There are three snippets from Marc Fisher and Laura Vozzella’s pre-post-mortem of the Ken Cuccinelli gubernatorial campaign that I want to share with you.
Here’s the first:
Four years ago, McDonnell’s largest single donor other than Republican Party organizations was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent $973,000 on his campaign. This year, the chamber gave Cuccinelli nothing.
Asked to explain that decision, a spokesman for the business association, Blair Latoff Holmes, said only that “the chamber is not involved in the Virginia governor’s race.”
Here’s the second:
Of the 43 donors who contributed $50,000 or more to McDonnell four years ago, 27 made no major gifts to Cuccinelli this year, The Post found…
…The 27 missing donors gave a total of $2.3 million in 2009. Most of those contributors gave to Republicans in other races this year. The Virginia Association of Realtors and Premium Distributors of Virginia, one of the state’s largest beer wholesalers, switched sides and gave to McAuliffe.
Here’s the third:
Mark Kington, an Alexandria venture capitalist who gave $83,000 to McDonnell in 2009, said he steered clear of Cuccinelli because “his position on climate change to me was a real non-starter, and I told him as much.”
Kington, a former member of the University of Virginia’s board of visitors, donated $1.5 million with his wife to endow a professorship in climate change research. Cuccinelli, a longtime skeptic on climate change, spent two years as attorney general investigating whether a U.Va. professor had manipulated data to show rising temperatures on Earth. The university fought back, and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled for the school.
Kington, a moderate Republican and former business partner of Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), said he would not have supported Cuccinelli even if climate change weren’t an issue. “It may be time to vote for the third-party candidate,” he said, “if only to send a message to the Republican Party that we need pragmatic solutions, not positions that are unbending.”
Now think back to the first piece I wrote today about how business-minded Republicans have no reason to align themselves with a party as socially conservative as the modern GOP. Think back to how I said that business leaders were already concluding that moderate Democrats were a better investment than conservative Republicans. Think back to how I said that business-minded Republicans are pining for a third party. And think back to how I said that most business-minded Republicans have no use for the silliness of climate change denialism.
Every single one of those points came up as partial explanations for why Ken Cuccinelli couldn’t raise enough money to compete in this race. It’s true in Virginia. It’s true in Georgia. It’s true in California. It’s true basically everywhere. The world has changed almost overnight. Something different is coming.
Yes, something different is coming. But the Koch brothers (& friends) still have their vast networks and their 80 billion dollars, so it’s not happening overnight.
A sure sign that something’s really happening is if congress starts working again. We’ll know that the minute Boehner stops pandering to the tea party.
The Kochs and Adelson can abundantly fund a hell of a lot of campaigns out of the change they find in their sofas. And likely will. But having the Chamber come out on the other side would be a huge deal.
All good and fairly draw-dropping anecdotes. But couldn’t the first two have something to do with the corruption charges against McDonnell? He’s caused a lot of disgrace and embarrassment in the Virginia GOP which may have spurred some of the regular GOP investors to sit out this cycle. Not to mention GOP-leaning voters.
This race might be a lot closer if the outgoing GOP guv wasn’t potentially on his way to prison.
Maybe, but don’t you see a pattern here with my articles on Michelle Nunn and California businessmen giving up on the GOP?
Of course – I think you are making a strong and sustained argument, I find it plausible and hope you are right. But also trying to sharpen your points re: the VA guv’s race. I think there may be more to Cuccinelli’s downfall than just the GOP pathologies writ large, though they are obviously a big part of it. It seems to be a uniquely flawed state party and campaign, in ways I can’t quite discern as a very removed West Coaster.
Cuccinelli orchestrated his own fall by doing away with the primary and having a convention. That was his stab in the back to Bolling, the heir apparent, who would have probably won a primary, then won against McAuliffe. With a convention, Cuccinelli grabbed up the TParty vote that swept in the spectacularly idiotic Jackson for lt. gov., and the more affable, but Cuccinelli twin, Obenshain.
While anecdotal evidence only, the Republicans at the golf club despise Cuccinelli, particularly women. These are old time Republicans, mind you. When a couple passed our table at supper, the wife said, “Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday,” and she meant vote for McAuliffe. She knows we’re Dems. There are a good many Republicans we know who are not sitting out the election. They are voting against Cooch.
Mark Kington, an Alexandria venture capitalist who gave $83,000 to McDonnell in 2009, said he steered clear of Cuccinelli because “his position on climate change to me was a real non-starter, and I told him as much.”
And Governor Vaginal Probe’s position on climate change is what?
That it doesn’t exist. That we should be burning more coal. That academic witch hunts against climate scientists are a good use of the state attorney general’s resources.
Right .. which means he wasn’t pulling support from Cooch just because Cooch thinks global warming is fake.
