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FAITH IN ACTION

Why Cuccinelli Lost…and How We Might Have Won

The very tight and hard-fought Virginia governor’s race has now concluded, and for the first time since 1969 a gubernatorial candidate of the party holding the White House has won in the Old Dominion. McAuliffe won by a very narrow margin, even though polls had shown him with a lead of seven to ten points. The reason? A superior conservative and GOP ground game, a failure of Obama voters to turn out for McAuliffe, and the meltdown of Obamacare over the past two weeks, which closed the race to a statistical dead heat. Still, Cuccinelli lost a race that he once led. The question is why, and was it ever in the cards for him? There were many factors in the outcome, some of which Cuccinelli could have controlled, and others that were beyond his control. First, the GOP was divided. Then–attorney general Bob McDonnell and Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling agreed heading into the 2009 election that McDonnell would run for governor first, then Bolling would run for governor in 2013 and McDonnell would back him. Cuccinelli was not a party to this arrangement and never felt bound by it. He chose to run for governor anyway, which was his right. But by changing the nominating process from a primary to a convention, his supporters backed Bolling into a corner (Cuccinelli likely would have won a primary as well), forcing him out of the race. Bolling refused to support Cuccinelli, many of his supporters and donors sat on their hands, and the GOP was hopelessly divided. This stood in stark contrast to the party unity that led to victory four years earlier, and it was a major factor in the outcome. If you want to win, it’s fine to have a heated intramural struggle (certainly Hillary Clinton and Obama did in 2008), but you must mend fences when it is over. The GOP needed everyone on the field to win, and that did not happen. Click here to read the rest of the article.

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