VA House of Delegate Caucus Endorses Rob Bell for Attorney General

Leading up to the Republican Advance, the first of many endorsement lists has been released.  One thing stands out.  The House of Delegate GOP Caucus overwhelmingly supports Rob Bell for Attorney General.  His list includes 36 different Delegates who have endorsed him, an overwhelming majority of the House GOP Caucus.  The list includes Speaker Bill Howell and delegates of every stripe from all over the commonwealth.  The list also includes two former delegates, Bill Carrico and Bill Janis.  Two other things that stand out about the list.  Rob Bell has the support of Congressman Rob Hurt.  He also seems to be distancing himself from Jeff Frederick (former Delegate and RPV Chairman) who recently endorsed him by leaving him off the list.  If Bell won't even acknowledge that Jeff Frederick has endorsed him, should Frederick's supporters back Bell?

Mark Obenshain's endorsement list will be interesting to see in the coming days.

The full list from the email is below.

We Endorse Rob Bell!

5^th Congressional District

Congressman Robert Hurt

Albemarle County

Sheriff Chip Harding

Honorable Ken Boyd, Chairman, Board of Supervisors

Honorable Rodney Thomas, County Supervisor

Botetourt County

Delegate Christopher Head

Campbell County

Delegate Matt Fariss

Caroline County

Delegate Robert Orrock

Jeff Sili, Republican Committee Chair

Chesapeake

Honorable Rick West, City Councilor

Chesterfield County

Delegate Roxann Robinson

Danville

Delegate Daniel Marshall III

Sandra Warren, Republican Committee Chair

Fairfax

Delegate David Albo

Delegate Thomas Rust

Honorable John Peterson, Director NOVA SWCD

Fauquier County

Honorable Jim Fisher, Commonwealth’s Attorney

Honorable Lee Sherbeyn, County Supervisor

Fluvanna County

Honorable Jeff Haislip, Commonwealth’s Attorney

Debbie Rittenhouse, Republican Committee Chair

Franklin County

Delegate Charles Poindexter

Grayson County

State Senator Bill Carrico

Greene County

Sheriff Steven Smith

Gary Lowe, Republican Committee Chair

Halifax County

Delegate James Edmunds

Hanover County

Delegate Christopher Peace

Honorable Trip Chalkley, Commonwealth’s Attorney

Sheriff Dave Hines

Honorable Wayne Hazzard, County Supervisor

Henrico County

Delegate John O’Bannon

Former Delegate Bill Janis

Sheriff Mike Wade

Isle of Wight County

Delegate Rick Morris

Bill Coburn, Republican Committee Chair

Lexington/Rockbridge County/Buena Vista

Cher McCoy, Republican Committee Chair

Loudoun County

Delegate Tag Greason

Delegate Joe May

Delegate David Ramadan

Louisa County

State Senator Tom Garrett

Lunenburg County

Delegate Thomas Wright Jr.

Madison County

Delegate Edward Scott

Honorable George Webb, Commonwealth’s Attorney

William Harvill, Republican Committee Chair

Manassas City

Steven Thomas, Republican Committee Chair

Newport News

Delegate David Yancey

Hazel Call, Hampton Roads Republican Women Chair

Orange County

Doug Rogers, Republican Committee Chair

Honorable Diana Wheeler, Commonwealth’s Attorney

Petersburg

Debra Mallory, 1^st Vice Chair Tri-City Republican Women

Pittsylvania County

Delegate Donald Merricks

Poquoson

Delegate Gordon Helsel, Jr.

Paul Keddell, Republican Committee Chair

Powhatan County

Delegate Lee Ware Jr.

Prince George County

Barbara Tabb, Republican Committee Chair

Prince William County

Delegate Richard Anderson

Delegate Jackson Miller

Richmond

Jerilynn Grigsby, Tuckahoe Republican Women Chair

Scott County

Delegate Terry Kilgore

Spotsylvania County

Delegate Mark Cole

Stafford County

Delegate Mark Dudenhefer

Delegate William Howell, Speaker, House of Delegates

Tazewell County

Delegate James W. Morefield

Virginia Beach

Delegate Salvatore Iaquinto

Delegate Barry Knight

Delegate Harry Purkey

Delegate Christopher Stolle

Delegate Ronald Villanueva

Washington County

Delegate Israel O’Quinn

Westmoreland County

Delegate Margaret Ransone

   

A Look Back on Last Year

With the dawn of 2011, it is a good time to look back on the last year. Countless blogs and political sites have recounted the biggest stories of the last year, and made predictions for 2011. I thought it would be interesting to see what stories from this site you thought were most important. The following is a list of the 5 most visited articles on this site from the past year.

