Virginia Republicans formally nominated Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to run for governor in 2013, and added as his ticketmates Mark Obenshain, a Harrisonburg state senator, as the attorney-general nominee, and E.W. Jackson, a Chesapeake-based Baptist minister, as the nominee for lieutenant governor.
Obenshain, the son of the late Richard Obenshain, the 1978 Republican Senate nominee who died in a plane crash, is a more mainstream choice for Republicans. Jackson is perhaps farther to the right than the Tea Party favorite Cuccinelli, making for an interesting GOP ticket for the November election.
“This year’s election will present Virginians with a clear choice between a Democratic vision for more jobs, good schools and the transportation system our economy needs and the Cuccinell-Jackson-Obenshain agenda to roll back the clock on women’s health and turn our government into a hotbed for Tea Party extremism,” Democratic Party of Virginia chair Charniele Herring said in a statement Saturday night.
Cuccinelli is looking to succeed another former Republican attorney general, Bob McDonnell, as governor. He will face Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe in the November election. Jackson will face one of two Democrats – State Sen. Ralph Northam or former Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra. Obenshain will compete with either State Sen. Mark Herring or former federal prosecutor Justin Fairfax.
Democrats will select their down-ticket nominees in a June 11 state primary.
With their own dust still not settled, Democrats went on the attack late Saturday night. Jackson, an also-ran in last year’s Republican Sente primary, was a popular target.
“I know that come November, the voters of Virginia will reject Jackson and his extreme agenda. This is a man who has attacked the Democratic Party as having an ‘agenda worthy of the Antichrist.’ This is a man who has called the LGBT community ‘perverted’ and ‘very sick people,” Chopra said in a statement
“Voters in Virginia saw what Bishop Jackson stood for last year, when he ran for U.S. Senate, and they didn’t like it. He couldn’t even break 5 percent of the vote in the Republican primary. The fact that he is now the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor shows just how far to the right the Virginia GOP has moved,” Chopra said.
“E.W. Jackson is fighting tooth and nail with Ken Cuccinelli to move Virginia backwards by imposing an extreme social agenda onto the Commonwealth,” Northam said in a statement. “The Cuccinelli/Jackson ticket would prevent Medicaid expansion and enforce the medically irrelevant TRAP regulations that will shut down women’s health clinics across the Commonwealth. I have the track record of defending women’s health care and defeating the transvaginal ultrasound bill to present a clear contrast to voters that is necessary to win in November.”
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