% It would have no impact
2% Not sure

That complicates the electoral calculus a great deal. Could Obama make up enough votes in the African-American community to offset losses among other voters? Maybe. It's a strategy that's been tried before.

In 2005, Republican Jerry Kilgore held a last minute rally with a post-Hurricane Katrina President Bush. Pundits are split on whether that appearance hurt or helped the campaign.

Team McDonnell, on the other hand, is playing conservative football -- handing off the ball and grinding out yardage between the tackles on most plays. McDonnell himself stays on message, hits Deeds on issues of taxation, but with a smile on his face.

The goal? Grind out a few more first downs and run out the clock. And don't fumble.

Down-ballot, the strategy is less complicated. Both Democrats are down substantially in the polls, but there's a large group of undecided voters who aren't paying attention to the race. For those two, it's all about communication.

Democratic lieutenant governor hopeful Jody Wagner's campaign sent out a strategy memo earlier today to buck up the troops and raise some money. From the memo:

Recent public polling shows that our campaign has a strong chance of winning, but that we need to continue to communicate our message to general election voters. The polling shows Bill Bolling leading, but by far less than the number of undecided voters who have yet to make up their minds in this race.

Based on the ad the campaign released this week, Team Wagner is going to be throwing long bombs down the field. They may not be high-percentage passes, but if one or two of these ads strikes a chord with voters, it could move them down the field substantially.

Democratic attorney general nominee Steve Shannon has a similar problem, but a slightly different strategy. Republican Ken Cuccinelli has made the most of Shannon's initial reaction to the Melendez-Diaz ruling, and if the reaction of the Democrat's campaign is any indication, has drawn blood with it.

Shannon brought in some star power in the form of Gov. Kaine to push back against the GOP ad and try to brand Cuccinelli as dishonest.

Will any of these strategies be enough to put the points on the board? Hard to say. But that's why they play the games.

The air war

2009-10-02T18:54:22Z

Election Day is a month and a day away, and both campaigns are cranking up their media campaigns.

Team Deeds appears to be doubling down on The Thesis. Not only has the campaign launched a Twitter account dedicated to the document, they've also developed a new Web site filled with snippets from the 1989 document.

They've also launched more ads that reference the work, including this one that went live a little while ago:

Deeds' campaign also took to the radio with a new thesis-centric ad.

Not to be outdone, Bob McDonnell's campaign has fired back with it's own thesis-centric rebuttal ad, in 16:9 format, no less:

McDonnell's team also pulled out what they think is Deeds' Achilles' heel -- his less than stellar handling of tax questions after the Fairfax debate last month, similar to an ad the Republican Governor's Association is running on McDonnell's behalf in Virginia.

If the polls keep up like they have been, look for this campaign to get nastier by the day.

Key Video

2009-09-22T19:04:18Z

For your viewing pleasure, the videos the campaigns would like you to see this week. First, two ads from Democrat Creigh Deeds on "the thesis."

Next, a post-debate video from the Republican Party of Virginia, as Deeds answers questions about when he would or wouldn't raise taxes.

McDonnell on abortion

2009-09-22T18:43:15Z

It's a phrase Creigh Deeds' campaign can't repeat often enough: Republican Bob McDonnell supported 35 bills to restrict abortion while he was in the General Assembly.

Deeds' campaign released two ads on Monday that make use of the talking point. McDonnell's campaign says the Democrat is distorting his record. So we here at Cheap Seats HQ cranked up some Blue Oyster Cult and started digging...

What we found is that McDonnell's record, based on the bill list provided by the Deeds campaign, is undoubtedly pro-life. But it's not the anti-abortion crusade that Deeds' campaign makes it out to be.

Team Deeds cites 35 bills in their claim. We managed to research 30 of them. The other five are from before 1994, when electronic legislative records begin.

Here's the breakdown:

Of those 30, McDonnell sponsored 6 himself. One was a ban on partial birth abortion -- a procedure in which a nearly full-term fetus is partly delivered then terminated.

The other five were repeats of the same bill over various years: requiring physicians to get written consent from a woman 24 hours before she has an abortion before the procedure can take place.

Of the remaining 24 bills, McDonnell was a co-sponsor. Some 14 of the bills required parental or judicial notification in some circumstances before a minor could have an abortion. Another four were partial-birth abortion bans.

Three dealt with fetal anesthesia -- requiring physicians to provide pain relief measures to a fetus before an abortion. Two more are identical to McDonnell's own 24-hour, written consent bill, and one would have voided surrogacy contracts that encouraged or required abortions in certain circumstances.

If I've missed something, or if someone has access to the five pre-1994 bills that doesn't involve driving to Richmond -- I'd love to hear about it.

