Virginia Tomorrow

In a baseball pennant race, they call it the AILC- The All Important Loss Column.

In a statewide election, we might call it the AICOHN- the All Important Cash on Hand Number

These are the numbers everyone will be looking at this evening. Preliminary figures for the downtickets races have been reported by The Post:

Attorney General

Shannon- $1.6 million

Cuccinelli- $752,291

Lieutenant Governor

Wagner, $593,067

Bolling, $1.3 Million

What to make of it?

Despite the fact that all the Democrats are lagging in the polls, AICOHN varies considerably in the downticket races.

Shannon has an almost 2-1 AICOHN advantage over Cuccinelli at the moment. Yet he trails in the polls, often by the most of any Democrat. And he is running for an office that no Democrat has won since 1989. Moreover, Cuccinelli has shown a capacity to respond adroitly to events such as the Melendez decision and the banning of a book program in state prisons.

BUT Shannon has a significant financial advantage that may enable him to run a campaign that is not entirely dependent on the rest of the ticket. Expect Shannon to use his AICOHN advantage to go on television early and hit Cuccinelli hard.

In the LG race, the party situation is reversed, with Bolling more than doubling Wagner in AICOHN. This provides Bolling, who already has the advantage of incumbency, with more flexibility and opportunity to define the race.

In recent days, the Wagner campaign has recognized (rightly, I believe) that fiscal responsibility is going to be the defining issue in the contest. She has aggressively defended the Kaine administration and her role in it against charges levelled by Bolling of incompetence in projecting revenues and and delinquency in alerting Virginians to the true dimensions of the state’s bugetary crisis.

Look for Bolling to utilize his AICOHN advantage to try and keep Wagner on the defensive, linking Democratic fiscal policies in Virginia to voter concerns about  spending and taxes that national conditions have exacerbated.