I Tip My Hat to Meredith Quillen and Noah Wall

Yesterday I read a blogpost and saw that Creigh Deeds achieved his impressive victory with a "tiny 25-person staff." If this is true then Ken Cuccinelli's victory is even more impressive. His statewide campaign was run by two people: Meredith Quillen and Noah Wall. There were a number of hard working volunteers for the campaign, which enabled them to operate with a tiny staff. That said, Meredith and Noah worked tirelessly for Ken during the nomination contest. As a result of their hard work, Ken confounded the pundits and took 57% on the first ballot. Meredith and Noah, thank you for all your work. I pray God blesses your efforts over these next few months like he did over the past few, and continues to bless your endeavors for conservativism in this state.

The Danger of Open Primaries

Recently I have been doing some research into the election process and compiled this information on the impacts of open primaries on a parties ability to nominate a candidate. In a state like Virginia where we are forced to hold an open primary we should stay with a convention system to nominate candidates so that it is just members of the Republican party who decide our nominees.
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In an open primary any registered voter can vote in any party’s primary. When a voter goes to his polling place he can choose to vote in a party’s primary, but can only vote in one primary for a race. The advantage to an open primary is that it encourages voter participation. Indpendents are encouraged to participate in an open primary. However, the downside of an open primary is that it is the registered voters of a state, and not the political party selecting its nominee. There is also a variation of the open primary known as the semi-closed primary which allows independents to vote in either party’s primary. People registered with one party can not vote in the other party’s primary in a semi-open primary. Liberal independents can vote in a republican primary, and conservative independents can vote in a democrat primary in a semi-open primary state. Open primaries permit members of other parties to influence a parties nomination contest, and they often take advantage of it.

In the 2008 presidential election, both parties impacted, or tried to impact the other party’s nomination process. In 2008, John McCain’s early victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina propelled him from a second tier candidate to the Republican nominee. However, through open primaries he never won a majority of the Republican vote in both of those two states. In New Hampshire[1] Mitt Romney won the Republican and conservative vote with 35% and 38% respectively. However, McCain won the state by 5% by winning the independent, moderate, and liberal vote by 40%, 44%, and 45% respectively. A similar thing happened in the South Carolina primary[2]. Here Mike Huckabee won the Republican and conservative vote with 32% and 35% respectively. However, John McCain still won the state by 3% by winning the independents, moderates, and liberals by 42%, 51%, and 47% respectively. In both of these elections, the independents were involved in key presidential republican primaries, and changed the results.

A similar thing happened part way through the Democrat primary. Part way through the Democrat primary when Obama was close to winning the nomination, Rush Limbaugh began what an operation for Republicans to vote in the Democrat primary for Hillary Clinton in large amounts. This operation became known as operation chaos. Following the beginning of operation chaos Hillary Clinton won the Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina primaries. Following the start of operation chaos Hillary Clinton went from being on the verge of losing the nomination to winning a majority of the elected delegates. She ended up losing the nomination as a result of the super delegate votes.

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[1] http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#val=NHREP

[2] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21228202

Jody Wagner: I failed, Can I have a Promotion?

This is essentially what the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor is doing. She regularly gave innaccurate budget projections, and now wants to become Lieutenant Governor. While Wagner was giving innacurate predictions, Bolling was telling the state these were bad predictions and trying to put the state on a solid financial state inspite of Jody Wagner.

A recent e-mail from Mark Obenshain really makes this clear.

Dear William,

Congratulations to Jody Wagner, who won the nod to be the Democrat's candidate for Lieutenant Governor. You can be sure that she is hoping that Virginians will not notice a certain small blemish on her resume. Ms. Wagner, you see, was Governor Kaine's first Finance Secretary, and under her leadership, the Kaine Administration began to amass a dismal record of projecting the state's revenues. Ms. Wagner left the Administration after so badly missing the revenue projections for the Kaine Administration's first budget that we were running deficits within 3 months of the beginning of the budget cycle. Sadly, the Kaine administration has never recovered and has continued to deliver deeply flawed and politically motivated budget projections. Ms. Wagner, meanwhile, is looking for a promotion.

May revenue reports, out today, show that Virginia is once again in the hole, this time by $288 million, with a month to go in FY 2009. Revenue collection from January through May is down over 15% over the same period the previous year, with no sign of abatement, and the year to date decline is already at 9.3% – worse than the Kaine Administration's revised forecast of 7.3% delivered in February – with a month left to go. In fact, closing the books on a balanced budget will require an 8.1% increase over June 2008 receipts. FY 2010 is rapidly approaching; it begins on July 1, 2009. The budget for FY 2010 relies upon projections of 4.4% annual revenue growth. Sadly, it is all too apparent that rosy revenue projections have failed us yet again, and that the FY 2010 budget is on advanced life support before it even gets out of the gate.

