Last night at the wonderful St. Patrick's Day party hosted by newly elected Congressman Gerry Connolly, there was a straw poll for the three Democrat VA governor candidates, as well as the Lt. Governor candidates. On the surface it appeared that Terry McCaullife won in a landslide, 58% to 30% for Brian Moran, and 12% for Creigh Deeds. But under the surface, it was total sleaze, and proved that his candidacy is based more on money (surprise!) than on qualifications. He is afraid of a fair fight.
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I noticed an unusually large number of young people, some seemingly too young to vote, with McAuliffe buttons on. Two of them sat at my table. "Oh, we came in from Maryland," they told me. Interesting. Upon a little more investigation, turns out that not only did many come from MD, many also came from DC. So what, you might say? Uh, if McAuliffe is running for Governor of Virginia, he might try limiting his paid supporters to people from Virginia. Of course, this may be unfair, as my impression is he knows very little about, nor cares much, about Virginia.
When he spoke, the first thing he said was "money is not the important thing, it's the issues," well, sure, Terry, looks like you have heard the chatter about you. The second thing he did was to seemingly take credit for Obama's win in Virginia, not bothering to mention that supported Hillary Clinton throughout the primary.
The word was also going around that he had paid for 400 supporters to attend (at $40 a pop). I have no way of verifying this, but it seems to fit. I was interviewed by The Journal newspaper and I hope they published what I said. We really don't need this kind of sleaze running for office - see this excellent revelation about some seemingly very questionable practices in the past from a previous diary by Mike Stark. I am supporting Brian Moran, but either he or Creigh Deeds would be fine governors, both have long roots in Virginia and great experience in the legislative branch of government. They know the issues, they know the state, they care. To me, McCaullife is on a par with AIG executives - the ones who live in a world of self-entitlement. McAuliffe's tenure as head of the DNC was characterized by one thing - fundraising. It took a small town Doctor from Vermont to actually figure out how to win, with a 50 state strategy. So let me say, I agree with Terry when he says that the Virginia governor race should not be about money, which is why I will work very hard to defeat him in the primary.