The New Indian-American Lobby

The party of angry white men - i.e., the Republican Party - may have a new lobby to face that will not sit well with its Christofascist/Tea Party base: Indian-Americans, a group I am acquainted with through my numerous Indian-American clients (some of whom were at a  White House gathering last month).  Like other minority groups, these immigrant and native born Americans subscribe to the so-called American dream and want to have more input into policy issues.  In the last presidential election, they voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for obvious reasons.  Today's GOP is a party of exclusion and if one isn't a white, heterosexual conservative Christian, one truly is not welcomed.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at the growing political ambitions of this demographic.  Here are highlights:

November wasn’t kind to the political power of Indian-Americans. In the hundreds of congressional and gubernatorial races across the country, only five Indian-American candidates were on the ballot. Three lost. Representative Ami Bera, incumbent Democrat from California, left Election Day trailing by thousands of votes only to secure a narrow victory during a recount. Two of Indian-Americans’ biggest victories were the electoral equivalents of shoo-ins—California Attorney General Kamala Harris and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Come next month, Indian-Americans will have only one elected representative in Washington—the same number that they have in the current Congress.

But this electoral thumping obscures the truth behind the curtain: The nation’s three million Indian-Americans are increasingly looking to flex their political muscles, and they have one very clear advantage to bring to the money-driven world of modern politics: They’re one of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the United States. According to a 2013 Pew Survey, Indian-Americans’ median household income sits at $88,000, the highest of all Asian-American subgroups (the U.S. average at-large is a relatively paltry $49,800).

Indians as a whole have a long way to go before they can be seen as an influential group in politics.  But he has a very clear benchmark in mind as he tries to navigate his educated and wealthy ethnic group towards political power: Jewish-Americans. “We’re learning a lot from the Jewish diaspora here and what we have noticed from the Jewish diaspora is that they’re willing to contribute, invest, and write checks,” Rangaswami told me. “Because of the size of India, we could become a much larger community [than the Jews] in terms of population and also in terms of diversity.”

Anand Shah believes that Indian-Americans will likely replicate this path—uniting around certain causes close to the heart of the population, like the well-being and future of India itself. USINPAC, the largest Indian-American lobbying organization, was lauded for its highly successful lobbying of Congress to pass the U.S.-India Nuclear Treaty in 2008 (after President Bush first negotiated it in 2005), but has not boasted any landmark victories since. U.S.-India relations cooled notably in recent years as the U.S. began to court China more formally and many Indians have been irked over a lack of visas for highly-qualified Indian engineers.

Much like Jewish-Americans, Indian-Americans currently lean heavily towards the Democratic Party—in 2013, a Pew Survey claimed that 65 percent of Indian-Americans identify as Democrats, while only 18 percent identify as Republicans. Yet as a group, there’s reason to believe that Indian-Americans votes are up for grabs.

Paul Kapur, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School who focuses on U.S. policy towards South Asia, argues that because neither party has yet “really reached out to Indian-Americans … they’re not really captured by one party or the other.” Kapur says that Indian-Americans’ overwhelming support for Obama may stem from the president’s association with the third world.

[F]or Indians who come from a country with a cacophonous democracy filled with numerous coexisting religious, linguistic and ethnic groups, keeping social values private and out of the public sphere is the norm. In India, much of family law differs for Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, and thus many Indian immigrants are likely perplexed by evangelicals’ efforts to codify aspects of their faith in broad-sweeping legislation.

Jindal and Haley have formidable barriers that could keep their stories from resonating with Indian-American donors in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Around 80 percent of Indian-Americans are Hindu and Jindal and Haley have both converted to Christianity (Jindal was raised a Hindu and Haley a Sikh). Both Jindal and Haley have Americanized their first names—Jindal was born Piyush and Haley, Nimrata—and both of their home states contain small Indian-American communities that pale in size, wealth and importance to those in California, New York, New Jersey and Texas.

Unsuccessful Democratic candidate Ro Khanna in California’s 17^th district in the heart of Silicon Valley also claims that the GOP’s outdated views on science could push Indian-Americans in tech, engineering and medicine towards Democrats for years to come. “Jindal…doesn’t believe in evolution,” Khanna told me. “The Indian-American community believes in science.” . . . . Khanna believes that Republicans who do not recognize the threat of climate change, deny evolution, or dither on so-called “Net Neutrality” could face significant barriers in courting Indian-Americans.

From my experience, this is a community that doesn't suffer fools or bigots.  The GOP has much to learn if it wishes to truly court this growing voting block. 

Lunatic Ken Cuccinelli Blames 2013 Loss on "Scam Pac"

Proving that he is becoming even more detached from objective reality, failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli has filed a lawsuit against a conservative political action committee ("PAC") claiming that the Pac, Conservative StrikeForce PAC, misled would be donors and hurt Kookinelli's ability to fund raise.   Cuccinelli refuses to accept the fact that his own extremism and efforts to push a theocratic social agenda while attorney general is what caused his loss.  The man truly belongs in a mental ward (he also needs to come out of the closet so that he can get past his self-loathing and internalized homophobia that may be the source of much of his lunacy).  Here are excerpts from a Washington Post on this latest batshitery from Kookinelli:

Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli (R) is accusing a conservative group of misleading supporters of his 2013 gubernatorial campaign through a “malicious ‘Scam PAC’ operation.” 

