VA-Gov: Crazy Squiggly Lines

I haven't been all that plugged in to either of the two gubernatorial races this year, in New Jersey or Virginia, but the primary for the latter is on Tuesday, and the poll numbers have really bounced around on the Democratic side. You basically have the 3 candidates, former state Sen. Creigh Deeds, former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, and House of Delegates member Brian Moran all within the margin of error and basically tied. McAuliffe surged about a month ago but has dropped like a stone, and Deeds was nowhere a month ago, started running a bunch of ads and now leads in some polls. Moran's always been right there and reportedly has the best ground game.

As Nate Silver says, the dynamic does resemble Iowa 2004:

This was the polling situation in the run-up to the 2004 Iowa Democratic Caucus, with the last data point representing the actual results. As you can see, while it was clear from the polling that Howard Dean was losing momentum and John Kerry and John Edwards were gaining it, the polling far underestimated the magnitude of the momentum, and Dean wound up losing to Kerry by 19 points.

These kind of dramatic late swings happen more often in primaries than in general elections, and more often in multi-candidate fields than in two-candidate ones. I don't want to say they're always dispositive, because I haven't studied the issue systematically enough. Of note is that at least one hot-off-the-presses poll (from SurveyUSA) still has McAuliffe ahead by 6 points. But overall, and particularly in consideration of the fact that is Terry McAluiffe, who started out with the biggest warchest and the most name recognition, it's hard to see what he's going to do to halt his slide [...]

My armchair assessment is that the probabilities here are something like Deeds 60-70%, McAuliffe 20-30%, and Moran 10-20%. Like Dean, McAuliffe wears his emotions on his sleeve, and if he were to lose, the concession speech should be something to watch.

Maybe he'll talk about running for Governor in other states and end with a YEEARGHHH!

Whoever wins, it will be difficult to beat the Republican, Attorney General Bob McDonell, simply because he has not been bruised by a primary and Virginia has had two Democrats in the Governor's mansion in a row. If the winner of this primary gathers enough momentum to win in November, then you really can color Virginia blue.

VA-Gov: Terry McAuliffe's Money To The Rescue

The NYT Mag has a profile of Terry McAuliffe, who to me represents the worst of the Clinton-era corporate Democrats, but who is re-inventing himself as a candidate for Governor of Virginia. He's simply swamping the state with money, much of it out-of-state (82%) and corporate money, and using his peripatetic style to attract votes. Apparently he's campaigning on a message of jobs - a keen political insight considering the country has lost 5.7 million of them in the last year-plus:

His campaign is tailored for these times. “Jobs is the issue — the issue, the issue, the issue,” Cranwell, the Virginia Democratic chairman, told me. And wherever McAuliffe goes, he is surrounded by campaign placards reading, “New Energy for New Jobs.” He talks everywhere, albeit often vaguely, about using economic incentives to attract out-of-state industry and to promote clean-energy technology. When Terry McAuliffe pitches Terry McAuliffe, it is not as the former head of the Democratic National Committee but as the businessman who started his first enterprise, tarring driveways for Syracuse neighbors, when he was 14. “If the biggest problem facing Virginia today were crime, Terry would not be a plausible candidate,” says Paul Begala, who first worked with McAuliffe on Richard Gephardt’s presidential campaign in 1988 [...]

As he campaigns, McAuliffe’s economic plan is “probably the most aggressive economic plan that has ever been put out in the country,” if McAuliffe does say so himself. By the time he is done as governor, he will “create more jobs than all the other 49 governors,” Virginia will supplant California as the film-production capital of the world and Old Dominion University in Norfolk will become the nation’s leading research university.

His business acumen, however, mainly involves shilling for candidates and taking money off the top of deals, not creating thousands of middle class jobs for Virginians. I mean, this is ridiculous:

In December, in response to Moran's claim to be the only candidate who had run a business and raised a family in Virginia, McAuliffe boasted of launching five businesses in Virginia.

It turned out that all five are investment partnerships, with no employees, registered to his home address in McLean.

McAuliffe may or may not have some liabilities - the $100,000 investment in the ultimately failed company Global Crossing, which netted him $18 million while employees lost their pensions - on the business and jobs front. He's always been a salesman, and that sales pitch might get him through an election. But I worry more about his policy menu:

There are a few policy differences among the Democrats, in particular Moran and McAuliffe. Moran opposes offshore oil and natural-gas drilling and the construction of a coal-burning plant in Surry, and he has pledged to fight to repeal a 2006 state constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions. McAuliffe has said he is open to coal-burning plants and offshore drilling for natural gas, though only under stringent circumstances. While McAuliffe says he also opposed the gay-marriage amendment, he has argued that it is politically unrealistic to think the state’s two Legislatures would ever vote to repeal it.

Terry McAuliffe strikes me as a huckster, not a leader. He'll compromise and not advocate. He'll listen to donors while talking to voters. And he's apparently winning the primary. I hope Brian Moran can come back.