Virginia Tomorrow

It’s official.

The Democrats have a frontrunner.

Terry McAuliffe.

Two public polls have McAuliffe leading by double digits. The McAuliffe camp has told people that his own polls have him leading by 12.

And the determined effort by the Moran team to interpret Amy Gardner’s story in the Post this Sunday about McAuliffe’s business dealings as a blockbuster expose’ that undermines the central premise of the his campaign- that he has significant experience in creating jobs- seemed to reinforce the perception that McAuliffe may be edging ahead.

As I said last week, public polls in primaries can be very unreliable because of the incredible difficulty in identifying who is really likely to participate (and the voter sample in the Survey USA poll which suggested that 29% of the registered voters in Virginia would cast a ballot in the Democratic primary was simply out of whack) .

But I also noted that if the candidates’ own internal polls were dramatically different, they would be releasing these right now.

The perception that McAuliffe is picking up momentum poses special challenges to the Deeds and Moran campaigns.

First, they will need to reassure donors that they have a  legitimate shot at winning if they are going to have enough cash on hand to wage a creditable air and ground war in the last weeks of the campaign.

Second, McAuliffe has been able to pick up momentum without much support from local officials, members of the General Assembly and other figures in the Democratic political establishment.  If more Democrats start thinking that McAuliffe is going to win, this will begin to change (and will change rapidly) as individuals begin to angle for the potential jobs and plum board appointments that a Governor controls.

Caveats.

Both of the public polls still show large numbers of undecided and persuadable voters- the Deeds and Moran campaigns can surely take some solace here.

Moreover, frontrunners don’t always win primaries.

McAuliffe should have a conversation with President Paul Trible of Christopher Newport University.

Trible has done such a great job at CNU that many people have forgotten that he was even in politics, serving as a congressman, as U.S. Senator from 1982-1988 and as a candidate for the GOP nomination for Governor in 1989.

That year, the GOP had a bruising, three way primary brawl between Congressman Stan Parris, Trible, and former Attorney General Marshall Coleman.

Ahead in the polls and widely considered the frontrunner, Trible was the target of a series of blistering ads accusing him of being a “quitter” for leaving the Senate and of playing “dress up” by appearing on television in what the ad stated was “a uniform he never wore in a plane he never flew.” 

At the time, many observers were themselves stunned by how devastatingly effective the ads appeared to be, enabling Marshall Coleman to wrest the nomination from Trible in a major upset.

For the next few weeks, the race is likely to focus more and more on Terry McAuliffe the person and he is likely to be the recipient of a Trible-like treatment.

McAuliffe will have to show that is capable of parrying it before the Democrats decide whether he should be their standard bearer in November.

Hold On!