Another point: if the Chamber and other big money orgs do in fact turn on the GOP, I’ll bet you hear a swift and sudden increase in bipartisan talk about the need to “fix” Citizens United legislatively. Already, the exploding spigot of money has mainly damaged Republicans, most notably in the 2012 primaries, but things would become an order of magnitude worse for them if the bulk of the Super PACs started supportings Dems in general elections, too.
A pendulum can only swing so far before it’s forced to return the other way. And the change is sudden and unstoppable. It was time, and I’m going to enjoy every moment of it.
Yes, Sisyphus has finally pushed his rock to the pinnacle. And whichever way the boulder starts down now, increasing speed and momentum is its fate. Obama said he would crush insincere assholes (paraphrase) and here is the dynamic playing itself out before our very eyes.
never tire of that clip
Democrats in Virginia better show up in huge numbers on Tuesday to make sure these predictions come true. There’s too much triumphalism before the vote on the Democratic side. That is worrying.
Beengo!!!
You mean like in 2000 when progressives on line in places like Salon’s Forum (I was there) were predicting a landslide victory for Gore.. laughing and guffawing about that “dumb, hick governor from Texas” and how he had no chance of beating Gore.
Well? Not only was there no landslide victory for Gore the popular vote was one of the closest in our history. Gore could not even muster a win in his home state of Tennessee.
A more recent example is the WI recall vote of their governor– a guy almost as bad as Cucinelli. the recall vote turned out more or less exactly as the original election in 2010 in terms of voter turnout/demographic. democrat voters did NOT show up.
You’re correct; it’s all about turnout. it’s not about how hideous the repug candidate is. historically voters vote their pocketbooks. Voters are not spending much time in bloggo world. they are out there trying to survive and millions aren’t making it.
that’s one of the reasons there’s a growing “throw da bums out of office” trend which applies to both political parties.
Agreed. Low turnout election, voter suppression in key districts, crazy republican base terrified of losing their hold on murca. Sensible people need to vote.
Yes, it’s notable the front organization for the One Percent– the Chamber of Commerce– withheld money from Cuccinelli.
the Cof C isn’t stupid; they saw what happened with the last POTUS election: Obama crushed Rmoney. they saw the demographics; a shrinking voter base for the GOP, a trend that could be a large problem if their goal is actually getting GOP candidates elected.
It makes sense they stop funding extremist dickheads like Cuccinelli. but this hardly means the dickheads are just going to go away/give way to more moderate GOP candidates.
as long as our economy continues to suck, the pressure to raise taxes on the wealthy and protect our social safety net will continue to grow– which in turn spurs the extremists, simply because this serves to distract us from our critical problems.
http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=c6550d4c-9741-4dcb-9614-ae499a4b3c23
Agree We must get out to vote
New PPP poll to be released today, twitter say no upset
After the debt ceiling end game, I have learned never to doubt the Booman.
So while I’m skeptical, because of the “stickiness” and inertia of large institutions like parties, there is no way I’m predicting against you.
You’re damned Jedi, you are.
I keep shaking my head at these business types who seem to understand how to make a buck but have no savvy in electoral politics at all. A third party? Seriously? Please proceed, business donors.
Am I the only one here concerned about organizations like the CoC switching to support moderate Dem candidates? If the big donors support moderate Dems in big numbers, then progressives will have nowhere to go to even aspire to influencing policy.
That’s another important dynamic that will become more prominent once the GOTP’s course is finally determined.
The left’s populist concerns, expressed through the Occupy movements, have already rejected the Democratic Party. Some savvy Democrats have tried, at least rhetorically, to co-opt their 99% meme while many Democratic mayors have been the face of police state repression against folks demanding justice in the foreclosure process (by protesting at banks) or for workers everywhere (by blocking CA ports). The future of a Democratic Party aligned with privatizing schools and cutting public workers pensions is cloudy to say the least.
IO, once the fascist threat posed by the GOTP is resolved, the already-compromised and terribly infiltrated Democratic Party is in for it’s own sturm und drang. The populists in both political wings have no love for the corporatists, especially the financial elites while all our post-Citizens United politicians will be more, not less, beholden to the anti-democratic plutocrats. ALEC is already moving from advocating for “limited government” to advocating for “limited representative government.
Even more interesting times lay ahead.
“IO” should be IMO.
“We need pragmatic solutions, not positions that are unbending.”
Unfortunately, right now we’re in a struggle with a Manichean segment of society that regards any compromise or pragmatism as acceding to the powers of darkness, in which they become losers of a cosmic war between good and evil. And they’re driving the Republican party with a heavy whip hand.
I don’t think they’re done quite yet.
We’ll have a chance to see in a couple months. My own hunch is that we’ll have another stare-down over the debt ceiling, with more farce. This bunch still has another foot to shoot.
another foot to shoot – nice!