After an eventful week where Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli declared his intention to seek the Republican nomination for governor and then participated as a panelist in an extremely substantive presidential forum on Fox News, he remains low-key in the presidential and U.S. Senate races today.
“We’ll be supporting the nominees,” said Noah Wall, Cuccinelli campaign spokesperson. “Ken has not made a decision of who he will be supporting.”
When asked if an endorsement will be made soon, Wall said that the Virginia presidential primary remains months out in March and the U.S. Senate primary is in June.
In contrast, Cuccinelli’s GOP opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling endorsed presidential candidate Mitt Romney early in 2007, where he served as Romney’s state campaign chairman. Bolling is also currently serving in this role for the Romney campaign. Additionally, Bolling endorsed U.S. Senate candidate George Allen earlier this year.
When Governor Bob McDonnell was attorney general, he was involved in presidential politics, supporting Fred Thompson.
This election cycle, McDonnell has stayed out of the presidential fray, largely due to the continued buzz that he is on “anyone’s short-list” for vice president. However, he did endorse Allen about a month ago.
Clearly Cuccinelli is biding his time in coming to a decision, if he even decides to make one publicly.
The question is, “Why?” In my opinion, he, like many of us, either hasn’t made up his mind, is trying to politically calculate the best time to announce – and the political consequences of doing so (or not doing so at all), or he just has other things to think about.
So, this leads to a few questions:
1) Will an endorsement from the attorney general matter in either of these races? If you think it does, how long do you think he has to make a decision?
2) If the AG endorses when it appears the races are a forgone conclusion, will that lessen your opinion of him as a leader?
3) Do endorsements from elected officials matter at all?
