By Peter Galuszka
Terry McAuliffe is well behind in a recent Washington Post poll — as much as 10 points (51% to 41%) among those who say they will cast ballots in November. Otherwise, the race is five points apart, still not good news for McAuliffe.
Previously, polls had put McAuliffe and opponent Kenneth Cuccinelli at about 50-50, so it is hard to explain what happened from around February when those results came in and the present.
If anything, the news has been running much harder against Cuccinnelli who is involved with two scandals involving unreported gifts from Jonnie Williams, head of Star Scientific, and involvement with Todd Schneider, the governor’s former chef who is facing felony embezzlement charges. Cuccinelli accepted up to $18,000 in gifts from Williams and supposedly was informed of wrongdoing in the governor’s mansion but did nothing about it. The FBI is involved with the gift matter as it applies to Gov. Robert McDonnell. Cuccinelli has had to recuse himself from his work as attorney general in cases involving Star Scientific and Schneider, who is cause enough for concern.
McAuliffe faces image issues by being a big time Democratic fundraiser and being linked to Bill Clinton. He quietly dropped out of GreenTech Automotive, a hybrid car firm under the spotlight for locating in Mississippi instead of Virginia, failing to live up to development promises and perhaps parking money in the Cayman Islands. The last matter is not illegal but did taint GOP candidate Mitt Romney last fall.
So why are things seemingly tougher for Terry than Ken? A few ideas:
- It is still early in the race. Cuccinelli has presented very little in the way of a real platform unlike McAuliffe, but no seems to have noticed.
- McAuliffe, unlike Cuccinelli, still suffers from a name recognition problem once one gets beyond the DC orbit of Prince William County.
- There’s not much news media any more. The Post owns the GiftGate and ChefGate stories but not everyone reads the Post. When I was in Culpeper on assignment for the Post covering McAuliffe on a tour of a community college in February, there was only one other reporter there. Some television journalist were supposed to have been there but ran out of gas money or something. This says a lot about the state of journalism in general.
- Voters are sick of politics. We’ve just been through a big race and now face a gubernatorial contest in Virginia. Why is that? Simple. It’s the Virginia way, dating back to the Harry Byrd Organization in the 1920s. You want an off year election precisely because people will be bored. That way the incumbents stay in power, sustaining the machine.
This gets as tired to listening about as what great guys Washington and Jefferson were. But that’s the Virginia way, too.