1. Greg Habeeb for 6th District GOP Committee Chairman, Bill Stanley for 5th District GOP Committee Chairman; Ironically both of these men are running in special elections next Tuesday. They are both running strong campaigns, and will be fine replacements for Morgan Griffith and Robert Hurt.

2. How will the Student Loan provisions affect me? Part II; In many ways this speaks to the biggest story in VA politics of the year. D.C. passed a healthcare bill full of unknown and dangerous provisions, and Virginians have lead the way in fighting it.

3. Why Joshua Solovskoy resigned as Michael McPadden's Campaign Manager; This was one more story of the mess that was conservatives shooting themselves in the foot in the 5th District nomination fight. Hopefully we have learned our lesson and can avoid such destructive infighting in future nomination contests.

4. Virginians Should Vote NO on the Constitutional Amendments; If an organized campaign had formed at least one of these could have been beat...

5. Trixie Averill Supports Undermining the Republican Party; For an article written very late in the year, it definitely got a lot of traffic fast. It also shows one of the things this blog is committed to: holding Republicans, and especially party leaders accountable.

Let's work together this year and put a conservative majority in the state senate this year. While there is a lot of talk about the 2012 Senate race right now, the state senate elections are the only general election this year, and winning them is critical to continuing the momentum heading into 2012.

Bill Stanley for State Senate

Bill Stanley is a rising conservative star in Virginia. He passionately believes in our core conservative principles, and will fight for them in whatever position he holds. Whether it was as Franklin Co. or 5th District Chair, or in his run for Party Chairman, Bill Stanley has a record marked by accomplishment and conviction. His hard work as Franklin Co. Chair lead to overwhelming support in his bid for 5th District Chairman. As chairman of the 5th District Bill Stanley was able to unite conservatives around Robert Hurt as Republicans took back the 5th District. In his bid for Party Chairman in 2009, Bill Stanley showed that he was willing to fight for things that looked impossible, and was not willing to be bought off.

Most importantly as a pro-lifer and a fiscal conservative, Bill Stanley will work make a pro-lifer chairman of the Senate Health and Education Committee, and will not vote to raise taxes.

Conservative State Senators Mark Obenshain, Steve Newman, Steve Martin, Ralph Smith, and Jill Vogel all endorsed Bill Stanley as they look forward to another conservative coming to the state senate. Ken Cuccinelli, Bob Marshall, The Lynchburg Tea Party, Gun Owners of America, and Bearing Drift have also endorsed Bill Stanley.

If you live in the 19th Senate District, help put a conservative majority in the state senate by voting for Bill Stanley on November 23rd.

FRC Action Launches Ad Targeting Tom Periello

FRC Action just announced that it has spent 125k to target 5 congressmen over the next two weeks. One of those congressmen is Tom Periello who is being challenged by state Sen. Robert Hurt. Here is an excerpt from the announcement with a list of the targeted seats.

FRC Action PAC, the political action committee connected with FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, started a television ad campaign today against five members of Congress who have furthered a big government agenda to the detriment of American families. This $125,000 cable news ad buy is connected with the "20 in 10" campaign targeting those members of Congress who voted for business-crushing pieces of legislation, including the new health care law that allows for taxpayer funding of abortions.

The members of Congress currently targeted in the two week ad campaign are:

Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ-8)

Betsy Markey (D-CO-4)

Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH-1)

John Boccieri (D-OH-16)

Tom Perriello (D-VA-5)

In Which I Agree With Tom Davis...

While I tend not to agree with Tom Davis, he understands Virginia politics very well, and his analysis of last week's primary was spot on. When asked by Politico what the most important election result was, and what we can learn, Davis made the point that the establishment is in trouble and even pointed to Virginia as an example of this.

"It's a political revolt out there. Jane Harman's numbers were down. Gary Miller's under 50 percent. Even the establishment Republicans in Virginia who run, they had multiple candidates against them and they were well under 50."

In VA-2, VA-5, and VA-11 there were very clear establishment candidates in Scott Rigell, Robert Hurt, and Pat Herrity. Scott, had the full backing of Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling, Robert Hurt had the support of most Republican officials because of his electability as opposed to his positions, and Herrity had the support of almost every party leader and elected official in the 11th district including Becky Stoeckel and Anthony Bedell. With all this support all three of these candidates failed to top 50% of the vote, and in probably the biggest surprise of the night, Herrity lost to Fimian by double digits. The only reason the establishment won in the 2nd and 5th is that the opposition was very disorganized and self centered and split the vote at least 5 ways in each race. When you combine these results with Howie Lind and Bill Stanley's victories in the 10th and 5th District Chair races, combined with victories in a number of unit chair races, this has to be a discouraging year for the establishment in VA. When the grassroots organizes and works together it can win any race. As a result we now have a much stronger party as we work together to win every congressional district in the state this fall.

