Del. SWACGirl?
Dickie Bell. Scott Sayre. Lynn Mitchell. (Yes, that Lynn Mitchell.)
Those are the names that we’re hearing associated with the open GOP nomination in the 20th House District.
In order of likelihood …
Dickie Bell: A Staunton native, Bell is in his fourth term on Staunton City Council, and it should be noted that he always runs well on Election Days. You’d have to wonder how well-known outside Staunton he is, and no, you can’t count the Riverheads school district area, since that’s not in the 20th.
I worked with Bell a good bit back a few years ago when we had a mutual interest in seeing Staunton build a public skateboard park. Outside of that, I don’t know that he has much of a track record of working across the aisle. He’s usually the 1 in 6-1 votes on City Council, which if you don’t like the way City Council has been doing things in Staunton in recent years isn’t a bad thing, but if you do like the direction Staunton is headed in, well …
Scott Sayre: He has one losing campaign under his belt, and speaking from experience in that respect, my guess is he knows what he did wrong last time around, in his case his 2007 run for the Republican nomination in the 24th Senate District, and he won’t make the same mistake twice.
My read of his mistakes in ‘07:
- He spent too much money on too negative TV advertising. I talked with several voters at the polls in the ‘07 primary and got the sense that a number of Emmett Hanger voters were motivated to go to the polls by the negative, negative, negative Sayre campaign messages that were bombarding the airwaves the final two weeks of the primary.
- He lacked specifics. I interviewed Sayre on his campaign announcement tour early in the ‘07 race. He tried to make every answer about his conservative philosophy. OK, so how does your conservative philosophy apply to transportation funding? To health care? He seemed to either be hiding something or more simply bereft of even basic knowledge of the world around him. Not good in either case.
- Bad timing. Emmett Hanger is going to be a tough cookie to beat in the 24th as it is currently constituted. He is most vulnerable in intraparty contests, but as he proved in ‘07, even running a halfhearted campaign against a rabid opponent is enough for him to be able to win.
Lynn Mitchell: The sound I’m hearing is those of you among my fellow progressives who know SWACGirl even just a sliver trying to pick yourselves back from the floor from laughing a bit too hysterically.
Mitchell is said to be considering a run at the GOP nod in the 20th, and I have to say she could be formidable at least in the intraparty contest. It wouldn’t take much for Mitchell to get the Kurt Michael band back together, and the Michael-Mitchell team can be something of a force in local Republican circles.
How that would translate to a general election remains to be seen, of course.
I will say that if I remember right, and I usually do, Mitchell was a key player behind the scenes in the 2001 election in the 20th backing a guy named Chris Saxman that few of us had heard of and ended up sweeping the floor with the guy we had heard of, Democrat Tracy Pyles, that November.
That election was a special election in a district created in the 2000-2001 legislative redistricting with only a couple-month-long campaign from the summer to November. This 2009 race is taking on a similar feel with the sudden and quite unexpected midsummer departure of the incumbent Saxman from the race leaving things wide open.
Del. SWACGirl? Stranger things have happened. Not much stranger, but still.
- Column by Chris Graham
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAA DEL SWACGIRL, AAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Too funny. What an amazing trainwreck that would have been to watch.
In some ways, I will be sorry to see Chris go. He is a decent sort and a hard worker. I disagree with him on some issues — including his heart’s desire, creating his own parallel school system — but at least you know where he was coming from.
Dickie Bell stands on principle, but so much that, as Chris points out, he stands often as the lone naysayer. That doesn’t get much done, and he does resemble Eeyore (as Jim McCloskey once portrayed him, I believe). He is the one councilperson conservatives in Staunton know and love (and vote for) but I don’t know if that translates into broad support in the area. And he has shown himself querulous at times.
Mr. Sayre would be a disaster for the area and potentially for his party because of his negativity on most issues. If he has a positive policy message, it never emerged from a cloud of “I’m not that liberal (sic) Hanger fellow”. Maybe if Chris were his campaign manager (joke, I trust).
SWACGirl! A perennial voice, mostly congratulating people who think as she does on how clever they are. The circle jerk of local Republican bloggers often got hilarious in recent years as the spent their time congratulating each other on their insights. I would love to see her in a debate the Eric Curren….or Scott Sayre for that matter.
