Cuccinelli in Bristol to Shore Up Support in Southwest Virginia

Consol Energy campaign contribution timeline - Click to enlarge

Certainly over the last 25 years, Southwest Virginia has always been reliably Republican and any GOP candidate could plan on overwhelming voter support absent being "found in bed with a boy or a dead girl" as some have said.  Yet, less than a week before election day, Ken Cuccinelli was in Bristol, Virginia campaigning to shore up support in Southwest Virginia.  Equally, surprising, he only had 30 people turn out.  Apparently, Cuccinelli's acceptance of campaign bribes contributions from Consol Energy is continuing to haunt him. One can only hope that this all demonstrates that Cuccinelli is in real trouble.  Here are details from Tricities.Com:

BRISTOL , Va. – With just a few days left until Tuesday’s election, Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli stopped by downtown Bristol early Thursday to shore up his support base in Southwest Virginia.

Cuccinelli spoke inside the dusty construction site of the Birthplace of Country Music museum, a work in progress that is expected to open next year. And his audience was a friendly crowd of about 30 who responded to his message with claps, hoots and the occasional “amen!”

“The single biggest decision in Virginia that the next governor will make on our budget will be to either support or oppose expanding Obamacare in Virginia with the Medicaid expansion,” he said. “We will not hug Obamacare. We will keep our distance as best we can.”

The attorney general has trekked into Southwest Virginia several times in the last month, with a meet-and-greet lunch held in an Abingdon restaurant and a stump speech from the steps of the Washington County courthouse.

On Thursday, Cuccinelli’s planned path from Bristol was to wind northward to Tazewell, on to Wytheville and then to Galax. A return trip to Bristol is also set for Sunday.

The many stops in a region that traditionally votes Republican could be an attempt to regain any votes lost as a result of a scandal in which a senior assistant attorney general provided legal advice to energy company lawyers embroiled in a federal lawsuit with regional landowners seeking millions in natural gas royalties. The controversy intensified because CONSOL Energy, the parent company of one of the energy companies involved, has dropped $111,044 into Cuccinelli’s campaign since 2012.

McAuliffe’s campaign pointed to the campaign contribution Thursday when offered an opportunity to comment about Cuccinelli’s local stop.

“Ken Cuccinelli is the last one who should be talking about the needs of Southwest Virginia after he took more than $100,000 from the out-of-state energy company his office was inappropriately aiding in its fight against Southwest Virginia landowners,” McAuliffe campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin wrote.

I continue to hope that Cuccinelli's extremism, his greed and his sense of entitlement will be his undoing.