Category: Politics
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Money Can’t Buy You Love (or Elections)
The 2020 election season has been fascinating to behold. Two billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, attempted to purchase themselves the Democratic Party presidential nomination through massive advertising buys. Bloomberg supplemented his television and online ad buys by hiring every party operative in sight and setting up campaign offices everywhere. “It is an open question…
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Virginia Beach: No Reason to Fire Mayor Bobby Dyer
by Kerry Dougherty Virginia Beach Councilman Aaron Rouse — on the job for a mere 14 months — has announced that he’s ready to resign his seat to run for mayor. Sigh. Some of us who supported him for council feared this might happen. It’s a bad move. Very bad. First, Mayor Bobby Dyer is…
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Virginia’s New Suburbia
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s suburbs are undergoing profound demographic changes with tremendous implications for politics and real-estate development strategy, argues Greg Weatherford in Virginia Business magazine. The suburbs are less white than they used to be. Northern Virginia, unsurprisingly, is leading the way. As of 2018, 49.4% of Northern Virginia residents identified as members…
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How Politically Skewed Is Virginia’s Artista Class?
In my previous blog post, I documented how Virginia’s college and university faculty staff skew leftward in their campaign contributions (at least among those who donated $10,000 or more over the past 20 years). But the imbalance was nothing compared to that of Virginia’s artistic/literary class. Using the same methodology (more than $10,000 in contributions…
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How Politically Skewed is Virginia’s Professoriat?
by James A. Bacon How thoroughly dominated are America’s institutions of higher education by faculty and staff hewing to the left side of the political spectrum? In a survey of 12,372 professors, finds a new National Association of Scholars study, 48.4% are registered Democrats and 5.7% are registered Republicans. The ratio of Democratic to Republican…
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Virginia Rated Worst State for Partisan Gerrymandering
By DJ Rippert They’ll be back (in office forever). The USC Schwarzennegger Institute released a report finding that Virginia had the highest degree of partisan gerrymandering among all U.S. states. The report analyzed the “statewide popular vote in 2017 or 2018 state legislative elections and the partisan composition of the state legislative chambers in 2019.”…
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West Virginia Offers to Incorporate Disaffected Virginia Counties
By DJ Rippert Almost heaven. West Virginia state legislator Gary Howell is spearheading an effort to allow Virginia jurisdictions frustrated by Richmond a chance to join West Virginia. While this might seem like gimmickry, Howell claims that “43 out of 100 West Virginia house members are sponsoring a resolution that would let West Virginia accept some…
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The Political Economy of Healthcare: a New Coalition Forms
A new healthcare coalition has appeared on the scene in Virginia that claims to represent the interests of “thousands of Virginians with chronic diseases, small business owners, and older adults” to protect patients with pre-existing conditions and to “strengthen” the health insurance marketplace. The Healthy Market VA Coalition is endorsing SB 404, which would limit…
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Finished with the Second Amendment Virginia Dems Now Attack the First (and Sixth)
By DJ Rippert Sticks and stones? Del. Jeffrey M. Bourne, D-Richmond, has introduced HB1627. The bill is entitled, “Threats and harassment of certain officials and property; venue.” The proposed legislation strengthens a series of very questionable laws already on the books. The first few sections of the existing law make it illegal to make threats…
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At Least He’s Asking the Right Questions….
by James A. Bacon With Democrats controlling the Governor’s mansion, the Attorney General’s office, the state Senate, and the House of Delegates, what’s a Republican to do, asks Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania. Republicans constitute a minority caucus of 19 senators and 45 delegates, but they are hardly powerless, Reeves says in a Fredericksburg.com op-ed. Today’s Virginia Democrats,…
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Plundering the Middle Class
by James A. Bacon To get a handle on how progressive (to be clear, I use “progressive” as a synonym for “leftist”) Governor Ralph Northam’s proposed two-year budget is, consider the following. If Northam’s agenda is adopted, Virginia’s middle class will pay higher gas taxes, higher cigarette taxes, higher income taxes, and higher electric rates.…
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More Info, Please, on Northam’s Proposed New $145 Million Entitlement
by James A. Bacon In his State of the Commonwealth speech yesterday, Governor Ralph Northam outlined his proposals for hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending initiatives. Needless to say, it was impossible during such a high-altitude overview to provide a detailed explanation of the thinking behind each program. In most instances, he posited…
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Virginia 2020: Tax-and-Spend on Steroids
by James A. Bacon Ralph Northam ran for governor as a don’t-rock-the-boat center-left moderate who would continue governance of Virginia in the tradition of his predecessors Terry McAuliffe and Tim Kaine. Virginians bit the bait. Then the blackface scandal happened, and Northam had to do penitence to Virginia’s progressives to survive politically. Subsequently, in what…
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After Ten Years in Washington, Mark Warner Has Lost His Way
by James A. Bacon This morning I found an email in my inbox, a fund-raising message from U.S. Senator Mark Warner calling for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. It saddens me to say what I’m about to say because, other than breaking his promise not to raise taxes, I thought Warner did…
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House of Delegates Election Tally: $66.4 Million
The final money tally is in, and it looks like more money was spent on House of Delegates elections in 2019 than any election in Virginia history. That was a nearly 42% increase over 2017, which itself was a record, according to data published by the Virginia Public Access Project. Democrats raised $38.2 million in the…