VA Primary Results

As of right now (8:49pm), pretty much everything is called for VA:

1-Rob Wittman (88%)
2-Scott Rigell (39.3%)
5-Robert Hurt (48.1%)
8-Patrick Murray (51.3%)
11-Keith Fimian (57.3%)

Unless there are any surprises, that's the gist. Put that along with -

3 - Chuck Smith
4- Randy Forbes
6 - Bob Goodlatte
7 - Eric Cantor
9 - Morgan Griffith
10 - Frank Wolf

And there you have your Republican Ballot for the general this November.

Could GOP Division Keep VA-5 Blue?

The 5th Congressional district in Virginia has definitely been a spectacle in recent election cycles. In 2008, Virgil Goode (R) lost to Tom Perriello (D) by 745 votes - and that was after Goode demanded a recount. Well, this November, the 5th district will claim the spotlight again and the entire state will watch to see which color bleeds over the south.

The Washington Post made a very accurate assessment of this district when saying that the GOP's division throughout the district could very well be it's demise. If we can't unite on a candidate, will the votes be split too many ways, therefore letting the Dem. win?

Here we get into the stickiness of third party voting, and whether it messes elections up - and whether it is ethical enough to take that risk. I personally believe you should vote for what has been called "the lesser of two evils" (but I call it voting for the person who has conservative morals AND enough votes to win), but I know many who would disagree.

Currently in the 5th district, we have 7 GOP contestors -

Educator and Republican Activist Feda Morton, private real estate investor Laurence Verga, Albemarle County Supervisor Ken Boyd, state Senator Robert Hurt, businessman Ron Ferrin, and Michael McPadden. Assembly line worker Bradley Rees, who had originally filed to run on the Republican ticket said he will run on the Conservative Party ticket instead.

There is speculation that Virgil Goode will announce candidacy, however it has not occurred yet.

The division appears in the form of state Senator Robert Hurt, who is a Republican moderate, being endorsed by the GOP because of his appeal to independents. Conservatives, however, are leery about Hurt because of his record of voting for tax increases. If Hurt wins the nomination, Conservatives are threatening a 3rd Party candidate - which might split the votes and allow Perriello to win... again. Do you follow my logic?

For now at least, according to Virginia 5th Watchdog (posted on bearingdrift), Michael McPadden seems to be the Tea Party movement's favorite, but we'll see as the primary draws nearer which candidate is able to pull themselves out of the pack and into the front runners.

After death of newborn in Campbell Co. General Assembly looks to close loophole

After charges were not filed in the questionable death of a newborn child in Campbell County last Friday, GOP legislators, under the lead of Senator Steve Newman, with the assistance of Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli, Campbell County Commonwealth's Attorney Neil Vener, and Campbell County Sheriff Terry Gaddy are looking to pass legislation to close this loophole in order to protect innocent life in future situations.

According to the Lynchburg News and Advance:

Deputies were called to a home in the 1200 block of Lone Jack Road in Rustburg about 11 a.m. Friday. The caller said a woman in her early 20s was in labor.
When deputies arrived, they discovered the baby had actually been born around 1 a.m., about 10 hours earlier. Investigators said the baby was already dead when deputies got there.
Investigators told WSLS the baby’s airway was blocked. They said the baby was under bedding and had been suffocated by her mother. Investigators said because the mother and baby were still connected by the umbilical cord and placenta, state law does not consider the baby to be a separate life. Therefore, the mother cannot be charged.

 You can read the whole statment regarding the legislation from Senator Newman here.

The general problem with the law is that the child was still attached via the umbilical cord at the time of death. In order for charges to be filed in Virginia under the current law the following must be established: (1) the child must have been born alive; (2) the child had an independent and separate existence from its mother; and, (3) the accused was the criminal agent that caused the infant’s death. So in the case number two of the above was not completly true and the mother gets off free.


Legislation being put forth will essentially abolish this loophole and will allow charges to be filed if another case like this were to occur. Delegates Kathy Byron and Ben Cline will lead action on this legislation on the House of Delegates side and Senator Robert Hurt will be Senator Newman's co-sponsor in the Senate.


Regarding the legislation Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli said today:

“I have spoken to Senator Newman about the tragic and appalling circumstances of the baby’s death, and I certainly will make the resources of the Attorney General’s office available to help make sure this can never happen again.  This situation cries out for action, and I will support efforts to fix what appears to be a horrific loophole in our laws.”

This whole situation seems to be a great travesty and certainly a call for action to our lawmakers. The action by Senator Newman as well as the other elected officials who are stepping up to close this loophole should certianly be commended as well as a testament to how fortunate we are in Virginia to have elected officials who consider protection of the right to life a serious priority.

Remember: If a person does not have the right to life, all other rights then become unavailable.

Cross Posted at Roanoke On the Right