Cuccinelli alleges that $10,000 of “approximately $2.2 million” raised by the PAC was donated to the campaign. Nor did the group follow through on promises of independent expenditures to support Cuccinelli with get-out-the-vote efforts, direct mail, phone banks, radio ads, canvassing and other election work, the suit says.

An attorney for the defendants, Mark Braden, said he and his clients were “mystified” by the lawsuit. “This is the classic definition of no good deed goes unpunished,” Braden said.

Cuccinelli’s fundraising lagged throughout the 2013 race. McAuliffe — a top Democratic Party fundraiser before he was a candidate — raised more than $38 million. Cuccinelli — hobbled by party infighting and concern among business-oriented Republicans that he was too focused on social issues — raised $21 million. 

Cuccinelli accuses the defendants of false advertising, breach of contract and unauthorized use of his name and image.  

Larry Noble, former general counsel for the FEC and now at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, said he has long seen PACs “that have been set up to basically support the people that are running it.”
He said that as long as the activity is accurately reported and the money raised was not earmarked for a campaign, there’s no FEC requirement to spend the money on politics. 

One can only hope that through this lawsuit Cuccinelli makes it even more impossible for him to ever run for political office in the future.

Terry McAuliffe Continues to Disappoint Those Who Put Him in Office

Broken Promises

Perhaps it is a good thing that Virginia Governors are only allowed to serve a single four year term.  Why?  Because Governor Terry McAuliffe seems to be hell bent to alienate those who put him in office.  True, a McAuliffe administration is far better than the batshitery that would have surrounded a Ken Cuccinelli regime, but McAullife continues to take actions that throw different elements of the base who elected him under the bus.  First he backed a chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia who opposes marriage equality.  Now he has signed a bill that contains a "conscience clause" drafted by the Christofascists at The Family Foundation ("TFF"). If I were Mark Warner and other Democrats facing elections in the fall I'd be very concerned about McAullife's actions which are demoralizing the base and aiding Republicans. Mother Jones looks at the bill McAullife signed with language hand crafted by the hate merchants at TFF.  Here are excerpts:

In February, when Arizona state lawmakers passed a bill allowing business owners to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers on religious grounds, a ferocious national backlash forced Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the legislation. But while Arizona legislators were catching heat, controversial "conscience clause" legislation quietly glided to passage in Virginia and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Now, certain health care providers in Virginia have the right to turn away gays or lesbians or to withhold test results that could cause a patient to consider terminating her pregnancy.

The law, the product of two highly similar bills signed by McAuliffe on February 20 and March 20, establishes new rules for licensing genetic counselors. These are the health care professionals who help couples assess their odds of parenting a child with a genetic disorder, test individuals for genes indicative of disease, or detect fetal anomalies after a woman becomes pregnant. Genetic counseling is a fairly new field that was not previously regulated in Virginia, as is the case in many states around the country. Critics of the new law say they support oversight of the profession, but they strongly object to the law's "conscience clause" provision, which, in the words of the ACLU of Virginia, gives counselors "a license to discriminate."

"This is Arizona-lite," says Tarina Keene, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. She and other opponents point out that the law not only gives genetic counselors the right to refuse to help gay, lesbian, or unwed couples, but it also frees them to withhold a patient's test results if the counselor suspects the information might lead her to have an abortion—although they cannot lie about the results. "The way the law is written, if a genetic counselor doesn't think a patient will make 'the right choice' with the information you give them, well, then you don't have to tell them," says Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, the executive director of the ACLU of Virginia.

The law does require genetic counselors who refuse their services to provide a list of alternative counselors. But it does not specify in what timeframe they must produce that list. In a March 10 letter to McAuliffe asking him to veto one of the bills that created the law, the ACLU noted that the measure shields counselors from lawsuits in cases where they have discriminated against patients—even when their actions may have caused someone physical harm.

The law now reads, "Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require any genetic counselor to participate in counseling that conflicts with their deeply-held moral or religious beliefs." For pro-choice activists, the new law is more than just another intrusion on reproductive rights. It represents a betrayal by McAuliffe. In 2013, when McAuliffe ran for governor against ardent abortion foe Ken Cuccinelli, abortion rights groups worked vigorously to help elect him. They believe McAuliffe owes them for generating high turnout among women voters who were disillusioned with the state's abortion-obsessed Republicans.

"We're extremely disappointed. We brought people power to that election. There was a 13-point gender gap" in favor of women, says Keene. "And you know why they were voting that way. We were hoping that this would be a new day, and our pro-choice partners at the legislative level would take this opportunity to do some proactive work."

First a betrayal of LGBT Virginians, now a betrayal of women.  One has to wonder what McAuliffe will do next to alienate minority voters.  The man is a major disappointment so far.  Yes, he's better than Cuccinelli, but he is not delivering what he promised. 

LGBT Democrats Call on Central Committee to Oppose Dwight Jones for DPVA Chair

With LGBT Virginians frequently providing the margin of victory in races ranging from the 2012 presidential race to city council elections, one has to wonder WTF those who nominated Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones for Chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia.  With everything that's happening on the same sex marriage front and in light of three statewide election winners in November 2013 who campaigned in support marriage equality why would a man who opposes marriage equality even be nominated?  Here are highlights from a message from LGBT Democrats of Virginia to the "powers that be" via Blue Virginia:

You are receiving this as a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia.

