In what has to be the most telegraphed hay-maker in the history of politics, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling offers his humble rebuttal to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s change-of-heart regarding emergency legislation with respect to the presidential GOP Primary ballot:
“Needless to say, I am pleased that Attorney General Cuccinelli has abandoned his call for legislative changes to Virginia’s ballot access requirements in advance of the Republican presidential primary in March. While I do not object to the General Assembly considering changes to our ballot access requirements for future elections, it would have been inappropriate to make such changes in the middle of the current presidential nominating process. That would have been terribly unfair to Governor Romney and Congressman Paul, both of whom successfully complied with these requirements and filed a sufficient number of legal petition signatures to qualify for the Virginia ballot.
“Going forward, I would also encourage Attorney General Cuccinelli to avoid making public statements that criticize our state election laws while his office is defending the State Board of Elections in a lawsuit that has been brought against them by Governor Perry and certain other presidential candidates. I am concerned that such public comments could be used against the Commonwealth in our effort to defend these lawsuits, and I am confident that the Attorney General would not want to do anything that could jeopardize his office’s ability to win this case.”
Admittedly, I thought Cuccinelli’s original response to the issue was impetuous, given that we value our commonwealth’s process and that the attorney general is very much in favor of conventions vice primaries. So, this retraction from someone so generally intractable is quite the admission.
That being said, the Lieutenant Governor wasted no time in reaching for the salt.
