Great news from the Mark Herring for Attorney General campaign,especially if you're an animal lover like me. 

Tea Party AG candidate Obenshain’s egregious record on humane treatment of animals exposed

Today, the Mark Herring for Attorney General campaign highlighted an endorsement from the Humane Society Legislative Fund, the nation’s leading political advocacy organization for animal welfare, for his support of legislation in the Virginia General Assembly to advance the humane treatment of animals, while exposing Mark Obenshain’s egregious record on animal welfare.

Mark Herring is the only candidate in Virginia to receive an endorsement by the national Humane Society Legislative Fund. The full announcement by can be found here.

“The Attorney General has an important role to play in enforcing the Commonwealth’s animal protection laws, and sending a message to the General Assembly and the public when gaps in the legal framework need to be addressed,” said Sara Amundson, executive director of the Humane Society Legislative Fund. “We urge Virginia voters who care about animal protection to reject Mark Obenshain’s extreme record, and to support Mark Herring for Attorney General.”

Mark Obenshain’s voting record includes:

• Being one of three Senators to vote against regulating puppy mills

• Voting against a bill to end competitive fox penning, an action so heinous that opponents call it “barbaric"

• Being one of two Senators who voted against increasing penalties for cockfighting

• Voting against requiring veterinarians and shelter employees to notify law enforcement officials if a dog showed signs of being forced into a fight

“Ken Cuccinelli’s comments on Fox this morning would be funny, if they weren’t so insulting to Virginia women”

Richmond, VA – Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC released the following statement condemning Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli for his misleading statements this morning on Fox and Friends. As polls continue to show, Cuccinelli’s extreme record and agenda on women’s health are costing him significantly with women. 

“Ken Cuccinelli’s comments on Fox this morning would be funny, if they weren’t so insulting to Virginia women. This is coming from the same politician who advocated for extreme and dangerous so-called ‘personhood’ legislation, which if enacted, could have interfered in personal, private medical decisions relating to birth control, access to fertility treatment, management of miscarriage, and access to safe and legal abortion, and Virginia’s targeted restrictions on abortion providers, which have dangerous implications on a woman’s ability to access health care. He has built his career on advancing policies that interfere with women’s personal medical decisions about birth control and safe and legal abortion.  Cuccinelli’s statements are the height of hypocrisy, but Virginia women will not be fooled – the more they learn about Ken Cuccinelli, the less likely they are to vote for him,” said Cianti Stewart-Reid, executive director of Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC.

Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Planned Parenthood Votes launched the Keep Ken Out campaign back in February, and in the weeks leading up to Election Day, we are reaching out to thousands of women voters to make sure they know this about Cuccinelli’s agenda for them and their families:

1. His ultimate goal is to end access to safe and legal abortion.

2. He wants to cut access to Planned Parenthood’s preventive health services.

3. He wants to make birth control less affordable and less accessible.

Last week, Planned Parenthood Votes announced a million-dollar ad buy on Virginia TV and radio. You can read the press release and watch the TV ad here. You can learn more about the Keep Ken Out campaign here: http://keepkenout.org/

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Paid for by Planned Parenthood Votes and Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC in support of Terry McAuliffe.
Authorized by Terry McAuliffe candidate for Governor.

Interesting analysis from Virginia/National Democratic political guru Mo Elleithee:

I’ve worked in politics a long time.  I’ve had some great wins.  And I’ve been on my fair share of losing campaigns.  I know what it feels like to have momentum, and I definitely know what it feels to be stuck in quicksand – when desperation just makes you sink even faster. 

Looking at Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for Virginia Governor, they’re up to their necks in the quicksand.

With just over three weeks left in this campaign, Cuccinelli and his team are exhibiting all the tell-tale signs of a campaign that has no real strategy, no real message, and no real traction.

In short, they are not acting like a winning campaign.

Now, I know each campaign and election are different.  But, there are some universal truths in this business.  Here are a few I’ve picked up throughout my career.

The closer you get to Election Day, the more important the trendline is.  And in Virginia, the trendline is clearly headed in the wrong direction for Cuccinelli.  In the last 19 public polls on the race, Cuccinelli has trailed McAuliffe by an average of almost 6 points. In fact, he hasn’t even broken 40 percent in the Real Clear Politics average since early July. Since the government shutdown began, Cuccinelli has trailed by an average of nearly 8 points. And with nearly half of Virginians viewing Cuccinelli unfavorably, it’s clear voters don’t trust him – making it even harder for the Cuccinelli camp to change course.

In swing states, winning campaigns expand the universe.  Losing campaigns give up on everyone except the base. Instead of making a final pitch to undecided, independent voters in Virginia with less than a month to go, Cuccinelli is already shifting focus to turning out his conservative base. Just this week, he told WJLA, “For us, we’re focusing on turning out our folks, and that means everybody who agrees with us on an issue.” In recent weeks, he’s headlined a Family Foundation gala with Senator Ted Cruz and held a rally with conservative firebrand Mark Levin. Rather than sticking with a broader message to appeal to the women voters and independents he’s struggling to win over, he’s gone home to the base and has counted out independents. Win independents, win the election. That’s how it’s gone for the last three governors – McDonnell, Kaine and Warner – and it’s likely to be true this time as well.

You cannot win statewide in Virginia if you are losing women by 20 points. Polls aren’t just showing bad toplines for Cuccinelli. The numbers actually get worse in the crosstabs – especially with women voters. Yesterday’s Quinnipiac poll has Cuccinelli trailing McAuliffe by 20 points – 54 percent to 34 percent – among women. To put that in perspective, President Obama won women by near double digits in 2012, a key to him carrying the Commonwealth.