Here's the list of bills for those who'd like to take a look for themselves:

2005       HB 1524
2004       HB 1315
2004       SB 371
2003       HB 2513
2003       HB 1402
2002       HB 563
2002       HB 600
2002       HB 601
2001       HB 2570
2000       HB 1482
2000       SB 781
1999       HB 2108
1999       HB 2160
1998       HB 1371
1998       SB 552
1997       HB 2778
1997       HB 1629
1997       HB 1945
1997       HB 2832
1997       SB 1148
1996       HB 225
1996       HB 267
1996       SB 25
1995       HB 2408
1995       HB 2486
1994       HB 1079
1994       HB 1181
1994       HB 1225
1994       HB 1355
1994       SB 519
1993       HB 2250
1993       HB 2342
1992       HB 1110
1992       HB 323
1992       HJR 225

Shannon on the air

2009-09-22T17:43:08Z

Democratic attorney general nominee Steve Shannon is on the air with his first ad.

Gubernatorial sit rep

2009-09-21T19:12:37Z

Creigh Deeds' campaign made it clear on Monday: they're going all "thesis," all the time.

Polls have tightened up since The Washington Post first wrote about McDonnell's 1989 master's thesis. But looking at the deep internals of some of the polling flying around, the story doesn't look to be hurting McDonnell so much as it's helping Deeds.

All things thesis have cut the gap between the two men, but not by pushing McDonnell down. McDonnell's share of the vote has remained largely stable, while Deeds has increased, cutting into the Republican's lead.

The Republican's favorability ratings remain high -- even in a poll done by the uber-partisan blog DailyKos, +16 compared to +5 for Deeds. Rasmussen shows McDonnell's favorability ratings equally high, +22 compared to Deeds' +8.

Instead, it looks like Deeds is betting that thesis attacks will engender enough outrage in Northern Virginia to pull Democrats out to the polls in Obama-like numbers. And that's the key. Deeds has to get a voter turnout that looks much more like November 2008 than the likely voters who have responded to polling to date.

But will it work? If history is any guide, it might not.

In 2005, the Republican former attorney general was facing a similar enthusiasm gap, brought on in part by rank-and-file GOP anger over then-Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner's $1.5 billion tax hike, facilitated by Republicans in the General Assembly.

Jerry Kilgore grabbed social issues -- then Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine's opposition to the death penalty -- and fired off some truly gut-wrenching ads in the last days of the campaign in an effort to energize conservatives.

[Full disclosure: I totally blew the call on the 2005 race. I thought the death penalty ads sealed it for Kilgore. So I'm an idiot. Now that we've got that out of the way...]

But the ads flopped once Kaine took to the air with an ad where he looked into the camera and promised to enforce the death penalty regardless of his personal opposition.

There are a lot of parallels between Deeds and Kilgore. Deeds has the same handicap of trying to prove himself to Northern Virginia voters who might be skeptical of his rural roots. And the national winds are blowing against him, too.

The Kaine-Kilgore race was an outlet for a lot of pent-up political frustration from the hard fought presidential race of 2004. Democrats were decidedly put out that President Bush won a second term, and poured much of that energy into the gubernatorial race.

To say Republicans in 2009 are fired up after President Obama's run to the White House is an understatement.

Kilgore also had an ill national wind blowing in his face. Not long before the campaign really got rolling, Hurricane Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast, leaving Bush's FEMA leadership with egg on their face.

Democrats rule the roost in Washington these days, and congressional approval ratings have never been lower. There's also serious unease in Virginia these days with the proposed health care overhaul and "cap and trade" global warming bill.

The next few rounds of polls are going to be very interesting to watch indeed.

Shannon on accountability

2009-09-16T21:27:29Z

Virginia's conflict of interest laws need a serious re-work, according to Del. Steve Shannon, D-Vienna, the Democratic nominee for attorney general.

The situation involving Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News, is proof that something isn't working in Richmond, Shannon said during a conference call with reporters today.

From the press release:

"This scandal has left a stain of public corruption on Richmond and our public universities," said Shannon. "In order to keep it from spreading, we need an Attorney General who will take a serious approach to preventing and confronting violations of public trust.'
"If I am elected I will work make our government more accountable and transparent by strengthening our outdated conflict of interest laws, increasing penalties for those who violate them and making important public information accessible to Virginians on the Internet."

Shannon's whole plan is here.

Solid advice for political scribblers

2009-09-10T17:06:48Z

Fantastic advice for reporters from a blog. If more political reporters would read and follow these steps, there'd be fewer keyboard-shaped dents in my forehead.