Maggie Sacra, Chair of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia, today spoke about the submission of Dwight Jones, Richmond City Mayor, to be Chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia, saying, “In response to the many phone calls and emails members of our board have received regarding Mayor Jones’ opposition to marriage equality, and frankly, in response to our own concerns and alarm, the LGBT Democrats of Virginia held an emergency meeting today of our board. After a unanimous vote, we are releasing the statement below to our State Central Committee, our statewide elected officials, and our legislators.”

The statement reads: “Given repeated opportunities over the past few years, Mayor Dwight Jones has consistently refused to endorse marriage equality. LGBT Democrats of Virginia is extremely disappointed with the consideration of Mayor Jones for Chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia. We oppose his nomination and call on Virginia Democrats to seek pro-equality nominees at all levels of the Party and public office."

“This is a historic time for marriage equality in Virginia. All three Democratic nominees for state office won election in 2013 unequivocally supporting marriage equality. Attorney General Mark Herring bravely refused to defend Virginia’s discriminatory Marshall-Newman Amendment and anti-equality statutes, and Judge Wright ruled on the side of equality, writing in her ruling that, 'Tradition is revered in the Commonwealth, and often rightly so. However, tradition alone cannot justify denying same-sex couples the right to marry any more than it could justify Virginia's ban on interracial marriage', referring to Loving v. Virginia."

“We have a President, a Vice President, and a U.S. Attorney General who now stand on the right side of history, on the side of equality. The Democratic Party of Virginia must not consider retreating on this issue. Instead, the Party should heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who declared, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'. These are beliefs the Chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia must embody."

“Unless Mayor Jones makes a strong public statement in support of legal marriage equality, we cannot consider supporting him. We call on all State Central Committee members to join with us in opposing Mayor Jones in this election for Chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia, and in finding a candidate for Party chair who supports equality and justice for all Virginians.”

 Again, WTF were the people who put Jones' nomination forward think?  Do they really want LGBT Virginians to turn off the LGBT ATM?

Growing Democratic Trending in Virginia

One thing that the 2013 Virginia elections highlighted was the growing ability of Virginia's urban areas to out vote the reactionary, bigoted parts of the state.  As the map above indicates, all of the larger cities in Virginia are now trending strongly for Democrats - Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County are likewise trending Democrat.  And with most population growth being confined to the urban areas, the long term prospects for the Virginia GOP in statewide races is not promising.  The Virginia GOP's continued prostitution of itself to white supremacists and religious extremists will likely accelerate the trend.  Blue Virginia notes as follows:

Take a look at the vote trend between 2001 and 2013 from Daily Kos. There's a lot of red there, but it's in the most rural, slow-growth parts of the state. All of the major population areas, from Northern Virginia to Richmond to Tidewater, are trending blue. The population growth in the state is heavily concentrated in this urban crescent. Favorable demographic trends and the alienation of moderate suburban voters by the hard-right have combined to turn Virginia into a blue state ... at least statewide in higher turnout elections. 

Will the Virginia GOP get the message?  Probably not since it is increasingly controlled by The Family Foundation and Tea Party lunatics, groups that do not like to accept objective reality.

The Virginia GOP's Problem With People

Having just suffered an across the board shut out in the statewide elections where gerrymandered districts do not ensue GOP victories, the Virginia GOP needs to face one of its main problems: people.  Today's GOP simply doesn't like most people.  The Virginia GOP hates gays, blacks, Hispanics and certainly women who want  control over their own bodies.  And the people that the Virginia GOP doesn't like do not like the GOP.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at this reality.  Here are excerpts:

Sen. Mark Obenshain’s squeaker defeat for attorney general — confirmed in a recount this past week — could set him up for something bigger but not necessarily better: the titular leadership of a dispirited Republican Party and dibs on its nomination for governor in 2017.

For more than 30 years, the most conservative Republicans have dominated the party’s governing body, the state Central Committee, and many of its subdivisions, the city and county units.

In the 1980s, it was Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson religious conservatives. In the 1990s, it was Mike Farris home-schoolers and Ollie North apologists. In the 2000s, it is Paul-ites and tea partiers. Organizational power translates to political power, assuring these activists the final say in candidate selection.

One would think an electoral embarrassment on the scale suffered by Republicans last month would augur a change in personnel and policy. Not in the Virginia GOP. Setbacks only strengthen the resolve of those on the inside to remain there.

These people are not going unchallenged. . . . . But for Republicans, the primary is a solution fraught with problems.

In 2012, George Allen was nominated by primary for the U.S. Senate seat he narrowly lost six years earlier to Democrat Jim Webb. Allen drew 65 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field. It would qualify as an impressive feat, were the primary not poorly attended.

Slightly more than 200,000 voters participated, compared with the 4,000 who picked this year’s Republican statewide ticket at a convention in Richmond. The Senate primary vote, however, represented less than 5 percent of Virginia’s 5 million-plus electorate.