Campaigns expand their media buys when they’re winning.  They cut them when they’re losing.Politico reported this week that “Cuccinelli’s campaign has been making smaller and smaller ad buys over the past three weeks.” This is the same move that George Allen made last year when his campaign began sinking in the final stretch. By staying off the air in this critical time of the race, Cuccinelli is giving up on making a pitch to undecided, independent voters. Their challenge is compounded by the fact that Terry McAuliffe has reserved about $2 million in airtime over the final four weeks to make his closing pitch to Virginians while Cuccinelli’s camp has reserved none beyond this week. When you have the cash, you buy early because you get better placement and a better deal. Cuccinelli’s inability to attract the traditional GOP donor base in Virginia is showing its impact.

Winning campaigns don’t shake up their staff. After trailing in yet another poll last month, Cuccinelli shook up his staff. Instead of acknowledging that his campaign is failing to appeal to women and independent voters, Cuccinelli is blaming internal campaign mechanics and taking it out on his staff. 

It helps to have a message that is consistent with where voters are. Just look at the government shutdown. Cuccinelli still won’t call out his Tea Party allies to stop playing chicken with shutdown and default. When asked about the shutdown, he said, “It is a federal government shutdown. I’m running for governor” – ignoring the outsized presence of affected federal workers in the Commonwealth. His embrace of Ted Cruz, who quarterbacked the GOP’s shutdown strategy, is already putting him in hot water with Virginians. This inconsistency and lack of clarity on major issues would signal trouble for any campaign this far along in a race.

If you’re going to tell voters why they shouldn’t vote for the other guy, you have to give them a reason to vote for you.  Cuccinelli is running a relentlessly negative campaign.  I don’t begrudge him that.  Elections are about choices, and there are plenty of differences between these two candidates.  But here’s the thing – if voters don’t like or trust you (see above section on polling), they tend to react badly to your negative ads.  And if you’re not giving them a reason to vote for you, chances are pretty slim that they will.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot of time left in this race, and Virginia is a competitive state. But the clock is ticking, and I don’t see them making any of the necessary changes they need to turn this race around.

As someone who has been there before, I’d much rather be in McAuliffe headquarters these days than Cuccinelli’s. 

Good question from the DPVA:  

Last night at a forum hosted by the University of Richmond, Ken Cuccinelli seemed to attempt to convince Virginians that his position on a women’s constitutional right to an abortion was decidedly more mainstream than it had been his entire career.

Despite numerous statements (including on his own 2002 campaign website) that he opposes abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, Cuccinelli made this statement last night in support, not only of the right for a woman to make her own decisions in that situation, but for public funding through Medicaid:

CUCCINELLI: “You wouldn’t know that looking at my opponents TV ads and he attacks on abortion as well and the one issue you deal with every year as governor in that area is Medicaid funding is public financing of abortion comes up in every budget every year. And my opponent has put no limits on the use of your taxpayer dollars for that. I’ve said that we’ll do that in the case of rape incest or life of the mother, but that’s it.”

This morning the Washington Post is reporting that Cuccinelli sought to retract those statements:

“His campaign said he was merely stating what abortions Medicaid funds under existing law, not voicing his personal support for abortions in cases of rape or incest.”

This is a very simple question for Ken Cuccinelli to answer: Has he changed his position on when it should be legal for a woman to make her own decisions about her health care?

Or did he get caught in a cynical attempt to mislead Virginians about his anti-women’s health record and have to admit that his position remains just as extreme as it has always been? 

Just when you think there aren’t any more extremist freaks left to campaign for Ken Cuccinelli – Mark Levin, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, the Duggars, etc. – another one pops up. Now, it’s Mike Huckabee. Why do I call Mike Huckabee an extremist freak? Let us count the ways.

*”Mike Huckabee is strongly opposed to abortion, including in cases of rape or incest. He has stated that abortion should be legal only when the life of the mother is at risk. He believes that it would ‘most certainly’ be a good day for America if Roe v. Wade were repealed...He stated the Supreme Court ruling, Roe v Wade, had created a ‘holocaust of liberalized abortion.'”

*”Huckabee has said that embryonic stem cell research creates life only to end a life.”

*”Huckabee has voiced his support for self-defense and the Castle Doctrine, and has generally taken an anti-gun control stance.”

*”Huckabee stated in 1992, ‘I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk’…Huckabee said that legalizing same-sex marriage would ‘be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, should we accommodate them?’”

*”Huckabee has voiced his support of intelligent design and he has stated that he does not accept the validity of Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

*Huckabee has also stated “comparing his weight loss to the experience of a concentration camp, for which the National Jewish Democratic Council chastised Huckabee;” “joking about suicide while speaking of fundraising efforts by himself and his opponents in the Republican primaries, for which he was criticized by various suicide awareness groups;” and in 2012 provoking “controversy by claiming that the Newtown shooting was because ‘we systematically removed God from our schools.'” Oh, and he also “compare[d] Muslims to ‘uncorked animals’ because Islam “promotes the most murderous mayhem’.”

*Last but not least, Huckabee is climate science denier, for instance falsely (and bizarrely) claiming that “[t]he volcano that erupted over in Northern Europe actually poured more CO2 into the air in that single act of nature than all of humans have in something like the past 100 years.”

In sum, Mike Huckabee is a right-wing extremist and stark-raving mad. Which, come to think of it, means he will get along superbly well with Ken Cuccinelli, E.W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain. Party on, boys!