Kaine concedes.
According to a story by Roz Helderman today, the Governor has agreed to make public all the travel he has undertaken in his role as Chair of the National Democratic Committee.
Anita Kumar of The Washington Post kept the story alive after the Governor had rejected a Freedom of Information request from the Republican Party of Virginia.
She was supported by the Post’s graphics department that developed a playful and informative map of the Governor’s travels, by the Post’s editorial page that supported Kumar’s efforts by name, and by the vast majority of media outlets in Virginia that editorialized in favor of transparency.
I only have one question about this.
Who could have ever imagined a different outcome?
How do you take on the Post and every other media outlet in Virginia on an issue of open government and transparency and actually win?
For the first three years, the Kaine administration has had a remarkably deft political touch- winning election after election with a subtle understanding of what voters were thinking and where they were moving.
In the last month, however, it seems to have exhibited a political tin ear- underestimating media persistence on the travel issue and giving their opponents a huge symbolic opening by letting the rest stops close.
On both of these matters, Creigh Deeds found himself compelled to distance himself from the administration whose legacy he says that he will continue.
Deeds says that he wouldn’t have held back the travel info and, if elected, will reopen the rest stops within sixty days.
It’s very early in the cycle and the Democrats surely have time to get their groove back.
Kumar v. Kaine was bad enough.
The Democrats have to make sure that this Deeds v. Kaine stuff ends right away.
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