African American officials in the Virginia Democratic Party are teeing off on E.W. Jackson, the Chesapeake faith leader and Republican lieutenant governor nominee, for promoting what they call political hate speech against fellow blacks in the guise of religion.

State Sen. Mamie Locke of Hampton called his rhetoric ugly and mean-spirited, while Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones, who’s also a minister, blasted Jackson for espousing a “message of hate and divisiveness” rather than one of Christian compassion.

Jones also took issue with Jackson’s penchant for using slavery metaphors to demean abortion rights advocates and black Democrats.

“Let’s make one thing clear right now. Nothing is like slavery,” he said. “And those who compare partisan politics to one of the worst institutions in human history do a grave disservice to us all.”

Jones offered those views Wednesday on a Demcoratic conference call targeting Jackson, one in a series of calls this week featuring party supporters with civic roles in the gay, Hispanic and African American communities with criticism

Source: The Virginian-Pilot

A spokesman for the Democratic Party of Virginia said today that an investigation of Gov. Bob McDonnell calls attention to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s own lapses on financial disclosure.

Brian Coy cited Cuccinelli’s initial failure to report his stock holdings in Star Scientific, headed by Jonnie Williams. Cuccinelli and McDonnell have come under scrutiny for their relationship with Williams, who has given gifts to both.

Star is separately undergoing a federal securities investigation and facing lawsuits related to its primary product, Anatabloc, a dietary supplement.  

“It is inexcusable for Cuccinelli to use the fact that it was his responsibility to investigate his own financial disclosure statements to avoid an investigation for six months after he began the investigation into the governor’s statements,” Coy said.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

E.W. Jackson played every card in the deck to win Virginia’s Republican lieutenant governor nomination Saturday night in Richmond — a rousing speech, a dedicated base, and charismatic appeal to undecided conservative delegates.

Now, though, the media spotlight is turning to controversial comments Jackson has made about the gay community and claims about Barack Obama’s alleged “Muslim perspective.” He’s going to have to convince a divided Virginia GOP and the electorate at large that he is ready for primetime.

Jackson, an ordained minister and former Massachusetts lawyer, has limited political experience. He campaigned for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate last summer, but garnered less than 5 percent of the vote. His strength lies in a populist appeal that rails against establishment GOP members at odds with the Tea Party movement.

“The working class in this country has not gotten representation in either party, I believe,” Jackson’s Nelson County campaign coordinator, Russ Simpson, said Saturday night. “E.W. gives us that ray of hope. I’ve got three kids. They’re in college. It’s hard. You’ve got to have somebody like E.W. Jackson to motivate people. We need more people like him to give that ray of hope because we don’t have it anymore. We’ve just got people butting heads and doing politics on party lines. I’m sick of it.”

But Jackson still has to unify a state party that seems more divided than ever, with Democrats using the candidate’s comments like a cudgel to bash the fragmented GOP.

Source: The American Spectator

Sen. Mark R. Warner says he’s introduced legislation that would better track the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.

So there was a rousing red political convention over the weekend in Richmond during which Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, dutifully reiterated his opposition to abortion, Obamacare and the science of climate change. Although he attempted to concentrate on job creation and the like, Cuccinelli nonetheless became the official standard bearer for all things tea-party in a state that by no means is wedded to such ideology.

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But didn’t we just see this movie a few months ago?

For the second consecutive presidential election cycle, Barack Obama won the increasingly blue Virginia by espousing progressive views deemed more acceptable to the electorate than the Republican option – first John McCain and then Mitt Romney.

The latter made no secret of his disdain for such things as Planned Parenthood, and, well, he lost the state.

Now along comes Cuccinelli, more or less running on the same platform with which he governed the past four years as the state’s controversial attorney general.

But this, as Virginia Tech political science professor Chuck Walcott points out, takes things to a different level as the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, happily and hungrily watches the emerging narrative.

“Compared to Cuccinelli,” Walcott says, “Mitt Romney is a feminist.”

