07/29/13: Virginia isn’t for governors

This op-ed appeared in USA Today on the date shown.

Every four years, Virginia is the center of the political universe, site of one of onlytwo gubernatorial conteststhe year after each presidential election. All eyes look to Virginia for some sign of the political future.

This year, the results will say more about the character of the two candidates than anything about the way national political winds are blowing.

High-minded history

Seventy-one men have held the title of His Excellency, The Governor of Virginia, including such notables as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler. It’s hard to see either Republican Ken Cuccinelli or Democrat Terry McAuliffe living up to the legacies of those men, three of whom went on to become president. Both Cuccinelli and McAuliffe are seriously flawed.

Cuccinelli has spent his public career as an advocate for the most stringent social conservative beliefs. Early in his career as a state senator, he led the effort to keep Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature anti-sodomy law on the books, despite the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas having seemingly invalidated it. He continues to fight to protect the law despite a U.S. 4th Circuit opinion striking it down last March. In between, he used his time in the legislature to push first for denial of unemployment compensation for those who did not speak English and then to allow concealed weapons permit seekers to complete competency tests online.

As attorney general, Cuccinelli made headlines when he sought to cover up the breast of the Roman goddess Virtus, whose image has adorned the state seal since it was designed by George Wythe in 1776. He was the first to file suit against the new federal Affordable Care Act and bullied state Board of Health members into adopting regulations for abortion clinics that treats them like new hospitals, no matter their safety record.

Low-minded track records

McAuliffe’s problems are different. He has not held elective office, so he doesn’t have a legislative and legal track record, but, boy, does he have baggage. The former chairman of the Democratic National Committee has what he has described as an “exuberant” personality, probably best exemplified by his appearance on national television waving a bottle of rum while wearing a Hawaiian shirt. His book, aptly named What a Party, is filled with cringe-worthy statements that are an opposition researcher’s dream.

Exaggeration is his modus operandi. When seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in 2009, he claimed to have created more than 100,000 jobs. Not quite. This month, in the first debate of the campaign, he alleged that his opponent would have been prosecuted for financial reporting errors. It wasn’t true.

McAuliffe’s claim that he located one of his businesses in Mississippi because Virginia “didn’t want to bid on it” proved false. The plant that was supposed to employ 1,500 has but 78 employees.

He calls himself a hustler in his book — with good reason. He used his fundraising skills to raise money not only for those he supported but also for himself. A failed bank, unpaid pension fund loans and a well-timed $100,000 investment that coincidentally grew to $18 million are just a few of the hits in this businessman’s background.

One a zealot, the other a hustler. Seriously, Virginia, is this the best we can do?