By Peter Galuszka
National media outlets are casting the Virginia gubernatorial match as “the grimmest election” featuring Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli as “a Republican nutjob” and Terry McAuliffe as a scummy fundraiser who has revealed his failings in a “self-Borking book.”
Those, at least are the summations from New York magazine and The Daily Beast.
The publications note that given Cuccinelli’s tendencies towards extreme comments, the Democrats should have had an easy time finding a candidate to more than match him.
They chose Terry McAuliffe, who is down 10 points in a Washington Post poll and 5 points down in a Marist poll. The news is filled with stories about McAuliffe’s business plans that never amounted to much, including a green car plant in Mississippi and then a wood pellet that would help tiny Franklin in the Tidewater area recover from the loss of the old Union Camp pulp mill.
My only point is why it takes so long for such snarky trend-setters as the Beast and New York to catch up with the pack. Virginians have known for years about Cuccinelli’s views. I wrote at length about McAuliffe’s gushy book about his years as a Democratic fundraiser several weeks ago and the book isn’t exactly news.
Of course, as I was told years ago as a correspondent and an editor at a national business magazine, “It’s not news until it’s in The New York Times.”
