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Two
from the Bacon’s
Rebellion stable were among the few who tried to
find meaning in the primary. Pat
McSweeney wrote that while it was difficult to
find a consistent pattern from Republican voting, he
found evidence of Democratic crossovers in some
races. Barnie Day had no
trouble pronouncing a verdict: “The flat-earth
wing of
Virginia
's
Republican Party is no more.”
The
primaries were messy affairs with large casts of
characters and pesky local issues. The Russ Potts
saga was much easier to follow. In a 10-day stretch
the Winchester Senator got on the ballot with a
surprising number of signatures, rekindled an
adoring press, reached 2 percent in the polls, and
was excluded from debates by Jerry Kilgore.
The
press’s adulation of Potts was in evidence in Marc
Fisher’s Washington
Post tribute
to the now official candidate. Fisher backpedaled
from the lavish praise in his column during his
follow-up online chat, admitting, “Potts certainly
wins something of a bye because he is crusty,
outspoken, fun and has little chance of winning.”
Times-Dispatch
columnist Jeff
Schapiro, however, earned plaudits for being the
first major columnist to subject Potts’ ideas to
the same level of scrutiny as applied to Tim Kaine
and Jerry Kilgore. On
transportation, Schapiro described Potts’
“customary speak-first, fill-in-the-blanks-later
style.” He added, “While Kaine and Potts …
have yet to lay out their plans for updating the
transportation program, Kilgore has put something on
the table.”
When
the debate story hit, Schapiro followed up with a
column analyzing this latest chapter in the debate
about debates
He was unsparing in suggesting Kilgore’s
motives: “Kilgore has good reason to hide behind
the pointed prose of anonymous copywriters and
poll-tested video imagery. … In two Associated
Press-sponsored debates in 2003 and 2004, according
to most observers, Kilgore got his head handed to
him by Kaine.” Schapiro understated the obvious
when he wrote, “Potts needs all the publicity he
can get.” Kilgore’s refusal to debate gave Potts
a boatload of it.
Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress melded
the twin issues of media infatuation with Potts and
the debate story. He explained the infatuation using
a Potts-style howler: “Potts, a former
sportswriter, athletic director and promoter, can
crank out the corn pone with the best of ’em and
his rhetoric can soar over the top faster than a
foul tip off a Nolan Ryan heater.” Of Kilgore’s
no-debate-with-Potts strategy, Gibson suggested,
“That may make Kilgore, the man with the smallish
early lead, look tanned and ready and way too
guarded - and maybe a tad smallish.”
This
Center Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us
In
the same piece that pronounced the death of the
“flat earth wing” of the GOP, Barnie Day
welcomed readers to “Mark Warner’s Centrist
Virginia. It
was a very apt description, proclaiming that this
Virginia
is “one that has learned that good politics is not
always good policy and now eschews the fringe
extremes, left and right, and now demands to be
governed by Warner's centrist template.” Day then
went and ruined a perfectly good column by
suggesting that Russ Potts was being fitted for
Warner’s “centrist cloak.”
Please.
Warner himself, in describing the “sensible
center,” excluded “political platitudes and
incendiary rhetoric,” exactly Potts’ stock in
trade.
Primary
Blogging
With
turnout so low in this year’s primary, any claim
that the burgeoning
Virginia
blogosphere played a pivotal role in the contests
would be beside the point, true or not. Still, blogs
were usually the only in-depth sources for inside
information about the House of Delegate races and
continuous coverage of the spats between candidates
and their staffs. Particularly effective was Virginia
House of Delegates 2005 Elections, run by the
mysterious “Not Larry Sabato.” “Not
Larry’s” research drove excellent coverage on
other blogs, including Commonwealth
Conservative, Commonwealth
Watch, and Sic
Semper Tyrannis.
And no scan of primary blogging was complete
without a review of the jaundiced viewpoint on
candidates, issues, and advertising at One
Man’s Trash.
Coverage
may be even better in the fall. An occasional critic
of “Not Larry Sabato” has started a competing
site. His/her name? “Not
Mark Rozell.”
Turn
Off Your Phone
On
the Sunday before the primary election, Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress noted an extraordinary amount of
telephone “push polling.” He call it “trash”
and quoted Republican sources as laying the bulk of
the practice at the feet of the Virginia
Conservative Action PAC (
VCAP
).
After
the election, Richmond
Times-Dispatch columnist Ray McAllister, who had
been following the deluge of campaign calls in
several columns, explained
the whys and published phone numbers for
candidates so citizens could complain or ask not to
be called.
High-Minded
Two
of
Virginia
’s
top pundits went with “issue” pieces instead of
primary election spinning.
Margaret
Edds of the Virginian-Pilot
explored where Tim Kaine and Jerry Kilgore stand on education.
Specifically, she reviewed the issue of
funding, where Kilgore aligns more with Gov.
Warner’s view that education is fully funded, but
where Kaine aligns with JLARC in saying that
Virginia
is almost a billion dollars short. In a nutshell,
“One man’s ‘full-funding’ is another man’s
‘shortchanging.’”
Gordon
Morse, writing in the Washington
Post, took his now-familiar shots at Jim Gilmore
and Jerry Kilgore for their tax-cutting ways on his
way to discussing Medicaid (he didn’t have much to
say about Tim Kaine’s tax-cutting ideas). He
proposed a variety of new definitions of
conservative, including, “If it's convenient to
avoid discussions of looming problems -- i.e.,
Medicaid -- while screaming ‘liberal’ in the
direction of your opponents, then that's
conservative.”
Still
on Fire
In
our last column, Kerry Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot
was “Pundit of the Week” for her righteous sense
of outrage. She continued her crusading ways this
week by criticizing spendthrift
habits at the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Commission.
In a memorable line, she called them
“Sugar-addicted kids with an endless supply of
Oreos.”
An
Honor and a Snub
Virginia
Union
University
’s
basketball team was the first NCAA Division II
national champions ever to be invited to the White
House. Unfortunately and inexplicably, President
Bush failed to recognize them during the event they
were invited to attend, a ceremony honoring black
musicians.
This
“snub” allowed Times-Dispatch
columnist Michael Paul Williams an opportunity to drip
sarcasm against Sen. George Allen, also in
attendance (“I guess you assumed Allen was there
because of his abiding love of gospel music”) and
President Bush:
You
don't invite someone to your house without
acknowledging them. If your staff left you unaware
that the VUU Panthers were there - how did you miss
that huge national championship trophy? - someone in
your charge has some explaining to do. After all,
the political ritual of greet-the-champions isn't
rocket science.
The
athletes get the thrill of going to the White House
and meeting the president. But how exciting can it
be if you render them invisible?
You
get a nice photo op to sway black voters leery of
you and the Republican Party's awkward attempts at
outreach. After all, Colin and Condi alone can't
offset decades of Negro-hostile politicking. But
doesn't this require you to be in the photo?
Let’s
hope President Bush has somehow made amends to VUU
rather than decide never to invite a Division II
champion team again.
A
Simple Definition
Bart
Hinkle of the Times-Dispatch analyzed recent
campaign rhetoric: “Most of it is a wagonful of
fertilizer."
--June
20, 2005
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