Given the apparent choices, if ever we needed a Democrat, it’s right now.
Chris, enjoyed the speculation … it was good for a laugh. I have posted about this at SWAC Girl:
http://swacgirl.blogspot.com/2009/07/del-swac-girl.html
See you in the political area. ~Lynn
Swac girl? Just take the “S” off and that’s what you’d get…
Editor’s Note: I’ve deleted a pair of comments alleging that SWACGirl, Lynn Mitchell, filed a false police report against Mike Stark. Without any specifics as to the allegation, I haven’t been able to find anything verifying that Mitchell ever filed a police report on Stark.
The commenter, I assume, is referring to the detention and removal of Stark from a George Allen campaign rally at the Shenandoah Valley Regional AIrport in 2006.
In the absence of any evidence that Mitchell filed a police report in that matter or another matter involving Stark, I can’t allow any comment to that effect to remain on the site.
Fair enough. Here are the details.
A woman and a young man, rumored around the VA blogosphere to be Lynn Mitchell and Alex Davis (used to have a blog, friends with Lynn), both claimed Mike Stark hit them at the rally he was removed from and then detained at the police station nearby. Both the woman and young man apparently made quite a scene and went to the police station to give their “story”. In the end, they did not file a report, but they sure took up a lot of time at the police station, LYING. They did this to create a spectacle and get Mike Stark removed more quickly than he would have been. There is a video out there; you can see Alex Davis/ Alex Davis deleted his blog in its entirety not long afterward…..
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cowy6y0-55Y&eurl=
2) From the original diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/4/266480/-It-happened-AGAIN!!-(updated-again-with-better-video-link)
“I however, saw an opening. There was no obstruction between me and the door through which the Senator had to pass in order to get to the tarmac. I made haste to establish position so that I could ask my question before the Senator left. I had just about arrived when I saw a blur out of my peripheral vision. A twenty-something that had stood in front of me during Allen’s speech (whispering things back and forth to whom I thought was his mom) just barely clipped my arm and took a dive.”
Now, who do you think that 20 something and “his mom” was? Chris Green may know….he left a few comments on the youtube page.
3) Many pics of the “fallen 20 something patriot”: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/4/266480/-It-happened-AGAIN!!-(updated-again-with-better-video-link)#c579
4) Alex Davis and Anne Taetzsch admit involvement right here, and OH MY! Anne basically says nothing and Davis refuses to comment to the police! Also, Lynn Mitchell admitted she was at the same raly, with the same group of people IN WRITING:
http://swacgirl.blogspot.com/2006/11/stark-stalks-senator-allen-at-weyers.html
http://www.whsv.com/news/headlines/4567637.html
“Stark says he brushed by an Alex Davis who fell.
Davis didn’t comment on the incident but other Allen supporters told a different story.
Ann Taetzsch says she was pushed as Stark rushed by.
“I was in a crowd of folks and Mr. Stark pushed me out of the way and into the camera in order to get around the folks to get to the senator,” says Taetzsch.”
My point is that LYNN MITCHELL has been involved in VERY SHADY CAMPAIGN tactics and should be kept far away from any elected position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1o1p_ly7Yw
How far Mike Stark has gone…while Lynn Mitchell has done NOTHING….
Darn. The Republicans didn’t fall for my attempt at psychops. (Well, David Karaffa did. As did obviously some of my fellow Democrats.)
I don’t hold the same personal grudges that some Dems do toward people like Lynn Mitchell and David Karaffa. Perhaps it’s because I’ve met them, and though I vehemently disagree with them on many important substantive issues, I know them well enough to understand that they’re as motivated by what they believe to be right as I am about what I believe to be right.
That said, no, no, no, no, and nothing against them, but neither is ready to be a member of the House of Delegates or other elected body yet.
Dickie Bell was the obvious choice on the GOP side tonight. I hope we at least made the 20th District GOP nominating committee think a little bit before they nominated the obvious choice.
Last night was a good occasion for The Base to blow off some steam and make themselves feel important. Bell was the obvious choice, as you say, though I’m surprised that you were surprised he had to make the required concessions to that wing of the party. He said all the right things, and I came away very impressed.
Chris, what did you do to make David Karaffa get mad?