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Exactly
one week later, a Mason-Dixon poll on the race was
released. It gave Tim Kaine a sliver of a lead over
Kilgore. Will pundits flock to analyze this news?
It remains to be seen, but bloggers Barnie Day of
Bacon’s Rebellion and Norm Leahy of One Man’s
Trash, at different ends of the political spectrum,
had similar instant reactions: good news for Kaine
and third party candidate Russ Potts; bad news for
Kilgore.
If
pundits do frame the race based on the polling data,
their spin will be fun to compare with a
surprisingly counter-intuitive column from Jeff
Schapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
First out of the chute with his Sunday slot,
Schapiro listed four potential problems for Tim
Kaine that might cause him to “lose his groove,
despite a new poll showing him neck and neck with
Republican Jerry Kilgore.” Schapiro sees Kaine
failing to raise his issues, fighting on GOP social
issue turf, allowing Russ Potts expose his
“liberal flank,” and being hostage to popular
Gov. R. Mark Warner’s presidential
calculations.
One
has to wonder if Schapiro has much faith in the poll
results, or if he is just trying to slow Kaine’s apparent
momentum to preserve the pundit nirvana that is a
neck-and-neck horserace.
Pundit
of the Week
Schapiro
garners the “Pundit of the Week” award for his
campaign analysis and his thoughtful review of the
mini-scandal at the Virginia Retirement System,
where the director received a $263,000 severance
package without proper approvals.
While
there have not been many “scandals” in the
Warner Administration, whenever there is a
questionable activity, the Governor has been a
distant, Teflon-coated bystander. Schapiro obliquely
casts a small shadow of responsibility for the VRS
transgression on the Governor’s decision at the
beginning of his term to run his transition
operation out of the retirement headquarters office.
That decision “represented a symbolic erosion of
the system's independence.”
Another
View of VRS
Margaret
Edds of the Virginian-Pilot also addressed
the VRS situation, attributing the problem to
government trying to operate like a business,
offering a big executive pay-out and failing to
receive approval from the board of directors.
Diversity
Might Not be All of the Problem
Shanna
Flowers of the Roanoke Times rightly
criticized the former chairman of the Western
Virginia Workforce Development Board for
reorganizing the board and, in the process,
eliminating all minority members. In concentrating
just on diversity, however, she missed the
opportunity to explore just what this board has been
doing for a “region that lags behind the rest of
the state economically.”
No
Rest for the Weary
Gordon
Morse of the Daily Press and Washington
Post might be on a European vacation, but he
can’t stop thinking about his pet issue: the need
for higher taxes. A sign in Austria that says
“Parken Frei,” but only means that a parking
space for a fee is available leads him to
rhapsodize, “somehow that message needs to get
across to Virginia road users: not free.”
Straight
Talk
One
of the biggest stories of the week was the possible
addition of the Oceana Naval Air Station to the list
of military bases that might be closed. In the midst
of hand wringing by Hampton Roads interest groups,
Kerry Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot
reviewed the record and concluded, “We brought
this mess on ourselves.”
Looming
Large
As
if the current crop of gubernatorial candidates
weren’t suffering
enough in comparison to other political titans,
University of Virginia professor/pundit Larry Sabato
offered a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed
tribute to J. Sargeant Reynolds, noting a
“yearning for the might-have-beens that never
were.” Reynolds, Virginia’s Lt. Governor,
died tragically of a brain tumor in 1971, and Sabato
helped sponsor a one-day conference on the legacy of
a politician unable to fulfill all the promise his
short life offered.
Bloggers
Meet the Mainstream
Daily
Progress political columnist Bob Gibson has been
one of the few major pundits to take bloggers
seriously. Not only did Gibson plug a Sorensen
Institute blog conference scheduled for August 27th,
he also was one of the first to register.
--July
25, 2005
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