Primaries are not a panacea for Republicans, particularly when the pool of prospective voters is becoming more perilous. The increasingly diverse electorate, most evident in the Northern Virginia-to-Virginia Beach corridor, is a vote trove for Democrats.

The Republican remedy: more of the members-only politics that got the GOP in trouble in the first place.

Given the dominant profile of Republicans — white, older, lopsidedly male, conservative, and rural — it’s unlikely their primary elections would attract voters different than themselves.

The Republican Party’s problem is one of people. Because it is seen as preoccupied with restricting abortion, cutting taxes, fighting gay rights, and promoting firearms, the GOP is estranged from business, working women and new Virginians. For them, politics seems less relevant.

Will the GOP Go Extinct in Virginia?

A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the questionable future of the Republican Party of Virginia, particularly in the wake of the 2013 Virginia statewide elections.  The column looks at issues that I discussed with friends at a holiday fundraiser - like me, all were former Republicans.  Also like me, all had been repelled and driven away by the extremism of today's GOP and its take over by the Christofascists and, to a lesser extent the Tea Party elements that do no coincide with Christofascist elements.  With Virginia's demographics changing rapidly, the question becomes, will the GOP become extinct in Virginia or will it, instead, become a permanent minority party if it doesn't throw off the strangle hold of the Christofascists.  Here are column highlights:

Beyond a message, Virginia Republicans are looking for a messenger. They need one or several who can sell ideas relevant to the real lives of the broadest range of Virginians rather than the rhetorical needs of the party’s narrowing base.

In electing a Democratic governor, a Democratic lieutenant governor and (perhaps) a Democratic attorney general, Virginians were not fully endorsing their views. Voters accepted them in the absence of a practical alternative.

Terry McAuliffe ran on Obamacare. Ken Cuccinelli ran against it. He rarely advanced other options for closing the health care gap. “No” is not a solution.

The state GOP’s post-election conference this weekend at The Homestead is as much an opportunity for activists to lick wounds as it is a chance to inflict new ones. As recent backbiting suggests, this is a party better at retribution than reflection. The mountain setting means much of this is taking place out of view.

There are talented Republicans who could lead their party from the wilderness. It’s that Republicans discourage talent by sticking with a creed that is strictly enforced by a shrinking pool of true-believers. Their sway is magnified by made-to-order legislative districts and a members-only nominating process.

As a consequence, prospective problem-solvers have a problem: They are reluctant to speak truth to power because they risk being stripped of it.
Even those Republicans to whom the party might turn are problematic.  . . . . The loud albeit unspoken lesson in this: Republicans need to get in front of a changing Virginia before they’re trampled by it. Speaking to the diversifying electorate rather than talking down to it is an avenue back into the urban and suburban vote troves that are the foundation of the latest Democratic ascendancy.
 
• Eric Cantor, the U.S. House majority leader from Henrico, is not a Republican given to counterintuitive behavior. So when he is, it gets people’s attention. Cantor is supporting an openly gay candidate for a Democrat-held House seat in California. Since the summer, Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California have combined to give the candidate, Carl DeMaio, $15,000.

Cantor may be taking only a baby step, but it’s an important one. It allows him, as national Republican congressional leader, to be seen as attuned to changing national opinion. But it is not so bold as to threaten his standing with the small number of younger, more conservative Republicans he must accommodate to remain in the leadership.

• Frank Wolf and Scott Rigell, Republican congressmen from Fairfax and Virginia Beach, respectively, know how to engage voters the GOP prefers to revile: federal employees and those in the private sector dependent on the beneficence of Washington, D.C. And because of this, Wolf and Rigell know how to get re-elected, even amid uncertainty over future federal spending.

Wolf and Rigell were early in their opposition to the Republican-orchestrated federal shutdown. For them, it was a human story about paycheck-less paydays for friends and neighbors and money permanently sucked out of the local economy.

• Outmaneuvered by Cuccinelli for the gubernatorial nomination, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling is preserving for the Republican Party a narrow conduit to its traditional allies in business. Though his conservatism largely matches Cuccinelli’s, Bolling knows, as many in the corporate class do, not to be doctrinaire. The idea is to close the sale, not scare it off.

Bolling is laying out a path forward through his Virginia Mainstream Project. It’s a political action committee that emphasizes the inclusion his critics say he refused to practice with Cuccinelli. Among the Bolling PAC’s priorities: that candidates are selected by primary rather than convention.

Republicans have to decide whether getting rid of bad blood is more important than attracting new blood. They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s a message Republicans may not want to hear.

Like the column's author, I suspect the message will fall on deaf ears among the Christofascists and Tea Party zealots who will prefer to continue drinking Kool-Aid and controlling a shrinking field of political extremists.

Judge Who Thinks Being Gay Is a "Choice" to Help Preside Over AG Recount

As long time readers know, my divorce after coming out was a nightmare.  Frighteningly, one of the judge in my case - who opined that being gay is a "choice" - has been tapped by the Virginia Supreme Court to be part of the three judge panel that will oversee the recount in the Virginia Attorney General race recount.  I for one, will NOT be sleeping better at night while this recount remains unfinished knowing that this judge is involved.  The judge in question was first appointed by George Allen and has handed down some questionable rulings (see No.6) - see here as well - in the past.  Here are details from the Virginian Pilot on this, to me, troubling selection:

Circuit Judge Junius P. Fulton III was selected by the Virginia Supreme Court to oversee a fresh tally this month in a contest where Democrat Mark Herring leads Republican Mark Obenshain by 165 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast.