Source: WJLA TV

Recently, I asked Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, one of the most fiercely pro-choice members of Congress, why she thought the House of Representatives had been so muted this year in its introduction of anti-abortion and anti–Planned Parenthood bills. “It pays to fight,” she said.

The implication was that House Republicans had decided that the lesson of the bruising 2012 election was to back off on anything that Democrats could tar as a war on women. (In the meantime, their allies in the states could push through real changes in abortion and contraception access, with very few political barriers.) But that fragile detente may be over, both nationally and in this year’s key state races. The question is whether it’s a battle Republicans even want to fight.

Norton’s own home turf, the District of Columbia, is often the ground for federal abortion policy grandstanding, as it was when Rep. Trent Franks introduced a 20-week abortion ban for women in the District. (That bill got a majority of votes on the floor, but was set up to fail by leadership requiring a two-thirds majority). Inspired by the national spotlight on Kermit Gosnell, Franks is back this week with a new, super-charged version: Banning abortion at 20 weeks, about a month before viability, for the entire country.

Source: Salon

The state Republican Party took bold action Saturday. Convention delegates staked the party’s future on a suite of candidates — Ken Cuccinelli, E.W. Jackson Sr. and Mark Obenshain — that is unabashedly conservative. The GOP has gone all in with the tea party.

Cuccinelli’s positions are well-documented. Jackson has compared abortion to slavery and has said gay people are “frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally.” Obenshain once proposed — then yanked — a bill requiring women to report their miscarriages to police within 24 hours or face criminal charges.

When voters go to the polls this fall, regardless of which Democratic candidates win the lieutenant governor and attorney general nominations in June, they have a distinct choice, with a vast gulf between the candidates on either side of the aisle. The Republican Party doubled down on the far-right end of the party.

Source: Staunton News-Leader

Virginia’s top lawyer is not above the law. Nor is Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli just doing his constituents a favor when he responds to requests for public records.

Cuccinelli’s startling epiphany that he is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act came at a convenient moment. He is running for governor while being pelted with questions about his relationship with a businessman who has a pending dispute over state taxes.

It was tempting for Cuccinelli to slather himself in a potent Scandal Proof Formula to shield himself from the state sunshine law. But the arrogance of the proclamation, not to mention its nonsensical legal justification, forced him to back down this week.

The Republican issued a statement Monday saying he has asked attorneys in his office to stop claiming in FOIA responses that the office is exempt. Notice he did not affirm that he is subject to the law. He merely promises not to keep saying that he’s immune or, at least, he won’t keep putting the outrageous claim in writing to avoid “confusion.” Cuccinelli’s staff have continued to respond to information requests while clarifying that they are doing so “as a courtesy.”

Source: The Roanoke Times

Terry McAuliffe plays up his support of Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell’s plan to pump billions into Virginia’s aging road network in his second campaign ad, drawing a contrast with Republicans likeKen Cuccinelli who opposed the bipartisan plan. Flashing back to late February when the fate of the $6 billion plan was uncertain, the ad’s narrator notes that while “Tea Party Republicans refused to support the plan” McAuliffe decided it was “too imporant a time for partisan politics. McAuliffe reaches out to Democrats and urges them to support the bill,” the ad notes. “And the bill passes. Terry McAuliffe: Putting Virginia first.”

Source: The Virginian-Pilot

An embezzling case that began with a chef being accused of stealing food from Virginia’s Executive Mansion and morphed into a political scandal involving two of the state’s most powerful politicians has some people wondering: What goes on behind the wide double doors of the governor’s house? The governor’s mansion is in some ways a dichotomy: It is perhaps the state’s highest-profile office, yet also one of the only places Gov. Bob McDonnell and his family can retreat for privacy. Past and present directors describe a place where people must carefully watch how money is spent, yet few formal rules or laws exist dictating how it must be run because employees have a new boss every four years. The state’s constitution limits governors to a single four-year term. “There’s no law or regulation that says the next administration has to do anything I did,” said Amy Bridge, who directed the mansion for former Govs. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. “You have to be cognizant of the fact that every family is different, everyone is going to use the mansion in a different manner.”

