First thoughts on redistricting.

I’m getting home too late to provide much in the way of useful commentary, but I really want to point to the redistricting plans that became public this evening. Just one week before they’re due to be voted on, we’re all getting our first look at them. (To be fair, I thought odds were good …

Virginia Redistricting Competition winners announced.

Quentin Kidd (of CNU) and Michael McDonald (of GMU) held a competition for the best redistricting plans for Congress, the Senate, and the House. Fifteen teams from eleven universities participated. The winners, selected by folks from the the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, were announced today. Of all of the submissions, UVA won …

The Post profiles Creigh Deeds post-election.

Frederick Kunkle had a tough-to-read article about Sen. Creigh Deeds in yesterday’s Washington Post. For those of us who have gotten to know him in the nine years since he ascended to the senate, there’s a lot in here that’s sad. Losing an election is tough, and the easy thing to do afterwards is to …

“Jobs governor”?

Can we all agree that the notion of either gubernatorial candidate being a “jobs governor” (as McDonnell has branded himself) is fundamentally bullshit? A governor has a very limited capacity to create jobs. I will buy that it’s possible that a governor, over the course of four years, can woo a couple of big employers …

Sen. Deeds is pulling even with McDonnell.

A trend has emerged in the last couple of poll results: Sen. Creigh Deeds is pulling even with Bob McDonnell. Clarus research group’s poll came out a few days ago, showing McDonnell 5% ahead of Deeds, much closer than Deeds had been. But who is Clarus? I have no idea. So I ignored it. But …

“Mass hysteria” at the Deeds/McDonnell debate.

During today’s debate between Sen. Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell, I was awfully surprised to see this appear on McDonnell’s Twitter feed in the midst of it: @CreighDeeds confuses audience, mass hysteria ~staff #vagov Mass hysteria? Whatever Deeds had said, it had left the audience throwing chairs, pulling each others hairs, weeping openly, screaming, running …

Eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” won’t close our budget gap.

Jim Bacon on both gubernatorial candidates’ promises to slim down the state budget by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse”: But we’ve been down this road before. Does anybody remember the “Warner commission”? Does anyone recall that Virginia, for all the flaws so manifest to us who live here, has been consistently rated either No. 1 …

We’ll look back and see this as the week that McDonnell lost the race.

Bob McDonnell HQ can’t be a happy place to work this week. The governor’s race has been static for a few months now. Sen. Creigh Deeds has been biding his time, waiting for the summer to pass by, his campaign secure in the knowledge that McDonnell’s record is awfully far to the right. Sure, Deeds …