Serving with Fulton are Danville Circuit Court Chief Judge Joseph W. Milam Jr. and Richmond Circuit Judge Beverly W. Snukals, who will sit as chief judge for the recount.

All three were named in an order from Supreme Court Chief Justice Cynthia D. Kinser.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for today in Richmond ahead of a likely mid-December recount, according to the Obenshain campaign.

By law, a three-judge panel, including the Richmond Circuit Court chief judge and two others appointed by the Supreme Court, supervise a recount when candidates for state office are separated by no more than 1 percent of the votes cast for them.

So-called undervotes and overvotes - ballots where voters didn't select a candidate for each available office or selected more than one in a single contest - will be of particular interest to the candidates' attorneys.

Fulton is a former Norfolk School Board member who, like Kinser, was appointed to the bench by Gov. George Allen.

Justice Kinser - a former law school classmate - was also appointed by George Allen who was a darling of the far right.  When I argued before the Virginia Supreme Court on behalf of Michael Moore who was fired by the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Justice Kinser struck me as incensed that I  described what had happened to Michael Moore as religious based discrimination.  To be candid, I will not feel comfortable with Judge Fulton on the recount panel.

Judge with Obenshain Ties Recuses Himself from Recount

There continues to be a great deal of concern - at least outside of Virginia Republican circles - that Mark Obenshain may yet try to steal the attorney general election having failed to do so at the ballot box. Thankfully, some conservatives are concerned about the integrity of the election and recount process.  A case in point: Richmond judge Bradley B. Cavedo who normally would have presided over the recount has recused himself due to family ties to Obenshain.  A second surprise was Sunday's main editorial by the Daily Press which admonished Obenshain NOT to try to throw the election into the Virginia General Assembly where the GOP controlled legislature could ignore the popular vote.  First highlights from the Washington Post on Judge Cavedo's recusal of himself:

The Richmond judge who would normally preside over the recount in the tight Virginia attorney general race has recused himself, possibly because of his close ties to the family of state Sen. Mark Obenshain.

Under Virginia law, the special court that will oversee the recount of the contest between Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) and state Sen. Mark Herring (D-Loudoun) — which Herring won by 165 votes, according to the results certified by the State Board of Elections — should be led by the chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court.

But Bradley B. Cavedo, holder of that title, recused himself from the recount case last week, according to Ed Jewett, the court’s chief deputy clerk. Instead, the recount will be overseen by another circuit court judge, Beverly W. Snukals, who was selected for the task by the Virginia Supreme Court. Two other judges, also selected by the Supreme Court, will participate in the recount court.
 
Cavedo did not say publicly why he was recusing himself, Jewett said. But Cavedo has a long-standing tie to Obenshain’s family
A preliminary hearing in the Herring-Obenshain recount is expected to happen Wednesday, though an official time has not been set. The recount itself is expected to take place over roughly a two-day period in mid-December.

As for the Daily Press' admonition, here's the money quote:

Since the difference between the two candidates is less than one-half of 1 percent, Sen. Obenshain was within his right on Wednesday to request a statewide recount to be conducted at taxpayer expense. A three-judge panel will oversee the process.

Yet, given the doubts expressed publicly and recklessly by Mr. Judd, Sen. Obenshain could later avail himself of an alternate path to victory by seeking a "contest" of the election. He could appeal the Republican-leading General Assembly and allow its members to decide the outcome.

However, leveraging those concerns to throw the election to lawmakers would be deeply troubling, especially for an individual who intends to serve as the commonwealth's attorney. A race decided by the legislature and not by the public would undermine both the office and the individual holding it.

All eyes will be on Sen. Herring, Sen. Obenshain and election officials as the recount proceeds, and they should conduct themselves as agents of the commonwealth, rather than instruments of parties, to ensure confidence in the results.

The GOP- Rooting for Failure and Against Families and Children

I do not adhere to many Democrat positions, yet given the ugliness of today's Republican Party - a sickening mix of greed, racism, homophobia, religious extremism and open hatred toward those deemed to be "other" - I often find that I have no choice but to back Democrat candidates.  A perfect example is the just past Virginia elections where the Christofascist controlled Virginia GOP nominated truly insane and vicious candidates for all three statewide offices.  Another example is the GOP's efforts to sabotage the Affordable Health Care Act yet offer nothing to replace it other than a return to system that is not only the the most costly in the world and but also the least efficient .  And what about the millions of uninsured?  They are to be left to simply sicken and die.  Even as the GOP base congratulates itself on its adherence to Christian values and the mantra of personal responsibility.  A column in the New York Times looks at this sabotage effort.  Here are excerpts:

I just spent 15 minutes on my local health care exchange and realized that I could save a couple hundred dollars a month on my family’s insurance. Of course, I live in Washington State, which has a very competitive market, a superbly functioning website and no Koch-brothers-sponsored saboteurs trying to discourage people from getting health care.

