Updated: Terry McAuliffe gears up to buy the Virginia governor's office
(UPDATE: After a two-month tour of Virginia, Terry was so excited about 10 more months of touring Virginia that he couldn't wait until Jan. 7 to announce his prefabricated decision to run for governor of the commonwealth. So he did it on Jan. 3 instead.)
Here's the bad news for Virginia Republicans, who once ruled the commonwealth politically: There are no limits whatsoever on how much a person or union, say, can give to any one candidate.
Here's the good news for Virginia Republicans: Terry McAuliffe, the ex-chair of the Democratic National Committee, the political powerhouse, is probably running for governor there.
Now, if Terry the Tiger's candidacy is good news for the GOP, that tells you how bad things are. The Washington Post had a fascinating examination of McAuliffe's cannonball into the political pond of Virginia.
Now that he's done raising gazillions of millions for both Bill and Hillary Clinton, who lost anyway, McAuliffe is doing a fair bit of money-vacuuming now on his own. Without hardly trying, he's already cornered the support of the state's billionaire Randal J. Kirk, who's given, oh, say, about $660,000 to Gov. Tim Kaine just in the last 36 months.
In the last 18 years, McAuliffe has raised nearly $940 million between the Clintons and the DNC. That's even more than the magic new guy. But, of course, he did it in a much shorter time and is busy changing the way things are done next door in Washington as soon as he's inaugurated Jan. 20.
Speaking of time, McAuliffe says he'll announce on Jan. 7 what his plans are. Gee, whaddya think?
-- Andrew Malcolm
No need for any money to get free cellphone alerts on each new Ticket item; just register here. RSS feeds are also available here. And Amazon has Ticket Kindle feeds as well.
Photo credit: Associated Press
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
Subscribe to this Blog
Wow,
This was as bad as Palin's Constitution response, or the Miss Teen USA South Carolina geography response.
Posted by: RIP GOP 2008 | December 30, 2008 at 09:10 PM
Hillary just wrote off 13 million because McAuliffe was
unable to live up to his promise of getting all the $ to pay
for her deficit. Besides this guy is a compulsive liar with
close ties to the Illinois democrat mafia Virginia deserves
much better.
Posted by: AnybodybutMcAulif | January 01, 2009 at 01:53 PM
Oh Jeez, this smiling sleazeball telegraphs the slime. Dear God, what happened to the home of Washington, Jefferson, Lee, and a few more presidents (Wilson not included) ? God help us get a VIRGINIAN as Governor.
Posted by: More Demcrap in the Old Dominion | January 05, 2009 at 02:31 PM