I frequently paraphrase Will Rogers when I introduce myself to groups as a member of no organized political party. I’m a Virginia Republican. Now that you’re angry, I’ll circle back to that in a minute.
I was on the air recently with a good friend (… also one of the muckier of the mucky-mucks in the Libertarian Party, both VA and National…) talking about 10%. Not that 10%, one-month poll average that was used to keep Robert Sarvis out of Thursday’s debate, but the 10% that should REALLY concern the leaders of BOTH parties. We know that Mr. Sarvis is now averaging 9.8% over the past months polling (thanks WDBJ-TV) and several recent polls have him as high as 13%, so this is certainly within the realm of the possible. If he reaches that percenage on Nov. 5th, it will create an automatic third-party line in Virginia ballots and remove the onus of collecting petition signatures for Libertarians to run a candidate.
My consultant friends all tell me that their research says that all these votes will come from Ken Cuccinelli and give us a Governor McAuliffe. Now, I don’t know about you, but most of the Democrats I know have less interest in voting for Terry now than they did four years ago, when the worst they could say was they did not know much about him. Well, now they seem to know TOO MUCH about a guy who either (A) sponsored a massive scam to steal little old ladies ID’s (who is waging a ‘war-on-women’?) or (B) hands out large sums of money to people he barely knew without finding out what it was for. Neither are traits they want in a Governor, much less a DEMOCRAT Governor! The bigger point is, the media is catching on, thus the RTD and Charlottesville Daily Progress’ “non-endorsements.” And the WaPo is starting to run almost daily updates about the case of Joseph Caramadre and his support from T-Mac, so don’t be too sure all of Robert Sarvis’ votes will come from the GOP. Plus, if you are in one of Virginia’s new gerrymandered, incumbent-protection zones (GOP or DEM), a third-party throws a real monkey wrench into the ‘best laid plans of Senators and Delegates’.
That said, the future of statewide and General Assembly races full of Libertarian choices (if, as my friend says, they are ready to seize the opportunity) is mind-boggling. Here in Charlottesville for example, the City Council passed ceremonial bills ‘de-emphasizing’ marijuana busts and banning drones in city airspace, could a Libertarian give David Toscano a run for his money? Think so. It’d be a REAL brave new world, not like the much more Huxley-esque one we are hurtling toward.
Now we circle back around to my opening statement. My Libertarian mucky-muck friend also told me that it will be much easier to recruit candidates for a Libertarian Party with a guaranteed spot at the table. This will help get the two old guard parties to get on with their re-invention. I can see where a ‘Byrd-machine’ old-school style Virginia Democrat might feel disenfranchised by their parties’ progressive move to mirror the National Party and the TEA Party has always been an interesting mix of Conservatives and Libertarians, so a good number of them they might leave the VA GOP behind. First reaction would be ‘that’s bad’, but think about it this way: as always the case with competition, though smaller in number, all three parties will be stronger and it’ll make for some very interesting elections! (And just maybe we can break up the cronyism.)
