William Jefferson Clinton and will.i.am come to town for him, but he doesn’t get too many local officials to show up.
The Moran camp issues a “Pinocchio Report” describing his pledge to create more jobs than any other Governor an “entirely empty and dishonest promise to the people of Virginia,” but Bob McDonnell adopts his campaign theme “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”
The national media seems to think that he has the nomination wrapped up, but the locals can’t really identify who the “McAuliffe Democrats” are.
A number of Democrats have told me that he the only candidate that can beat Bob McDonnell, but an equal number maintain that he could never defeat McDonnell.
He hasn’t raised the kind of money that people spoke about at the beginning of his campaign, but he’s still comfortably ahead of his Democratic rivals in dollars.
The Moran campaign says that McAuliffe is ahead by 2, but the public polls and what McAuliffe says his own internals show have the lead at double digits.
What should we make of it all?
With less than 30 days left before the primary, the McAuliffe campaign can’t be unhappy with where he stands.
He’s an energetic campaigner who, as George Mason’s Mark Rozzell observed, has dominated the media coverage. McAuliffe has proven to be a quick learner about Virginia; he’s worked hard across the state; and he’s never given off the air of entitlement that often afflicts well-heeled celebrity candidates. Moreover, he was first to the jobs theme that almost every other candidate has adopted.
McAuliffe’s major remaining challenge is the same one with which the campaign began.
Will voters actually turn out to vote in a June gubernatorial primary for someone they didn’t even really know last November?
I’m not sure that anyone can really answer this question yet.
But, to McAuliffe’s credit, he has done little during the campaign to raise any additional concerns or reservations about his candidacy.
Since he has become the effective frontrunner, the remaining 28 eight days before the primary are likely to bring an even more intense focus on Terry McAuliffe, the person.
I have to think that the Moran’s campaign’s effort to raise questions about his business background and to send out the almost daily “Pinocchio reports” are simply a prologue to the mailings they’ll be sending and the television ads they’ll be running in the last weeks of the campaign. And it appears that Creigh Deeds is hoping to be the ultimate beneficiary of Moran’s attacks.
But with less than a month before the primary, McAuliffe has put himself in a position where even his detractors admit that he has a legitimate shot at winning the the nomination.
Six months ago, he really couln’t have asked for anything more.
We’ll see in the next few weeks whether he can actually close the deal.
Terry McAuliffe is uniquely qualified among the candidates to lead Virginia in this challenging economic climate. He understands the interrelationships of business and government like very few political figures do. While other candidates are saying “Here’s what I want to do” Terry says, “Here’s HOW I am going to accomplish this.” He is always three steps ahead of everybody else and this is the kind of leadership we need now.
As for Brian Moran he should do a Pinnochio Report on himself. There are people I like and respect who support Brian Moran, but I am appalled that in this dire economy he has wasted so much money and energy on a negative campaign and a factually challenged one at that. The deplorable offshore drilling nonsense is a case in point. We need a team player in the Governor’s Mansion.
Creigh Deeds is a supremely decent and accomplished public servant we Virginians are lucky to have but I don’t think he can do nearly as much for Virginia’s economy at this critical juncture as Terry McAuliffe can.
Bob McDonnell, like much of the contemporary GOP, is heir to that Southern tradition of the patrician class that holds the interests of ordinary citizens in contempt but expects popular support anyway through manipulative appeals to pride, fear, ignorance and bigotry.
We need Terry McAuliffe.