Senate:
Chap!, John Miller, Ralph Northam, George Barker, Janet Oleszek, and Al Pollard win. And maybe Mike Breiner and Karen Schultz too.

House:
Eric Ferguson, Margi Vanderhye, Paul Nichols, Jay Donahue, and Adam Tomer win. And maybe Rex Simmons, Chris Brown, Bobby Mathieson and Jeannette Rishell too.

UPDATE: We got the Senate! So I may have been a little over-exuberant but Chap, Miller, Northam, and Barker were the winners. Janet appears to be a painful hair short. As for the House, it’s a mixed bag- we got the Vanderhye and Nichols seats as well as the Mathieson seat and the totally unexpected Bouchard victory. But on the other hand we lost Ferguson! Who would have thought that?

About a month out, here’s where I think things stand in the State Senate. (incumbents underlined, projected winners in bold)

Likely Turnover
34th District - Chap Petersen OVER Jeannemarie Devolites Davis
1st District - John Miller OVER Tricia Stall

Leans Turnover
39th District - George Barker OVER Jay O’Brien
6th District - Ralph Northam OVER Nick Rerras
37th District - Janet Oleszek OVER Ken Cuccinelli

Toss-Up
29th District - Chuck Colgan vs. Bob Fitzsimmonds
27th District - Jill Holtzman Vogel vs. Karen Schultz

Leans Retention
28th District - Richard Stuart OVER Al Pollard
22nd District - Ralph Smith OVER Mike Breiner

Likely Retention
13th District - Fred Quayle OVER Steve Heretick
33rd District - Mark Herring OVER Patricia Phillips
20th District - Roscoe Reynolds OVER Jeff Evans
17th District - Edd Houck OVER Chris Yakabouski

Keep in mind that these are the 13 even remotely competitive races. If Breiner and Heretick win, the Republican party will really line up the circular firing squad. You may want to get your popcorn ready.

Up until a few weeks ago if asked I would have said that Ken Cuccinelli had run the strongest campaign among the endangered Republican incumbents this year. With the exception of one serious misstep Ken had controlled the terms of the debate in his re-elect. By separating Janet from her affiliation with the successful Fairfax County Public School system he had been making the best effort at caricaturing her into an impossible choice. But now he has not only reminded voters of her role with the schools but has insisted on a terrible and stupid strategy of attacking the schools themselves. And he’s fallen right into Janet’s outstanding narrative.

37th Senate District - Leans Turnover

So yeah, I’m finishing up my last year of law school, taking a couple classes, representing a criminal defendant in Rockville for Criminal Justice Clinic, working part-time at a firm in Fairfax, trying to keep up with some Democratic party duties, and all the while we’re going to have a baby any day now. Those are my excuses.

But I found a few minutes this morning and I’d like to riff off of something Ben posted this morning. Ben has posted his early predictions for the legislative elections and they look awfully weird to me. They’re weird because all the talk I’ve heard and all the polling I’ve seen indicate that this election is shaping up as a wave. It’s clear that Ben is not reading this election as a wave. In fact, his prediction has barely changed in months. Sure- his predictions point to a successful year for Democrats, but nothing spectacular. A wave is something different. A wave is when bad candidates, vastly outmatched candidates, and candidates in awful districts, win. A wave brings in not only those toss-up competitive races in Democratic-trending districts with sufficiently financed candidates that Ben didn’t include like Barker and Janet, it also sweeps in people like Donahue, Brown, Pollard, Del Toro, Brennan, Rishell, Martinez, Bouchard and Schultz.

Will it be a wave? My thinking right now is yes.

They’ve kicked up a storm haven’t they? We’re over 85,000 signatures and well on our way to 100K.

In the latest “Cuccinelli Compass” Ken Cuccinelli tries his best to worm out of the abuser fees mess he helped pass.

Follow me through the Cuccinelli contortions:

1) He starts with The Blame Game

• Blame the Governor- “The Governor has long supported raising money through these abuser fees.”
• Blame the House of Delegates- “the House always wanted much higher fines/fees than the Senate”

2) He moves on to a little Misdirection

• He voted against some other version of the abuser fees (that was never enacted)- “I was one of 6 Senators that voted against the bill.”
• And then rinse and repeat- “I do not support the abuser fee concept”

3) Then it’s Desperate Excuses

• They made me do it- “I had to either vote the whole package up or down.”
• And this classic statement “This calls to mind the notion that a compromise, by definition, includes things that I don’t like.” (Simply classic coming from a supposed principled anti-tax warrior.)