Mark Obenshain
Virginia State Senator

Recent Washington Times Article about Homeschoolers in Politics

In the June 15th edition of the Washington Times on page A17 an article was published about homeschoolers in politics that talked about Generation Joshua. The article is republished below.

Home-schoolers take plunge into politics

Liz Essley THE WASHINGTON TIMES

At 17, home-schooler Tyler Fehrman was the youngest paid member of the John McCain presidential campaign. In the last five years, he's worked on 18 political campaigns in five states. Now, at 18, he is running for an at-large seat on the Mount Vernon, Ohio, City Council.

"My dream for some day is to be the governor of Ohio," he said. "But you gotta start somewhere and take it one stage at a time."

Mr. Fehrman, who finished his schooling in May and plans to attend Mount Vernon Nazarene University this fall, represents the forefront of a growing trend: home-schoolers who are actively involved in politics in their communities.

"I think it's definitely a growing trend," Mr. Fehrman said. "Here in Ohio we have a network of about 200 home-schooled students who are avidly active in politics all the time."

Mr. Fehrman's circle runs even larger. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, said evidence shows that both home-schooling parents and their children are more civically involved than the general populace. His 2004 study of more than 7,000 home-schooled adults showed that home-schoolers were more likely to vote, volunteer for political campaigns, participate in boycotts or write letters to the editor.

Although there is no way to confirm the numbers, Mr. Ray estimates that growing numbers of students -- about 2 million -- are now learning at home.

Home-school political activism manifests itself in such groups as Christian youth organization Generation Joshua, designed to educate students in civics. Founded in 2004 as an offshoot of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, the organization now has about 6,000 student members nationwide, an estimated 70 percent of whom are home-educated.

Although Generation Joshua itself is nonpartisan, members often actively campaign for political candidates.

"We consider our mission to be to give the young people the training, knowledge and inspiration to get involved. And then they go and work on the campaigns," said the director of Generation Joshua, William Estrada, also a lawyer and home-school graduate.

Mr. Estrada recognizes political activism as a growing trend in home schooling, but said it was not necessarily new. Both he and Mr. Ray pointed out that many states still outlawed home education at the birth of the modern home-school movement in the 1980s. This forced home-schooling parents to petition state and local government for the freedom to teach their children.

Mr. Ray said the nature of home schooling also draws parents who are firm in their beliefs.

"Just by choosing home education, they're, in a sense, activists. It's not unusual for them to get involved," he said.

He also noted that although home-schoolers' beliefs are important to them, those beliefs are not necessarily uniform -- home-schoolers could not be characterized as liberal or conservative. The most common thread, Mr. Ray said, was a "classical liberal perspective," a government-hands-off attitude.

Mr. Fehrman, who calls himself a Reagan conservative, said home schooling not only gave him the flexibility to be heavily involved in campaigns, but also gave his parents the ability to instill in him a strong biblical worldview.

Seventeen-year-old Daniel Oberlander, a home-schooler in Lovettsville, Va., and a member of Generation Joshua, said his parents raised him to care about politics and the right to vote.

He has helped register voters and made calls for political candidates.

On Election Day last year, Mr. Oberlander stood on a street corner with a group of Generation Joshua students, waving McCain signs.

A car drove up to the stoplight. The driver signaled for Mr. Oberlander and his friend to come over.

"Hey, where are all the Obama kids?" the driver asked from his rolled-down window.

Mr. Oberlander's friend replied: "They probably slept in."

Just say Yes!! ...to what?

At the RPV convention Bob McDonnell had a section of his speech he spent running through the issues and going "Democrats just say no... but Republicans just say yes". Bob seemed to be tripping over this part of his speech at the convention as if he wasn't totally comfortable with it yet. This slogan was used immediately after the convention as the name for the ticket airport rally tour.

When I first heard the "Just Say Yes" slogan at the convention I knew their was something wrong with it, but I couldn't pin point it. My first thought was that it was conceding to the Democrats their idea that the Republican party is just an obstructionist party, and promising to change that course.

While admitting Republicans may be part of the issue, the real problem with the slogan comes out when you ask the question just say yes to what? When any issue is proposed people can say yes to it, or say no to it. When solutions to issues arise that disagree with our conservative principles, should we just say yes? If we are focused on saying yes, so we are the party of positive change instead of obstructionism, then we will take the moderate solution to difficult issues.

The focus of this campaign like any campaign should not be saying yes to ideas, but applying the constitution and the ideas of the founding fathers to the issues that face this commonwealth. I want a governor who isn't focused on saying yes to possible solutions. I want a governor who is willing at times to say no to the moderate position on issues inorder to force people to take the more conservative idea when the occasion arrives.