As promised in an earlier post, the Democratic contenders for the Commonwealth's offices in 2005:
Governor: Tim Kaine is the ostensible front-runner. He previously served as mayor of Richmond, and now serves as Lieutenant Governor. The Virginia Public Access Project lists no other registered campaign committees.
Lieutenant Governor: As in the Republican line-up, there are four candidates. First (by virtue of alphabetical order) is Viola Baskerville. She is a sitting Delegate from the City of Richmond/Henrico County. Other than having heard the name, I can't say that I know anything about her; the site her name links to lists more information about her as a Delegate.
Then there's Senator Leslie Byrne. She has been in Virginia's Senate since 1999 and has also served in our Congressional delegation for a term, representing Virginia's Eleventh District. I don't have a map of our Congressional districts on hand, but I'm willing to bet that the Eleventh is somewhere near Falls Church, which is Northern Virginia.
Next up is Delegate J. Chapman Petersen. He represents the Thirty-seventh District in the House of Delegates, which is "the heart of Fairfax", according to him. According to the VPAP site, he led all candidates in fundraising by a substantial margin. I would, however, point out that these records apparently haven't been updated in a while, and to suggest him as the frontrunner on the basis of VPAP would be akin to calling a State for someone while single-digit percentages of precincts are reporting.
Last in this lineup is Senator Phillip Puckett. Senator Puckett represents what VPAP calls "far southwest Virginia". This is slang for "West of Charlottesville", so a bit more explanation is in order: Senator Puckett's district is in Russell County, which is, more or less, on the way to Scott County, from where Jerry Kilgore is from. His site mentions transportation issues as an important thing, but he's not a railroad man; "transportation issues" in the Commonwealth usually mean either more money for Northern Virginia's roads or something to do with U.S. Route 58. No such luck for Norfolk Southern.
Attorney General: Senator Creigh Deeds of Bath County is the first candidate from the Democrats. ("Creigh" is pronounced either 'Cray' like the computers or 'Cree', depending upon who you ask. Sources in the Senator's district indicate that the former pronunciation is accurate.) He leads rather well in fundraising over the next guy, Senator John Edwards of Roanoke. Edwards was the better man for the Democrat nomination for AG in 2001, but lost to the inept campaign of Donald McEachin. What that says, I don't know.
There you have it. Once again, the race for Lieutenant Governor is dominated by people from Northern and Central Virginia. However, the real race that matters, i.e. Attorney General, has two people from more or less the western end of Virginia. Although I hope both Senators Deeds and Edwards lose in the end, it is good to see somewhere west of Charlottesville producing candidates.
Posted by Country Pundit at December 6, 2004 04:35 PM