4) Finally, he owns up to his critical role in advancing the abuser fees legislation, probably hoping you’ve bored of his rambling defense, stopped reading, and won’t even see it buried in the 15th paragraph:

” The abuser fees were one of those things that I didn’t like, but I did vote for the transportation bill. In the Senate, that vote was 21-19, with every single Republican except Russ Potts and John Chichester voting for the bill, and no Democrats voting for it.”

It’s so sad to see a so-called principled leader come re-election time.

NLS is reporting counts on the volunteer participation for political campaigns in the Fairfax City and Clifton parades. The most interesting news:

Fairfax- Chap creams Jeannemarie
Clifton- George slams Jay

Great job guys!

That phrase is going to be heard a lot between now and election day. Why? Because it truly represents the screwy compromise that is this transportation bill and, even more, it epitomizes the screwy ideology that rules the roost in Richmond. The weird public policy results directly from the fact that the decision-makers - people like Ken Cuccinelli, Jay O’Brien, and Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis - are beholden to a narrow ideological set that demands fealty to the catechism of weakened government and “no new taxes”.

Of course, these fantasy-land agendas clearly don’t pan out in reality (or we would have NO transportation legislation). I wrote earlier about the Cuccinelli and O’Brien apostasy against the Norquist cult. So, in their cheap effort to disguise that apostasy yet cling to electability, we’re left with a bill that is more concerned with political appearances and CYA than with rational, stable, and transparent funding.

Good government is what’s at stake this November.

At the event I mentioned in the last post I also got to talk to Creigh. Strangely enough he recognized me and appropriately, (if not accurately) in his role with the Senate Democratic Caucus, exhorted me to support all of our State Senate candidates including George Barker. (I assured him that I have consistently been resolved to do my part to make sure we win all these State Senate races. Primaries are important, if temporarily divisive, but at the end of the day we’ve all got the same goal.)

I’ve got to say I was impressed with Creigh for picking me out of a lineup. This small proof that the modest Deeds has some pretty good raw political skills, combined with his highly amusing, self-deprecating interview with the Ditzocrats has Creigh’s stock rising. He’s still got a good ways to go to trump Brian Moran with me, but I am pleasantly surprised. Sure would like to see them work something out.

Man, I really feel for poor Jeannemarie Devolites and her husband. Not only do they have to face re-election in an impossible district, they have to face off against one of the most impressive, tenacious campaigners in Virginia.

Last night I was at Chap’s big Young Lawyer’s event and he owned the night. And even without the assist from young lawyer mastermind Scott Surovell, State Senate mastermind Creigh Deeds, and “his excellency” Mark Warner.

I saw Chap give two speeches in the span of about half an hour (one in a smaller reception and the other in the bigger room) both without notes and both brilliant and entirely unique. On several occasions he had the audience so engaged that individuals burst into applause in mid-sentence. In his bigger speech he further wowed the huge crowd with detailed proposals for reforms in Richmond to improve our quality of life up here in Fairfax County. It’s rare that a politician- especially one so endowed with the gift of gab like Chap - will move beyond the platitudes to really respect our intelligence enough to tell us exactly the things they want to accomplish and exactly how they plan to do it.

It seems clear now that Chap’s loss in the LG primary in 2005 was just a small bump in the road in a long and impressive public service career.   Tom and Jeannemarie better just move out of the way, because Chap is coming, and he’s in top form.

Thanks to NLS for providing this video. I went ahead and youtubed it.

George Barker has a very good chance to win this one for the Democrats but despite some conventional wisdom, he’s not going to be able to do it on the favorable shifting population numbers alone. It’s true that we have seen great returns in the district since the last State Senate election.

• In 2003, Jay O’Brien defeated Greg Galligan by about 5,000 votes.
• In 2004, Bush won it with just 51%.
• In 2005, Kaine flipped the 2003 results, besting Kilgore by a little more than 6,000 votes.
• And in 2006, Webb reaffirmed that result against a South County resident-incumbent in Allen.

These numbers all sound great right? Well, of course, 2006 is nothing like 2003 or 2007. It was a federal election and a statewide campaign with national attention. And 2005, while a little closer to a realistic comparison, is still a far cry as an election with three very competitive statewide races in addition to a super-competitive House of Delegates race (42nd- Albo v. Werkheiser) in the fastest growing part of the district. This year we have the State Senate race and a couple of Supervisor races which likely won’t be very competitive.

So what exactly has the population shift been? Between 2003 and this fall’s election we will have netted about 8,500-9,000 new voters. Assuming we get 50% turnout among this group (4,500) and assuming Barker gets 75% of this vote (3,375)- both absurd assumptions - we still don’t get the vote we need to make up for the 2003 deficit. More likely only 25% of those new voters will vote. And among those new voters, perhaps 60% are Democratic. That improves Barker’s margin by about 1,300 votes. About a quarter of what he’ll need to win.