From the column:

3. Read both right and left political blogs (and Andrew Sullivan's site doesn't count as conservative). Blogs can be silly, full of misinformation, and downright deceitful, but the best of the best offer savvy insights into politicians and the reporters who cover them.
4. Hold the powerful accountable, even if they echo your views. Michael Moore's upcoming film, Capitalism: A Love Story, hits theaters this fall. It's a lock to earn rave reviews and countless softball interviews. Try questioning the tactics used in the film, the facts on the display, and Moore himself.
...
6. Read -- and respond to -- your critics. If a reader accuses you of bias or any other journalistic indiscretion, consider the argument. And assuming the e-mail or letter didn't devolve into name calling or obscenities, write back with a personal note. You'll improve the reporter-reader relationship, which has been severely damaged over time due to arrogance, and let them know you take their views seriously. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with their critique.

Rep. Frank Wolf: 30 days to read health bill, please

2009-09-10T16:56:53Z

Health care reform is a complicated issue, so Congress should take at least a month to read the bill, according to Rep. Frank Wolf, R-10th.

From Wolf's office:

WASHINGTON - Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10th) today announced he is supporting the call for any health care reform legislation considered by Congress be made available online in its final form 30 days prior to being voted on in the House.

"Clearly Congress needs to deal with the rising cost of health care, but it needs to get it right and the public needs to be involved and aware of what is being considered," Wolf said. "This resolution will ensure that there is ample time to review the bill by Members and the public. This issue is far too important to be rushed through the House and not properly vetted."

Wolf said the health care reform legislation presently being considered in the House has been marked up by three different committees, and there will likely be no formal hearings on the final version of the bill that is put together for a vote on the House floor. The current bill - H.R. 3200 - is already over 1,000 pages and is expected to grow.

Bolling on the air, Wagner fires back

2009-09-10T16:45:30Z

Incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling is on the air with his first TV ad this race:

Democratic challenger Jody Wagner's campaign didn't wait long to fire off a response.

From the news release (which actually arrived a few minutes before the new ad did):

RICHMOND - Bill Bolling just can't seem to get his own record straight. Today, Bolling released his first TV ad, entitled "Lessons." In it, Bolling says that "we need more money in our classrooms, increasing teacher pay, and improving schools." He also notes his support for the Children's Health Insurance Program. Once again, Bolling's rhetoric doesn't match his record:

- Bolling voted against new funding for education. In the State Senate, Bolling repeatedly voted against new funding for education, including Governor Mark Warner's record investment in public schools in the 2004-2006 budget.

- Bolling voted against new funding for health care. Bolling also repeatedly voted against funding for health care-more than $16 billion in the 2004-2006 budget alone-including money to construct a children's hospital at the University of Virginia.

- No-Show Bolling continues. According to available meeting minutes, Bolling failed to show up to a single meeting of the Commission on Civics Education or Governor Kaine's Health Care Reform Commission.

- Bolling's own transportation plan would take money from education and children's health care. Bolling's own transportation plan would take money from schools and the Children's Health Insurance Program by using money from the General Fund for transportation.

A strategy in ads

2009-09-10T16:18:40Z

"The Thesis" fell flat. Now what?

If the ads Democrat Creigh Deeds' campaign has running today are any indication, it's a three-prong strategy.

Two polls done after the revelation of Republican Bob McDonnell's controversial 1989 master's thesis at Regent University indicated that the damage done to the former attorney general has been minimal.

A raft of new ads in the past couple of days would indicate that the Democrat's campaign is pursuing a new tack. The objective is simple: try to knock down McDonnell's favorability ratings in two places where the Democrat needs much more support -- vote-heavy Northern Virginia and rural southwest Virginia.

In Northern Virginia, it's still The Thesis, followed by The Thesis and more of The Thesis. This ad, now in fairly heavy rotation (heavy rotation = I saw it twice while I was ironing a shirt), keeps up the drumbeat.

Deeds' strategy in southwest Virginia is entirely different. Voters there are much less likely to be outraged by the Republican's past writings on social issues, so the campaign has launched an ad that hopes to use a little political jujitsu.

Team McDonnell has blasted Deeds over his support for climate change legislation that Republicans say would cause power bills to skyrocket. This ad turns that on its head, taking the attorney general's office position in an Appalachian Power rate hike proceeding before the State Corporation Commission and throws it back at McDonnell.

(Snarky mountain-dwelling redneck note: It's pronounced 'Apple-at-cha,' as in "Your sister threw an apple atch 'ya".)

But it's not enough to give voters a reason to hate your opponent. You have to give them a reason to love you. Witness this ad from Deeds, regarding education.

Will it work? Only the polls will tell.

Allen: Not damaged goods?

2009-09-08T20:34:10Z

Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen looks at what people think of former U.S. Sen. George Allen, two-years post "macaca."

It may have made enough of a difference to tip the needle in an extremely tight race, but I don't think it had a huge impact on voters' long term perceptions of him- it may have made Democrats who disliked him already dislike him even more but it didn't make many Republicans sour on him and evidently the impact with independents was small as well.

Read the whole thing.