Yes, Virginia, there is a choice in November

When I moved from the Left Coast to Virginia a decade ago, I thought it would be like entering the Promised Land.

For a long time, I had dreamed about living in a state that hadn’t lost touch with reality, been infected with the virus of political correctness and would be a force for good on the national scene.

That state was always Virginia for me.

But over the last 10 years, Virginia’s citizens have too often voted like they live in a giant suburb of Washington, D.C.

I am amazed at the poor election choices the state has made.

In 2013, for instance, Virginia made the astonishingly bad choice to elect Terry McAuliffe as governor over state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. It was a stark choice of good vs. evil and Virginians chose absolute evil from the pit of hell in McAuliffe. Amazingly, McAuliffe’s No. 1 campaign issue was abortion. He sounded like a zealot in every campaign appearance and debate, suggesting unfettered, unrestricted, unregulated abortion on demand for any reason or no reason whatsoever was his highest priority. And, remarkably, he won with that agenda.

But long before his bid for the governorship, McAuliffe was Bill Clinton’s political fixer. He served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, chairman of Bill Clinton’s campaigns and chairman of Hillary’s ill-fated run for the presidency in 2008. For people who understand the Clintons, I shouldn’t need to say more about McAuliffe. But there is more – a lot more.

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McAuliffe is an example of a guy who got rich gaming the political system. His business record below explains how he joined the super-rich – without working hard, without producing anything, simply through political sleight of hand and help from high places. The following is taken almost verbatim from McAuliffe’s Wikipedia page – not known for its conservative or Republican bias. There’s no embellishment on my part:

• In 1979, McAuliffe met Richard Swann, a lawyer in charge of fundraising for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in Florida. In 1988, McAuliffe married Swann’s daughter, Dorothy. In the late 1980s, Swann’s finances collapsed. McAuliffe went to work using his political contacts to help Swann. In 1990, federal regulators seized Swann’s American Pioneer Savings Bank. Swann filed for bankruptcy. The Resolution Trust Corporation, a federal agency that served as a tool of corruption by Bill Clinton, seized American Pioneer’s assets and liabilities. McAuliffe then partnered with a pension fund controlled by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association to buy American Pioneer real estate, valued at $50 million, for $38.7 million from the Resolution Trust Corporation. Of the purchase amount, McAuliffe paid exactly $100, while the pension fund paid $38.7 million, but McAuliffe received a 50 percent of the equity. A Department of Labor lawsuit against McAuliffe never went anywhere during Clinton’s administration.

• In 1997, McAuliffe invested $100,000 in Global Crossing, a Bermuda-registered telecommunications company providing fiber-optic networking services. Global Crossing went public in 1998. The following year, McAuliffe sold the majority of his holding for a $8 million profit. McAuliffe sold the rest of his shares in January 2002. The company filed for bankruptcy that same month, causing investors to lose over $54 billion, and 10,000 employees to lose their jobs. According to McAuliffe’s book, he played no management role in Global Crossing.

• In 2009, McAuliffe founded GreenTech Automotive, a holding company, which purchased Chinese electric car company EU Auto MyCar for $20 million in May 2010. Later that year, McAuliffe relocated GreenTech’s headquarters to McLean, Virginia. GreenTech subsequently announced plans to manufacture vehicles in Mississippi. In December 2012, McAuliffe was questioned as to why he chose to locate the factory in Mississippi as opposed to Virginia. McAuliffe claimed that he wanted to bring the factory to Virginia but the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the state’s business recruitment agency, chose not to bid on it. However, in January 2013, PolitiFact declared McAuliffe’s claim to be false. According to PolitiFact, VEDP and GreenTech formally discussed building the factory in Virginia, and its representatives even toured potential sites with GreenTech representatives. McAuliffe responded that he disagreed with PolitiFact’s report, and that other GreenTech executives made the decision about location.

So much for McAuliffe, whose governorship in Virginia extends to 2018.

Nothing we can do in Virginia about Terry McAuliffe. But, according to the polls, Virginia is close to making another enormous mistake in the race for Senate between Democratic incumbent Mark Warner and Republican challenger Ed Gillespie.

Warner is one of those Democratic politicians who has masterfully masqueraded as a “moderate.” Unfortunately, that disguise has no impact on his actual voting record. As a U.S. senator, he has voted with Barack Obama 97 percent of the time.

I have a theory that Warner’s entire political career is based on little more than name recognition in our state – not his own name recognition, mind you, but a case of mistaken identity. Republican John Warner served as a U.S. senator in the state for five terms between Jan. 2, 1979 to Jan. 3, 2009. He was a dapper fellow, most well-known for being Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband. He wasn’t much of a statesman. He wasn’t much of a Republican. But he was affable and popular with his Old Dominion constituents.

Along comes Mark Warner (no relation) in 2002 as a Democrat candidate for governor. There is no doubt in my mind that his first statewide political success was due largely to his last name. Even 12 years later, there is widespread confusion among Virginians about Warner. And when John Warner endorsed him for re-election recently, it certainly added to their Warner Bros. brand.

My theory is no one in Virginia really knows who Mark Warner is. His secret is keeping a low profile – and keeping his political track record a virtual secret from voters.

In 2014, when Republicans have the opportunity to sweep control of the Senate, Mark Warner is running significantly ahead of his opponent, Republican Ed Gillespie.

It makes no sense.

Virginians don’t support Obama – not anymore. Yet they are prepared to re-elect an Obama clone as U.S. senator.

Warner is a phony from the get-go.

He claims to be a “radical centrist,” but his vote for Obamacare was the one that passed it in the U.S. Senate. You know what he said about Obamacare prior to that crucial vote?

“I’m not going to support a health care reform plan that’s going to take away health care that you’ve got right now or a health care plan you like,” said Warner. Does that sound familiar? Does it sound almost identical to what Obama said: “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan”? They both lied. They knew they were lying. And they have never apologized for those lies or backed down from supporting this government takeover of the best health-care system in the world.

Mark Warner also told Virginians he would support building the Keystone Pipeline to get elected U.S. senator. When he got the job, he opposed building the pipeline – a decision that cost American hundreds of thousands of jobs and an energy boost that would have pulled the country out of the economic doldrums.

How about runaway government spending? Warner ran on a campaign promise to push for a balanced-budget amendment. Once he got the job, he opposed a balanced-budget amendment.

This is not the kind of track record that any state should reward with re-election – especially not a swing state like Virginia.

That’s why I am writing a longer column than usual today in support of the Senate candidacy of Ed Gillespie in Virginia.

Not only am I urging Virginians to vote for him with enthusiasm, I am asking Republicans, conservatives, independents and libertarians all over America to rush the Gillespie campaign urgently needed campaign funds to overtake pretender Mark Warner’s single-digit lead in the polls. The best way to do that is right at his official website.

Yes, Virginia, you really do have a choice in November. Put Ed Gillespie over the top for the U.S. Senate.

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