California is just as good. It’s enrolling more than 2,000 people a day. New York is humming as well. And Kentucky, it’s the gold standard now: More than 56,000 people have signed up for new health care coverage — enough to fill a stadium in Louisville. 

This is terrible news [for the GOP], and cannot be allowed to continue. If there’s even a small chance that, say, half of the 50 million or so Americans currently without heath care might get the same thing that every other advanced country offers its citizens, that would be a disaster [for the GOP]. 

But not to worry. The failure movement is active and very well funded. . . . . The Republican Party started a failure campaign earlier this year, but then the strategy got sidetracked in a coercive government shutdown that cost us all $24 billion or so. With the disastrous rollout of the federal exchange, Republicans now smell blood. A recent memo outlined a far-reaching, multilevel assault on the Affordable Care Act. 

It’s hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose. When the first attempt by the United States to launch a satellite into orbit, in 1957, ended in disaster, did Democrats start to cheer, and unify to stop a space program in its infancy? Or, when Medicare got off to a confusing start, did Republicans of the mid-1960s wrap their entire political future around a campaign to deny government-run health care to the elderly? 

Of course not. But for the entirety of the Obama era, Republicans have consistently been cheerleaders for failure. They rooted for the economic recovery to sputter, for gas prices to spike, the job market to crater, the rescue of the American automobile industry to fall apart.

This organized schadenfreude goes back to the dawn of Obama’s presidency, when Rush Limbaugh, later joined by Senator Mitch McConnell, said their No. 1 goal was for the president to fail.

Does this mean we throw in the towel, and return to a status quo in which insurance companies routinely cancel policies, deny health care to people with pre-existing conditions and have their own death panel treatment for patients who reach a cap in medical benefits? 

The Republican plan would do just that, because they have no plan but to crush the nation’s fledgling experiment. 

Where was the media attention when thousands of people were routinely dumped once they got sick? When did Republicans in Congress hold an oversight hearing on the leading cause of personal bankruptcy — medical debt? All of that is what we had before. And all of that is what we will return to if some version of the Affordable Care Act is not made workable.  

Not too sound too dramatic, but I increasingly do not understand how decent, moral people can support today's GOP.  Of my friends that remain Republicans, sadly most are motivated by greed.  They care nothing for the less fortunate and focus solely on paying less in taxes being to short sighted to understand we all pay when millions of Americans - many of them children - go without health care coverage.

Will Obenshain Acting Honorably And Not Try to Steal AG Election

Like many others, I have followed the razor thin lead of Mark Herring in the Virginia attorney general race in which Herring was certified as the winner by the Virginia Board of elections yesterday.  Likewise, I have been concerned that the extremists in the Virginia GOP will push the contest loser, Mark Obenshain, to not only demand a recount but also to push the election results to the Virginia General Assembly where the GOP majority could reject the popular vote and declare Obenshain the winner.  In the Virginia GOP of old, such worries would be nonexistent.  But in today's Virginia GOP which is dominated by Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics and which has Ken Cuccinelli as the still incumbent attorney general to stack the dice so to speak, it is a legitimate worry.  A post at Blue Virginia suggests that Obenshain will do the honorable thing and concede the election.  I hope the post's author is correct. Here are post highlights:

The following piece has run in several Virginia newspapers, including today in the Lynchburg News & Advance.

Earlier this month, an alarm about Virginia's razor-close Attorney General's race sounded in some Democratic circles. Adam Swerver, in an article posted on the MSNBC website, declared that even if the defeat of Republican candidate Mark Obenshain is confirmed in a recount, he might still be able to have himself declared the winner by the Virginia state legislature, which is dominated by Republicans.  . . . . Opinions differed about the chances of Republicans succeeding with such a gambit, but there was little faith that scruples would hold them back from stealing the election. One response: "The va GOP will do ANYTHING to win cheat or steal an election."

I don't know whether state Senator Obenshain can gain the office through such a power-grab. But I bet he won't.

I live in Senator Obenshain's district. For more than twenty years, I have done talk radio in Harrisonburg, the town where Mr. Obenshain lives, discussing politics with the predominantly conservative audience in the Shenandoah Valley. I have only general impressions of him, but I know the political culture from which he comes.   

That political culture retains traditional conservative values and a sense of honor not yet transformed by the very different spirit that's come to dominate the Republican Party nationally.  I would bet that Obenshain - scion of a much-respected family of Virginia conservatives - would act in that true conservative spirit.   

A real conservative would not damage a pillar of the American political tradition by disrespecting the voice of the people expressed through voting.  It is at the heart of American democracy, because it is the means by which we confer power in an orderly and peaceful way.  

At the national level, the Republican Party has shown has shown itself increasingly contemptuous of the voters and of the sanctity of elections.  This is a party that

• Had its partisans on the Supreme Court decide the 2000 election to put their guy into the presidency, rather than make sure that the results in Florida honored the intent of the electorate;
• Has been erecting barriers to voting for constituencies that  support Democrats, ostensibly to solve a problem of voter fraud that every study shows to be virtually non-existent;
• Has used the filibuster in the U.S. Senate in an unprecedented way that subverts the basic principle of majority rule;
• Has made as its top priority preventing this president from leading the nation, even though he was fairly chosen by the people.

