Sometimes the truth is too hard to avoid. The Washington Post headline says it all: McAuliffe on defensive as Cuccinelli gets a boost.
Ken Cuccinelli is having a very, very good week. When even the Washington Post is forced to concede that Terry McAuliffe is foundering at just the same moment Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign has hit its stride, you know that things are really bad for the Democrat.
A Smiling Ken Cuccinelli
Cuccinelli impressed the board’s majority as a serious, detail-oriented candidate while McAuliffe seemed to wing it, according to three board members present for the interviews who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly.
‘Terry was his normal, flamboyant self,’ said a board member present for both interviews. ‘He didn’t want to get pinned down to any details. He didn’t give any details. He was all about jobs, jobs, jobs — ‘I’m just going to take care of the situation when the time comes. I’m just going to do it.’ It was all [expletive].’
Cuccinelli, by contrast, the person said, ‘was precise. He was thoughtful. He thought through all the issues. He had a clear position on all those issues, and he didn’t agree with the council on all the issues.’
As my Virginia Virtucon colleague Jim Riley describes it, “Terry McAuliffe – An ‘uninformed and superficial’ drunkard who is winging it.”
Then there’s the strong-arm thug tactics employed by McAuliffe supporters (including Snacks Bolling) when the NVTC decided to endorse Cuccinelli. Norm at Bearing Drift and Riley at Virtucon nail the Democrats for the apparent bribery and extortion racket the Northern Virginia Democrats appear to believe is the way business is conducted in the Commonwealth.
And how did Terry respond to news about his campaign’s attempt to Chicago-ize NoVa? By SQUIRMING, just like he did when he stumbled away from his rash and reckless threat to shut down state government over Medicaid expansion.
Asked about the behind-the-scenes push to change the endorsement, McAuliffe said he was in the dark. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, pivoting immediately to another subject.
Did I mention the latest polls, which show Cuccinelli in a statistical dead heat with McAuliffe, closing the gap McAuliffe created with millions of dollars of smear ads over the summer? Why, yes, I did.
All of this great news is creating some appreciable momentum for Cuccinelli at a crucial time in the campaign. People have only really begun paying intense attention to the Governor’s race. What they’re finding is that Cuccinelli is smart, capable, dedicated, focused, and practical, while McAuliffe is lazy and arrogant. As the WaPo article concludes,
McAuliffe is breezy while Cuccinelli grasps the details and gravity of the job. Both candidates had 45 minutes to address the group. Cuccinelli gave a 39- minute address heavy on wonky details. McAuliffe gave his standard 16-minute stump speech.
We’re almost there, folks. Time to put the pedal to the metal.
UPDATE:
Yet another new poll shows Ken Cuccinelli’s momentum. Adding insult to Terry McAuliffe’s injury, a poll results published today reveal McAuliffe’s earlier lead has all but evaporated:
Democrat Terry McAuliffe holds a statistically insignificant lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli (35%-33%), while 22 percent of likely voters in Virginia remain undecided in the 2013 gubernatorial election, according to The Roanoke College Poll.
Nice.