This is not to say that we can’t win or that new voters are our only hope. There are a number of factors running strongly in our favor. My only narrow point is that an influx of new progressive voters is not going to be the difference-maker and it does not explain the recent trend. In that sense, the performance numbers of the last four years are pure deception. It isn’t so much that we’ve benefited from a mammoth demographic shift (though we have gotten significant benefit from some change) as much as existing residents have changed their voting habits to vote for some Democratic candidates - Kerry, Kaine, and Webb.

It’s not even clear that these people would be interested in turning out for a State Senate race. (And that’s why of course turnout is vital in these off-year elections). But it’s even less clear how much of that recent performance we can bank for Barker. O’Brien’s ties to, and focus on, the 39 precincts in the district will presumably earn him some Kaine crossover. The hardest work will be convincing these Kaine-O’Brien voters to change their vote to George Barker. To put it another way: Jay O’Brien outperformed Mark Earley’s performance against Mark Warner in 2001 by about 7%. Even in this newer, bluer 39th State Senate District, if O’Brien outperforms Jerry Kilgore by a similar margin- he wins.

Kenton Ngo, the blogger prodigy, inspired me to write up my own list of which State Senate districts are most likely to switch hands this fall.

Likely Democratic Pickup
1. 34th District - Chap Petersen v. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis
Chap is doing everything right here. He’s raising enough money to be competitive, he’s working hard and he’s also running in a district which he has, in substantial part, already represented. But the bottom line is that the numbers in the district have gotten so far away from the Republicans. Tom Davis may try his tricks but they’re not going to work on a candidate like Chap who always works like he’s 20 points down.

2. 6th District - Ralph Northam v. Nick Rerras
The State GOP have known that Rerras is their weakest incumbent for some time. And now Northam has shown that he is willing and capable to put the fundraising work in to finish the job. This has to be the GOP’s most concerning race.

Leans Democratic Pickup
3. 28th District - Al Pollard v. Richard Stuart
A great Democratic candidate against a divided GOP in a less than solid GOP district. I like Pollard’s odds.

Toss-Up
4. 39th District - George Barker v. Jay O’Brien
George showed that he could run a tough race and get great results in the primary. The big challenges for him will be to raise money, re-unite his base, and realize that the general election requires a much bigger strategy than he required in the primary. For instance, George’s impressive vote total in Clifton isn’t even 1/3 of the total he’ll need to win the precinct this fall, based on the 2003 numbers.

5. 37th District - Janet Oleszek v. Ken Cuccinelli
I don’t know why I’ve slid this campaign so far down, and maybe it’s a bit unfair. But I think Cuccinelli is a gifted campaigner and a gifted motivator of his base. Janet is a really likeable candidate I just don’t know how to measure her grassroots skills other than looking at her results against Bulova 2 years ago. On the other hand, she has done a very good job of raising the money she needs and in a normal turnout distribution she wins it in a walk. For now, I think Cuccinelli has some serious advantages but this race, more than any other, is subject to becoming very competitive very quickly.

6. 29th District - Chuck Colgan v. Bob Fitzsimmonds
I’ll be honest that I don’t know a whole lot about this race other than a little random buzz. Fitzsimmonds doesn’t strike me as a terribly great candidate, but while our incumbent is generally popular and well-regarded, he is a reluctant candidate and this is a Republican district.

Could Become Competitive: 27th District (Dem Pickup); 33rd District (GOP Pickup); 1st District (Dem Pickup)(Updated)

Likely Republican Pickup
-

Leans Republican Pickup
-

Senate Outlook – 21-19
If the election were held under the current terms, we win the 34th, 6th, 28th, and probably one of the two between the 39th and the 37th.

Soon-to-be State Senator Chap Petersen has a new post discussing Virginia’s role in addressing global climate change. It’s refreshing that we’re actually talking broadly and ambitiously about the state’s role in resolving the issues of global warming. Only a few years ago it would have seemed a strange notion that the state can play an active part in addressing a global problem. But the renewed political commitment across this country has been so strong that I believe, given the right conditions, the will is there to achieve something truly meaningful.

It’s my opinion that a very simple first step would be to extend the 10% ethanol requirements for retail gas to all parts of Virginia, not just Richmond and the urban areas of NoVA and Hampton Roads. But as you might recall, Tim Kaine already tried to get this done but the provision was stripped from last year’s energy bill by the Republican Assembly. This is what is at stake in this fall’s election. If we win, the Senate will be in Democratic hands and passionate environmental advocates like Chap Petersen will lead the charge to placing Virginia at the forefront of this effort for our future. But if we lose, the issue will likely be buried for another 4 years.