If the national Republican Party calls the shots in Virginia, such a disturbing scenario would indeed become plausible.  And we have seen how the spirit of power-at-any-cost has been spreading in the Republican Party from the national level down into the states. We've seen that Republican governors and legislatures -- in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida - have pursued parallel agendas, further empowering the already mighty at the expense of ordinary citizens.  

But I'm betting that, if the recount confirms his defeat, Obenshain will stay true to his more genuinely conservative roots, and will act the part of honor. 

Again, I hope the post's author is correct.  As for Obenshain, if he does act honorably, it may go some way to rehabilitate his image.    Of course, he will still need to stop trying to police people's bedrooms and women's vaginas if he wants to stage a come back in the new, demographically changed Virginia.

Attorney General Race Certification Today - GOP Likely to Demand Recount

Today is the day that the Virginia Board of Elections is scheduled to certify the results of the 2013 attorney general race results.  All indications are that Democrat Mark Herring will be certified as the winner and it is expected that extremist GOP candidate Mark Obenshain will demand a recount.  There is little precedent for recounts reversing an election outcome, but some fear a recount is the first step towards Obenshain seeking to throw the election into the General Assembly where the GOP members of the legislature could overthrow the popular vote.  The Richmond Times Dispatch has details:

The two candidates for attorney general are gearing up for a recount in the closest statewide contest in modern Virginia history, pending today’s meeting in which the State Board of Elections will certify the results.

State Sen. Mark R. Herring, the Democratic candidate, maintains a 165-vote lead over his Republican opponent, state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain — that’s about 0.007 percent of more than 2.2 million votes cast statewide — following extensive canvassing in several localities.

If a candidate is within one-half of a percentage point, the state will pay for a recount. If the margin is between one-half of a percentage point and 1 percentage point, a candidate can urge a recount at his own expense.

Charles E. Judd, chairman of the elections board, expects a recount. “We’re probably looking at the middle of December. It will be a long day for some localities,” Judd said Friday.

At 9 a.m. today, the board will review the election results provided by the local electoral boards.

Confident that he’ll maintain his lead, Herring declared victory two weeks ago. Obenshain, however, has repeatedly pointed out that the race is far from over and that the numbers could still turn in his favor during the state canvass or a recount. Both candidates have named transition teams.

Herring campaign lawyer Marc Elias, who worked on the Minnesota recount, told reporters in a call last week that he wouldn’t expect, based on history, a lot of movement in the vote totals during the state canvass that will be certified today.

“Obviously, Senator Obenshain will have a choice to make about whether to bring the people of Virginia through a recount,” Elias said. “Those of you who have seen past recounts in Virginia know they do not tend to change the results,” he said.

During a recount, all Scantron forms are run again and provisional and absentee ballots are recounted. Electronic receipts are re-tallied and re-added — all on one day. A law passed after the 2005 contest for attorney general requires that all paper ballots have to be rescanned or recounted. Deeds sponsored the bill.

If neither the state canvass nor a recount swings the vote count in his favor, Obenshain has one last chance to challenge the election. He could ask a joint session of the General Assembly — which is dominated by Republicans — to reverse the results through a rarely used provision in state law called a contest.

Under state law, grounds for a contest include objections to “the conduct or results of the election accompanied by specific allegations which, if proven true, would have a probable impact on the outcome of the election.”

Logan, Obenshain’s spokesman, did not comment when asked Friday if the Republican would consider contesting the election.

Virginia: Two Regional Cultures - Tidewater v. Appalachia: Stark Differences in Gubernatorial Election

Historically, there has been a longstanding divide in Virginia:(i)  the generally more affluent and more educated Tidewater region that for the most part now encompass the so-called urban crescent that extends from the Washington, D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia southward through Richmond (located at the Fall Line) and then eastward to Hampton Roads, and (ii) portions of Appalachia that encompass mush of the Southwest Virginia up through the Shenandoah Valley.  An article in Washington Monthly makes the case that the recent gubernatorial election results reflect this historic divide just as much as the urban v. rural divide in the state.  In many ways, the divide comes down to a divide between an acceptance of modernity in the Tidewater versus the embrace of the past and ignorance in Appalachia.  True, there are exceptions to this rule such as Charlottesville and other cities dominated by large universities (Lynchburg and Liberty University excluded), but for the most part the analysis holds true.  Here are excerpts:

For two years now, I’ve been arguing in this space, in the pages of the Monthly, and elsewhere, that the Tea Party was doomed on the national stage because it’s agenda is anathema to the cultural traditions of vast swaths of the country. Instead, it would become isolated in the South and interior West, the only parts of the country where its agenda would find fertile soil.

If subsequent events - including the sharp regional divisions exposed by the actions of the shutdown caucus last month - haven’t provided enough evidence for you, here’s some more:  In Virginia this week, voters narrowly elected the (flawed) Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe over Tea Party firebrand Ken Cuccinelli. The surprise wasn’t that McAuliffe won, but that the result was far closer than pollsters had predicted.

What went wrong?

