GOP attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain has continued to run extremely disingenuous folksy and family focused ads seeking to foll Virginians into falsely believing that he's a nice guy. What Virginians really need to know is that Obenshain has himself said he would be a successor to Ken Cuccinelli's extreme ideological agenda if elected to the office of attorney general. Like Cuccinelli, Obenshain supports a personhood amendment and introduced a bill to criminalize women having miscarriages who failed to notify police within 24 hours. It doesn't get much more extreme. If gays, women, minorities and non-climate change deniers want more of Cuccinelli's lunacy and efforts to police their bedrooms, then Obenshain is their man. On the other hand, if you support individual freedoms, modernity and rational though as opposed to religious extremism, then you need to get out and vote for Mark Herring. Moreover, you need to encourage everyone you know to vote for Herring as well. The Washington Post looks at the real Obenshain, which ought to make sane individuald run screaming away from him. Here are highlights:
The race to succeed Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II pits a Republican who has been philosophically in step with the incumbent against a Democrat who says he’d head in the opposite direction.
State Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) faces Sen. Mark Herring (D-Loudoun) in the low-profile but consequential contest.
The attorney general’s race is always overshadowed by the one for governor, and this year’s slugfest between the departing Cuccinelli (R) and Democrat Terry McAuliffe (D) has had no trouble dominating the Virginia political scene.
But the attorney general’s race will decide who serves as the commonwealth’s top lawyer, presiding over a 400-employee public law firm that reviews, interprets and defends Virginia law. The contest also could help determine who’s at the top of the ticket four years from now, given that the last six attorneys general have run for governor . . .
On the campaign trail, as in the ornate Senate chamber, they have had sharp philosophical disagreements on matters ranging from Medicaid expansion to gay rights.
Herring, also a lawyer in private practice, has sought to make the campaign largely about Cuccinelli, a social conservative who developed a national reputation for his battles against the federal government, a university climate scientist and a public colleges with policies that protect gay people from discrimination. Herring has said that Obenshain is likely to take the attorney general’s office further down that activist path, one that he says has made Virginia a less appealing place to do business.
“Time and again, he has bent and twisted the law and misused and abused the power of the office in order to advance personal ambition and an extreme ideological agenda,” Herring said of Cuccinelli in the debate. “Senator Obenshain would be a continuation of what we’ve got.”
When it comes to his own record, Herring has highlighted his sponsorship of legislation to strengthen penalties in domestic violence cases . . . . . He has also stressed his support for a $1.4 billion-a-year transportation funding overhaul passed this year, which Obenshain opposed.
Those in Hampton Roads and Noerhtern Virginia should be most concerned about Obenshain's anti-transportation mind set. As in the gubernatorial race, the choice could not be more stark. Obenshain's base consists of those motivated by reaction against modernity, reaction against racial demographic change,
reaction against the larger population’s rejection of a fear- and
hate-based version of Christianity, and reaction against the decline of
white privilege. We need Mark Herring, not Mark Obenshain to be the next attorney general of Virginia.
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