On Monday afternoon, I went to Richmond and had lunch with Lt. Governor Tim Kaine. We hadn’t met before; he’s a nice guy. I’ve been certain that he’d get the nomination for governor in 2005, but not so certain that he could defeat the attorney general, Jerry Kilgore. Although he’s not a shoo-in, I think that Kaine’s odds are a great deal better than I’d thought previously. He has some good ideas for Virginia, and we even came up with some ways that his campaign and Al Weed‘s campaign could work together.
While I was in town, I stopped in to visit the state Democratic Party headquarters, which I had never visited. (I’m not fond of Richmond, and only go there when I absolutely must.) Party communications director Laura Bland gave me over two hours of her time, during which we discussed Al Weed, the Fifth District, and the party’s strengths and weaknesses. Because she used to be a reporter with the Danville Register Bee, she has some specialized knowledge of people in Southside Virginia that could be an asset in Al’s campaign, which she imparted to me. I was surprised at how underfunded and bare-bones that the state party is; their resources are perhaps a tenth of what I had long assumed that they were. I have offered to volunteer my time with regard to a specific project there. I hope to make the state party a bit of a personal project when I finish school.
There have been lots of Al Weed-related events in the few days since I arrived in Charlottesville for my week-long break from school. The campaign is very much underway now, with a goal of raising a fairly ambitious amount of money by the end of the year. It’s doable, but it won’t be a walk in the park. With Amber as the fundraising administrator as of a week ago, I’ll be inevitably be keeping much closer tabs on the financial situation. I’ve already become considerably more aware of the fiscal imperative, and my mind is often occupied with attempts to determine who I know that has money that would like to see a real congressman representing Virginia’s Fifth District. It’s too bad that my friends with money are apolitical, and my friends that are political don’t have any money. I suspect neither phenomenon is a coincidence, now that I think about it.