As in the Alabama and Mississippi GOP presidential primaries last year, pollsters failed to weight their samples to ensure they properly represented not just the racial, gender, and economic profile of the electorate, but the state’s two, centuries-old, rival regional cultures. I’m not talking about “NoVa” versus the Old Dominion, but something much older that suburban Washington: the massive schism between the state’s Tidewater and Greater Appalachian sections.
I asked one of my research collaborators - Miami University of Ohio geography masters student Nicollette Staton - to run the results of Tuesday’s election through the American Nations model. The regional differences were stark:

McAuliffe won Virginia’s Tidewater by 11 points, 52 to 41.  Cuccinelli won Greater Appalachia by an even wider margin, 57 to 36.

McAuliffe’s overall margin of victory is owed entirely to the relative size of Tidewater’s electorate (over 1.6 million cast ballots in Tidewater on Tuesday, under 600,000 in Appalachia.)

The lesson, once again, is that Tea Party ideas are embraced as strongly as ever in the Greater Appalachian sections of our federation - and the Deep South and Far West - even as they have become repellant to a majority of voters everyplace else. Given that everyplace else comprises two thirds of the U.S. population, that’s a recipe for national isolation.

I’m not saying urban/rural electoral divides don’t exist - they do in every nation, from France to India - but their predictive power is often greatly exaggerated. And in the case of this week’s election in Virginia, they are an inadequate means to interpret the results.

In Conflict of Interest, Cuccinelli Leads Fundraising For Obenshain Recount

Hopefully history will regard Ken Cuccinelli as one of the sleaziest and most corrupt attorney generals in Virginia history.  The man continues to believe that he's above the law and not constrained by conflict of interest concerns that govern the rest of us.  His arrogance truly knows no limits.  As many news outlets and blogs have noted, there is an inherent conflict of interest for a sitting attorney general overseeing election results when he was himself a candidate in the election contest.  The Daily Press looks at Cuccinelli's efforts for losing GOP candidate Mark Obenshain and Cuccinelli's likely effort to steal the election from Democrat Mark Herring.  Note the lie in Cuccinelli's e-mail claiming that he supports equality for "ALL Virginians" - unless, of course, one is LGBT, black, Hispanic, or non-Christian.  Here article are highlights:

Ken Cuccinelli, whose office would represent the State Board of Elections in any challenges to its vote count, has asked people to help pay for state Sen. Mark Obenshain's legal costs for any recount in his race to be the state's next attorney general.

Democrats say that's a conflict and casts a huge shadow over the state's efforts to ensure that every vote is counted. Cuccinelli and Obenshain's fellow Republicans say the Democrats are making a mountain out of a molehill.

But with the Democratic attorney general candidate, state Sen. Mark Herring, holding a lead of just 165 votes over Obenshain, both sides are gearing up for a fight.

In the email, Cuccinelli said he was asking for the donations because, "It's important the work I started at the AG's office continue. Mark will do just that – fighting for liberty, fighting against federal overreaches and fighting for justice for ALL Virginians."

Herring's campaign declined to comment, but other Democrats were more vocal.  A fundraising appeal from former U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello says, "No wonder Obenshain thinks he has a chance — he's got a guy on the inside."

State Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, said Cuccinelli's fundraising was disturbing because "he is someone who has a critical role to play to help ensure that Virginians have confidence in the outcome and know that our elections are professional, fair and non-partisan. Attorney General Cuccinelli needs to take his responsibilities seriously in this process and refrain from his overt and extreme partisanship."

The sooner Cuccinelli is forced from the Virginia political scene, the better off Virginia will be.

Mark Herring Attorney Confident of AG Race Recount Victory

Mark Herring at left; Obenshain at right

Unless the Virginia GOP steals the attorney general election by fabricating a reason to throw the election result to the GOP controlled House of Delegates (a possibility discussed in prior posts), the legal team for Democrat Mark Herring is confident that Herring will prevail in the election recount.  It is critical that Mark Obenshain - a minion of The Family Foundation and anti-abortion and anti-gay extremist - not gain the attorney general position from which he could work to sabatoge all of the efforts of Governor McAuliffe and Lt. Governor Ralph Northam.  The Daily Progress looks at the optimism of the Herring legal team.  Here are story excerpts:

An attorney for state Sen. Mark Herring said Monday he expects the Democrat to retain his slim lead over Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain in the race for Virginia attorney general.

“I don’t expect a significant change,’’ Washington, D.C.-based attorney Marc Elias, a veteran of election recounts, said in a teleconference. “I expect the attorney general-elect [Herring] — whether there is a recount or not — will prevail.”

 

The final certification by the State Board of Elections is set for Nov. 25. As of Monday’s unofficial tally, Herring, of Loudoun County , has a 164-vote lead among more than 2.2 million votes cast.

Elias said just three recent statewide recounts “against the backdrop of hundreds and hundreds” have changed the result. He called the recent canvass of votes in Virginia cities and counties “painstaking.”

Elias comes as a seasoned attorney in election battles. According to the website for his law firm, Perkins Coie , he was the lead counsel for Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken in his successful 2008 Minnesota race and recount, which was decided in that state’s Supreme Court.

Obenshain , of Harrisonburg , has said he is committed to seeing the process through. He is expected to request a recount if he does not come out the winner.

Both candidates have put transition teams in place. Herring is preparing to take over as attorney general, said his campaign manager, Kevin O’Holleran .  “[Herring] has been focused on governing,’’ O’Holleran said.