Kaine Wins

OK, that's not news at this point. Tim Kaine (D) was elected Virginia governor. The short post I wrote on it Tuesday night was eaten by Blogger. I will note that a former student and good friend had a paid position on the Kaine campaign, so I'm happy that all his efforts were not in vain. (I mean, you still get paid if you lose, but it's not really the same thing. Just ask the Buffalo Bills . . . but we don't want to start down that road, again, do we?)

I was also thinking about how much money the developers sank into the Kilgore campaign. What happens now? Well, one of two things. Kaine and the developers can reach a new understanding; the developers can help Kaine retire his campaign debt (I'm assuming that he has some), Kaine can take a more Kilgore-like approach to the deelopers' issues. Or the developers are in a bad place. Having supported the loser, they will now face the political consequences. I don't really follow Virginia politics, but I'll be keeping an eye on the aftermath here.

One interesting thing that comes out of this election. Kilgore's campaign tried two different attacks on Kaine. First, in a now infamous series of ads, the Kilgore people tried to dukakis Kaine's anti-death penalty position. Kaine came back, not as hard as some may have wanted, but challenged the ads. Unlike the Duke, Kaine's opposition to the death penalty was based in his (Catholic) faith. There are apparently some GOPpers who think any Democrat can be brought down in the same way as Dukakis; but that was belied in this campaign. Second, the Kilgore campaign tried to depress "liberal" voter turnout in Northern Virginia by attacking Kaine's conservatism. This was chiefly done with spliced robo-calls of Kaine calling himself a conservative; but there was also a print circular. But I think the 2000 election demonstrated to progressive voters that attacks on the Democratic candidate as not liberal enough, if followed (by, say, a vote for Nader), result in a much worse result, from their point of view (Bush in 2000, Kilgore in 2005). Thus, this sort of attack probably doesn't work anymore, either.

What's left for the rightwing attack machine?

Btw, did you know that one in seven Virginia voters lives in Alexandria county?