It was a day when climate change was very noticeable...a summery, 75-degree day on January 6, 2007. The Stafford Democrats gathered to celebrate our wins, analyze our losses, and plan for the 2007 and 2008 election cycles.
It was a well-attended event and the food and refreshments were good, too. Shawn O'Donnell, our candidate for Congress, was there, and our featured speaker was 25th District State Senator Creigh Deeds, who lost the Attorney General's race in 2005 by 300 or so votes; that puts Jim Webb's 9,000+ vote victory in a bit of perspective, doesn't it?
Shawn told me that recent campaign filings showed that Jo Ann Davis, the Republican representative of VA-01, had actually spent around $1.3M during the 2006 campaign, a staggering amount. I was not surprised, given the fact that she was carpet-bombing our cable system with ads from just after Labor Day. Shawn ran a shoe-leather campaign, and he will be better known in 2008, and, we hope, better funded. It would be great to get this race into a Second Tier category. Meanwhile, rumors persist that Rep. Davis might retire after the current session, she has been battling cancer and no doubt being in the minority won't be as invigorating.
Creigh Deeds offered up a vigorous stem-winder extolling what makes us Democrats, and he pointed out two sobering facts about 2005 and 2006: for the first time in over forty years, the winning candidate for Governor did not get anyone else on the ticket elected (we only have three statewide offices in Virginia, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General), and while we upended George Allen, the other eight Republican incumbents all survived. Clearly, we have work to do.
Because Virginia has off-year elections, we're always in a cycle; the good news there is we get to build on momentum. We're still looking for candidates for the 24th District State Senate seat, currently held by John Chichester, President Pro Tem of the Senate, my former neighbor and a former Democrat who still gets lots of Democratic votes, and the 28th District State House Speaker, Bill Howell, who is entrenched and extremely well-funded, that's where I live. We do have a candidate to go up against Del. Mark Cole (R) of the 88th House District, Carlos Del Toro, a Navy vet and local businessman. I told Carlos I would be there in his support. Cole and Howell are part of the anti-tax, anti-traffic-solution coalition in the House of Delegates who help keep us tied in knots on I-95, US-1, US-17 and VA-3. Now they've launched a campaign in the local paper saying we don't need new taxes, there's a surplus, etc. Well, boys, what are your ideas then? We've started calling our endemic traffic jams "The Howell Tax".
Update: On December 21, 2006 I wrote that I'd e-mailed the office of Jo Ann Davis asking for her statement on Virgil Goode's (VA-05) bigoted remarks on Keith Ellison. To date, no reply.