Ken Cuccinelli - WTF Is Wrong With Virginians?

Anyone sane who has followed Ken Cuccinelli's behavior in office as Virginia's Attorney General ought to know that the man is, at least in my view, seriously mentally disturbed.  Moreover, he is the face of the worse elements of the extreme far right.  The man is not only ethically challenged as the Star Scientific saga has shown, but more frighteningly, he wants to implement a Christofascist version of Sharia law and would bring back the sodomy laws.  Everyone other than angry straight white males ought to be running screaming from the man.  Yet an early Washington Post poll shows Cuccinelli - a/k/a Kookinelli on this blog - with a slight lead over Democrat Terry McAullife.  Hence why I ask, WTF is wrong with Virginians?  Here are highlights from the Post article on the poll:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has an early lead over businessman Terry McAuliffe in their race for governor, a new Washington Post poll shows, even as most voters in the commonwealth have yet to engage in the nationally watched contest.

Six months before Election Day, Cuccinelli (R) has a slender 46 to 41 percent edge over McAuliffe (D) among all Virginia voters and a significant 51 to 41 percent lead among those who say they’re certain to cast ballots in November. But those numbers may change before then: The poll found that barely 10 percent say they are following the campaign “very closely” and that nearly half of the electorate says they’re either undecided or could change their minds.

Having never held office, McAuliffe is the lesser-known quantity in this year’s contest, giving both sides the opportunity to try to define him in coming months. Fully 70 percent of Virginia voters say they know “just a little” or “nothing at all” about him or his qualifications to be governor. Even 65 percent of Democrats know little about the party’s nominee.

There is also broad uncertainty about Cuccinelli — 52 percent of voters say they know little about his qualifications — but the public continues to give a more positive than negative assessment of his work as attorney general. About 54 percent of voters say that he has “high personal moral and ethical standards,” about triple the number saying that he does not.

Cuccinelli is up in the race because he has overwhelming support from the GOP base. Among all registered voters, he’s backed by 95 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of conservatives and 62 percent among white men.

McAuliffe beats Cuccinelli by a big margin among nonwhite voters, 57 to 21 percent, but that is far from Obama’s tally of 83 to 16 percent in the state’s exit poll. Even state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) scored 76 percent among nonwhite voters in his unsuccessful 2009 gubernatorial bid.

McAuliffe and Cuccinelli are about evenly matched among female voters (Obama won women’s votes by nine percentage points), and the Democrat is lagging among younger voters, too.

One potential positive for McAuliffe is that 45 percent of voters aren’t yet following the race closely. And McAuliffe does far better among those very closely tuned in than he does among those yet to pay much attention.

The boyfriend and I find Kookinelli to be so scary that we will be housing a McAuliffe campaign staffer for several months in the lead up to November's election.  Should Kookinelli win, it would be a terrible message to progressive businesses and talented workers who could well decide that Virginia is too extreme and look for other places to locate.   As for minorities, women and gays, Kookinelli wants to take Virginia back to the 1950's or earlier.