Source: The Virginian-Pilot

Until Saturday night, I had never heard of E.W. Jackson, a Harvard Law School graduate and minister who served three years in the Marine Corps and attended Harvard Divinity School. I’ve never met the man, but I already know that Republicans in the commonwealth of Virginia have a problem with their new nominee for lieutenant governor. The combination of material on Jackson’s own website and the videos of Jackson speaking for himself suggest that Republicans have nominated a no-holds-barred social conservative who seems destined to utter the sort of controversial comments reminiscent of former Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin. Nominating conventions are inherently dangerous for political parties. The activists who show up invariably are more ideological than most in their party, and they seem to care little about nominating candidates with broad appeal or proven electability. (The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party had this problem for years, which is why the winner at the state convention often lost in the primary.) As I have noted in recent columns and posts, many Republicans believe their party has been too compromising and needs nominees who are more conservative. Jackson would appear to fill that bill. He is an admirer of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (both of whom have endorsed him, according to his website), and religious themes are an important part of his agenda.

Source: Roll Call

Virginia has received federal permission to take the first and biggest step toward overhauling its Medicaid program, potentially setting the stage for expansion of coverage to hundreds of thousands of Virginians under the Affordable Care Act. More than 78,000 Virginians, including more than 24,000 in the Richmond region, will be able to use one ID card for Medicaid and Medicare services under an agreement reached between the state and federal government on Tuesday. The three-year pilot is designed to coordinate long-term care and other services for so-called dually eligible Virginians covered by both programs. It is the linchpin in the first phase of changes the state is requiring as a prerequisite for expanding its Medicaid program for the poor.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Gov. Bob McDonnell is under investigation over the statements of economic interest he has filed. The investigation was initiated by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who sent a letter in early November 2012 to Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring, appointing him to review McDonnell’s statements. By law, elected officials are required to account for all gifts received in excess of $50. “In that letter, the Attorney General designated me, pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3126(A)(2), to review certain Statements of Economic Interest filed by the Governor,” Herring states in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between the attorney general’s office and Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Office filed last week by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The section of the Virginia Code referenced in Herring’s response outlines the responsibility of the attorney general as the sole official charged with the initial enforcement function with regard to disclosures required by certain state officers and employees.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

During their party convention Saturday at the Richmond Coliseum, some Republicans spotted a familiar face in what might have seemed an unlikely setting: Kenny Klinge, a seen-it-all campaign strategist who broke in with Barry Goldwater in the early 1960s, sitting in the skybox that served as E.W. Jackson’s war room. Klinge, who also is a lobbyist, was Jackson’s convention manager. Working without pay, Klinge joined the minister-lawyer’s campaign three weeks earlier, when — to political reporters, handicappers and his six opponents — Jackson’s victory for the lieutenant governor’s nomination seemed improbable. “Something happened that wasn’t supposed to,” Klinge said Tuesday. That “something” was the repudiation of what remains of Establishment Republicanism.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Virginia’s newly minted Republican lieutenant governor nominee E.W. Jackson says his faith and values inform his conservative stances on issues such as abortion and marriage — and some of his past statements critics are now highlighting as extreme and offensive. “I say the things that I say because I’m a Christian, not because I hate anybody, but because I have religious values that matter to me,” Jackson told reporters at a campaign stop in Fredericksburg. “Attacking me because I hold to those principles is attacking every church-going person, every family that’s living a traditional family life, everybody who believes that we all deserve the right to live. So I don’t have anything to rephrase or apologize for. I would just say people should not paint me as one-dimensional.” Jackson, a virtual unknown who has never held public office, has grabbed headlines in recent days as Democrats immediately seized on his past comments on abortion, race and homosexuality. He suggested that Planned Parenthood has done more to hurt blacks than the Ku Klux Klan and called gays and lesbians “perverted” and “very sick people.”

Source: The Washington Post