Category: Politics
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Virginia Needs a Constitutional Amendment to Elect the Board of Education
by James C. Sherlock The Virginia Board of Education (VBOE) is by far the most powerful and consequential public board in Virginia. It is the only one whose Powers and Duties are defined in the Virginia Constitution. It was a mistake not to make the members of the Board with such vast and unconstrained powers…
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Fall Elections Threaten Northam’s Radical Education Team
by James C. Sherlock Politics is a contact sport, and the two people in the Northam administration most likely to be blindsided are Secretary of Education Atif Qarni and Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane. I say blindsided — they won’t see it coming — because the hits will come from their own team. This…
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CNU Polls — Post-Trump Shift Happening in Virginia
by Chris Saxman Folks, we have a ball game in Virginia. Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center released another poll today and VPM’s headline captured the catnip as their headline writer wrote, “New Virginia Poll Shows Support for Progressive Ideas, but Not Labels.” It should have read “Virginians are centrists but like free stuff.” In that…
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Where Is the Trump Donor Money Going?
The Virginia Public Access Project has done an interesting bit of data sleuthing. It identified 360 Trump donors who have given to Republicans battling for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination through the end of March. Trump in Heels Amanda Chase is dominating in the number of contributions, but average size of most her donations is small.…
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Virginia Voters Tilt Mildly Right — Why Can’t Conservatives Win More Elections?
by James A. Bacon Virginia voters describe themselves as ideologically moderate, leaning conservative, according to a new poll by the Wason Center for Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University. Asked to place themselves on a 0-10 scale (liberal to conservative) with 5.0 being middle of the road, the 1,008 voters polled rated themselves 5.83 on…
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“Virginia Students Will Never Get This Year Back”
by James A. Bacon I have no inkling whether Former House Speaker Kirk Cox will win the Republican gubernatorial nomination, but I do think he just latched on to a good issue and framed it just the right way. The headline of a press release issued today says, “Virginia Students Will Never Get This Year…
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Union Bosses Bullied the CDC to Keep Schools Closed
by Kerry Dougherty Anyone remember when Donald Trump was pummeled for putting pressure on the CDC over COVID? Wonder what those critics are saying now that we learn union bosses from the American Federation of Teachers essentially wrote public policy for the agency that kept children locked out of schools last winter. It’s an astonishing,…
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Chase Aide Pulls Gun in Self Defense
by James A. Bacon Sometimes Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, goes out looking for trouble. Sometimes trouble comes looking for Amanda Chase. Yesterday the Washington Post published an account of an incident in which Chase’s aide brandished an AR-15 pistol at a man whom Chase said threatened them during a road rage incident. My immediate reaction…
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A Positive View of the Performance of Two Key General Assembly Members
by James C. Sherlock Virginia has some dreadful members of its General Assembly. We spend more time writing about them than we do on those who are exemplary. I am going to focus on two that I truly admire, Senator Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, and Delegate Jason Miyares, R-Virginia Beach. It is hard to relate in…
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Did Joe Biden Just Cost Virginia Democrats 47,000 Votes?
by Chris Saxman Full disclosure on this one: I hate cigarettes. I have never smoked one — ever. When I waited tables and tended bar, the worst part of the job was cleaning ash trays. And that includes the time I had to break up a bar fight after which the teeth swallowing loser had…
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Cox First to Appeal for Second Choice Votes
by Steve Haner Former House Speaker Kirk Cox is the first of the GOP candidates for Governor to take the expected step of asking explicitly for second choice votes. “Delegates, the Republican convention is fast approaching,” he says in new video message. “The Republican nomination for Governor has been spirited. Look, I understand I might…
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How Not to Build a Big Tent
by James A. Bacon American Jews belonging to the Reform and Conservative movements within Judaism back Democrats in overwhelming numbers. Ultra-Orthodox Jews skew strongly Republican. But there is a swing vote within U.S. Judaism: Modern Orthodox Jews. While a slim majority identify as Democrat, liberal or progressive, 37% describe themselves as Republican, conservative, or libertarian,…
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GOP and Virginia Election Laws, Part II
by Steve Haner With the 2021 General Assembly receding in the rear view mirror, the voting rules for this year’s Virginia elections are set. Republicans who are whining that the deck has been stacked against them are making a mistake. Every change the Democrats see as a benefit to them is of equal benefit to…
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GOP and Virginia Election Laws, Part I
by Steve Haner Let us elevate a discussion from the comment string to the main page: Having examined Richard Hall-Sizemore’s offered examples of Virginia Republicans seeking to discourage voting in Virginia, I reject his assertion (part of a coordinated national campaign) that those bills “would result in fewer people voting.” The broadest Republican bill he…
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Comrades of Convenience
by Kerry Dougherty Opportunists? Or bosom buddies? You decide. On Thursday morning, Gov. Ralph Northam and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe were palling around town — Norfolk — together. Best of friends. Comrades, really. Shoot, Northam passed up the historic opportunity to endorse one of the two black women — State Sen. Jennifer McClellan and former…