Poll: Virginians divided over State Senate split
A new Public Policy Polling survey reveals that Virginia voters think that Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling would be acting in accord with the state Constitution if he were to break a tie in favor of giving Republicans control olf the State Senate, but that at the same time the GOP should share power with Democrats in accord with the results of the November General Assembly elections.
Fifty-five percent of Virginia voters think there should be some sort of power-sharing arrangement, according to a PPP poll released Friday, while only 31 percent of voters think Republicans should have full control of the senior chamber. The key voting bloc there is independents, who side with Democrats in backing power-sharing by a 53 percent-to-28 percent margin.
The split in favor of Bolling’s power to vote to break ties is much closer – with 37 percent saying they feel he has the power to side with Republicans in the Senate organization and 34 percent saying they don’t think he has that power. Read more
Poll: Republicans have early lead over Dems in ’13 state races
Republicans Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli both have early leads over potential Democratic gubernatorial challengers Terry McAuliffe and Tom Perriello.
Public Policy Polling has Bolling, the sitting lieutenant governor, leading McAuliffe by a 38 percent-to-33 percent margin and leading Perriello, the former Fifth District congressman, 39 percent to 32 percent. Cuccinelli, the sitting attorney general, leads McAuliffe 41 percent to 38 percent and Perriello 41 percent to 36 percent.
That the race on both sides is still very, very wide open is evident in the large numbers of voters who have no opinion one way or the other on any of the four. Sixty-six percent don’t know enough about Bolling, now in his second term as lieutenant governor, to have an opinion of him, while 64 percent have no opnion of Perriello, 59 percent say the same for McAuliffe and 35 percent say that for Cuccinelli.
Ken Plum: Virginia’s energy future
President Barack Obama declared a “Sputnik moment” for our country to recognize the dangers involved in our unquenchable need for oil and the civil unrest that marks the countries that supply us with petroleum. He established as a goal that 80 percent of U.S. energy come from clean generation sources by 2035. Just as engineers and scientists went to work in the 1960s to put us ahead in the space race, a massive effort is needed for our country to catch up with others in green technology and alternative energy sources and to free us from our dependence on foreign oil.
Edward L. Flippen, a Richmond attorney and energy regulation and policy expert, addressed our challenge in a recent opinion column for Virginia Business: “If there is an answer, it’s the tried and tested American way. We need to bring together our best and brightest to harness the limitless capabilities of our research institutions and invest whatever it takes. The result would not be much different from the actual Sputnik experience: the creation of billion-dollar industries, new technologies with applications heretofore unimaginable and, critically important in the fragile American economy, thousands of jobs.”
This is not the first time that Virginians have been given this message. When Terry McAuliffe ran for the nomination for governor of Virginia in 2009, he sounded the same theme of the importance of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, developing new green technologies, and creating jobs at the same time. A recent article in Huffington Post found that McAuliffe has followed through on his ideas even though he did not win the election. “By starting an electric and hybrid car company called GreenTech Auto, investing in wind turbines, scouting out new technology throughout Asia to bring back home, and fighting to resuscitate a shuttered factory in Franklin, Virginia, McAuliffe is personally taking the strategic financial risks he believes the state needs to launch into the future.”
The principal thrust of the current administration in Richmond is to push for offshore drilling. The broader issues of environmental challenges and the creation of jobs in a green economy have been left unaddressed. From my position on the House Agriculture, Chesapeake & Natural Resources Committee and my role on the Commission on Electric Utility Restructuring, I plan to continue to provide leadership for Virginia to seize the Sputnik moment to create a green economy, improve the quality of our environment, and create jobs.
I am pleased that Terry McAuliffe has agreed to join me in a discussion of those issues at my State of the Commonwealth Business Breakfast on June 7, 8:00 a.m., at the Hidden Creek Country Club in Reston. I hope you can join us. Write to me at kenplum@aol.com for details.
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Warner, McAuliffe: Don’t cede territory, and stand for something
The driving force behind this blog is my effort to get my head around what happened in Virginia between 2008 and 2009 that turned the tide from where we saw the Old Dominion give its electoral votes to Democrat Barack Obama in ‘08 and then elected Republicans Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli to state office in ‘09 by eye-popping margins.
I’m having a fun time getting people to talk to me on the record on the topic. I guess I should’ve figured as much. It’s easy to get people to talk when things are looking good. When things are bleak, why have your name associated with what some are likely to refer to as fingerpointing or sour grapes or what-have-you?
I have been able to get two players on the frighteningly short Virginia Democratic bench to weigh in at the outset of this project – Mark Warner and Terry McAuliffe. Warner and McAuliffe might be the party, for all intents and purposes, with questions swirling about whether Jim Webb will run for re-election in 2012, with Tim Kaine in Washington heading up the Democratic National Committee, and every single other Democrat in the state with any degree of name recognition having a big X in the ol’ L column for their most recent election effort.
Link to column on WhenVirginiaWasBlue.com.
McAuliffe: ‘I want to keep all of my options open’
Is Terry McAuliffe running for something? Well, not technically, but he is traveling with the former executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia, Levar Stoney, who now works for him in a sort of nebulous role that doesn’t have Stoney as a political aide, per se, but …
And McAuliffe didn’t begin his talk at a meeting of the Staunton Democratic Committee Tuesday night with politics, but rather what he’s doing in the business world, which is trying to build electric cars.
And McAuliffe, being McAuliffe, who once wrestled an alligator for a political contribution for a candidate that he was working for, is as gung-ho about the electric-car thing as he is anything political.
But he is still Terry McAuliffe.
“I want to keep all of my options open,” said McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chair and 2009 Democratic Party gubernatorial-nomination candidate, who you’d have to think is on the short list of top contenders for the next Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination after the beatdown that was handed to the state ticket in ’09 left a short bench for the party heading into the ’13 election cycle. Read more
WhenVirginiaWasBlue.com: McAuliffe-Paybacks, and comebacks
You ask Terry McAuliffe why he lost last year’s Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination, and he has a ready answer: Republicans.
“A significant number of Republicans showed up in our primary. I was 10 points up in my polling data, but I wasn’t polling Republicans,” McAuliffe said during a visit with the Staunton Democratic Committee Tuesday.
McAuliffe had been the heavy favorite going into the three-way race with eventual winner Creigh Deeds and Northern Virginia legislator Brian Moran. In the end, Deeds emerged the big winner, taking just short of half the votes cast, though Deeds went on to a historic defeat in the November election, losing by nearly 20 percentage points to Republican Bob McDonnell, ending a long winning streak by Democrats in statewide elections in the process.
Link to column on WhenVirginiaWasBlue.com.
Vindication – Deeds takes Democratic nomination in dramatic fashion
When Creigh Deeds announced his candidacy for the 2009 Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination back in December 2007, it was not exactly with the full support of the Democratic Party decisionmaking set. The whispers at the time and for months after were that party leaders had been trying to persuade Deeds to make another run at the attorney-general job to clear the way for Northern Virginia lawmaker and Mark Warner acolyte Brian Moran to run for governor. Read more
