Election Day is upon us! It’s like Christmas for political junkies like me. The height of civic engagement and patriotic fervor. The day when voters make their voice heard by going out to cast their ballot for the person they despise the very least and everyone else stays home to complain about both candidates and how utterly flawed our system is. Wait a minute, that’s not how my AP government textbook explained it…
But that’s the reality in the Virginia gubernatorial race this year. Terry McAuliffe, a relatively unpopular Democrat who has never held public office, continues to lead in the polls by attacking Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on a myriad of issues: the Star Scientific scandal, his stated goal to “make abortion disappear in America,” his failed legal case harassing University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann at great cost to taxpayers and the University, his legal opinion that Virginia universities like U.Va. cannot protect against LGBT discrimination, and the list goes on.
Keep in mind that this is absolutely not an endorsement for Terry McAuliffe. I don’t know if he’ll be a good policymaker. In fact, I have serious reservations about a Governor McAuliffe realizing on day one that he promised barrels of budget money to everyone in the Commonwealth, all while magically keeping income taxes low. But McAuliffe knows that while his weakest asset is his novice policymaking abilities, his greatest asset is this laundry list of issues people can hate Cuccinelli for. Just look at what the campaigns are up to today. McAuliffe has been kept on a short leash by his campaign, letting big-name surrogates do most of the talking for him, while the Cuccinelli campaign is busy at work releasing fake Obama endorsement speeches about McAuliffe on their Facebook in a way that would draw the envy of any writer for The Onion.
So it comes as no surprise that few are voting for a candidate. A recent Washington Post poll shows that neither candidate has a majority of likely voters voting in favor of them. We aren’t even choosing the lesser of two evils anymore; we’re voting against the greater of them. This is a huge detriment to our democratic process. How can we reach any sort of consensus if politics becomes nothing more than one big smear campaign among hyperpartisans? We can’t.
Even major newspapers are sitting this campaign cycle out. The Richmond Times-Dispatch neglected to endorse a gubernatorial candidate for the first time in years. Meanwhile, Democratic State Senator Ralph Northam is such a high-quality candidate that even the Time-Dispatch endorsed him, endorsing a Democrat for the first time in decades. But not McAuliffe. Or Cuccinelli, for that matter.
So what created this mess? I propose that the single biggest factor is the primary season. This is when we are supposed to broadly choose our best candidates for office on either side. McAuliffe ran completely unopposed and neither voters nor the Democratic Party did anything to insist on a robust primary season with diverse candidates to allow any major voter choice. And why would any potential candidate bother? In keeping with the usual trend, the highest voter turnout in any county for the primary election was 11 percent, the lowest was .006 percent. At margins like these, name recognition (read: money) decides primaries.
That turnout is okay, as far as Republican leadership is concerned. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all. Republicans moved from a primary system to a convention system this year. For people who want the most ideologically radical candidate, a convention guarantees that the average Republican voter who works, is elderly or disabled, can’t pay to travel to Richmond, or has children can’t make it to the multi-day gathering of party enthusiasts. The only people left to decide the party’s candidates are radical activists with an agenda and nothing better to do for a weekend. So welcome to the ballot Cuccinelli, E. W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain.
Moderate Republican voters ought to have been outraged at this change. Sensible politicians like Bill Bolling and Jeannemarie Davis would have swept independent voters, Northern Virginia voters, and even voters like me. I’ll just say it — Bolling would have had my vote over McAuliffe any day. He has the legislative experience and know-how to work toward consensus, he’s well-liked, and he shows an independent spirit and thoughtful approach to understanding which policies would benefit Virginians most. I don’t get to devote an article to Bolling because he had no chance of winning the votes of the radical ideological purists who selected Jackson, of “gays are icky” fame, as their lieutenant governor candidate. Save for Mark Herring and Northam, we have no good candidates for anything this year.
So, I can’t say McAuliffe will be good for U.Va. or good for Virginia. But I know Cuccinelli won’t be — he’s already proven that. Like most people, I’m going to the polls to vote against a gubernatorial candidate. But this can’t be the way we do things next time. There must be some candidate we can vote for, not against.
Brendan Wynn is a fourth-year College student and the president of Virginia21.
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