Tea Party Test in Virginia Harbinger for 2014 Senate Race

[Purveyor]

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis - Nov 4, 2013

Call it a test case for the 2014 congressional elections. Tomorrow’s contest for Virginia’s next governor is drawing attention as a national harbinger, and it’s giving Republicans plenty to worry about.

Polls show Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the former national party chairman and fundraiser, ahead of Republican rival, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. If that’s the outcome of the race, McAuliffe would become the first candidate of a sitting president’s party in almost four decades to win election in the Old Dominion, a state that voted twice for both former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

“As Republicans, we have to ask, is there a business model issue here?” said former Virginia Republican Representative Thomas M. Davis III, director of federal affairs for Deloitte Consulting LP. “We have a Republican who’s opted to go the Tea Party route, and it’s absolutely clear it’s a losing strategy -- that’s going to be the message of this” election.

The contest has taken on national significance in its closing days, with each candidate working to portray his opponent as a poster boy for all that is wrong with his party.

McAuliffe, 56, who campaigned with Obama yesterday and appears with Vice President Joe Biden today, is painting Cuccinelli as an ally of the small-government Tea Party movement that orchestrated last month’s 16-day federal government shutdown.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-04/tea-party-test-in-virginia-harbinger-for-2014-senate-race.html

[onehandle]

1. I hope so. We need GOP Senate candidates to be asked often about lady parts and rape...

...between now and November 2014.