An Election Reflection - 2013

Now that it’s all over, I’m left to ponder the issue of targeted demographics.  Mainly because I have a pile of trash to throw away after the election that is spilling all over on my counter.   You see, I’m a targeted demographic in a hotly contested area.   The Commonwealth of Virginia just finished a heavily contested Governor’s race between two candidates and an extra.  You could say, two heirs and a spare, but Sarvis wasn't even that good.  As a targeted demographic, I got zero campaign mailings for the Governor’s race.  Zippedy-do-da Zero.  Which makes it even more interesting given the fact that Ken Cuccinelli almost won even though Terry “I buy my way to power” McAwful or Terry "I invest in dead people" McAwful reportedly outspent him by $15 million.   Think about that one.  Terry McAwful’s campaign threw around $15 million more than the Cooch to buy the election and I didn't get a single campaign mailing.  There’s some sort of message there.  I’m not sure what.   I’m sure the Data Mining Gods at the NSA have already reported to McAwful that I attended the last two LPACs.  Best not waste a mailer on her.  You know, because when you are throwing around $15 million spare ones, you can't spare a dime.  

When it comes down to the Vice/Assistant/Lieutenant whatever’s position that used to be occupied by serial whiner and foot stomper Bill Bolling, a man that absolutely no one outside of Richmond has ever heard of, I got again, zero campaign mailers.   For the hotly contested and still not called, Attorney General’s race, I got two mailers, both from the “Southern Progress Action Fund.”   One said in screaming large letters, “Mark Obenshain.  Wrong for Women.  Wrong for Virginia.”   The other one said, “It’s Simple:  If Mark Obenshain Wins… Virginia Women LOSE!”   Really?  Lose what?   According to the mailers….  Mark Obenshain wants to steal all American women’s birth control… or all Virginia women or their birth control… or something.  I dunno.  As a woman this mailer assumes I’m too stupid to read through their agenda.  I loose! Or Lose!  Or something.  But what I do know is that the Southern Progress Action Fund is a brand new Democratic Super PAC, dedicated to getting Southerners out to vote their way.  Missed that demographic as well folks.  As any inbred Fauquier County resident will tell you, that woman is a Yankee. 

The real spamming of my mail box came from the local state delegates race between Michael Webert and Colin Harris.   I've already covered that here and here.  But I have more thoughts I’d like to share now that its all over.  First off, while the fake Camo and Guns ad was truly my favorite, a hot and close second is dear “Penny P.”  Penny is a true winner.

First off, I might be a little harsh here, but is birth control really "Penny P."'s primary concern in life?   Perhaps Social Security might rank higher on her list?  I'm just spit-balling here but I'm willing to bet the farm that there just might be something else in "Penny P."'s life that ranks just a tad higher than this.   What this really tells me is that someone failed "Stock Photo Selection 101" when they made this ad.   If they wanted "Penny P." to truly be believable they should have selected a photo of some anonymous 20 something young hottie who maybe is truly scared to death that she was knocked up by last nights encounter in the bar and birth control is front and center in her hungover mind.   Now the Photoshop pro who put this together gets some kudos for selecting a photo of a woman who truly looks seriously unhappy, but birth control?  Nah. Not buying it. 

What is truly frightening is that Harris actually won just over 1/3rd of the vote with his blizzard of campaign mailers claiming that Michael Webert hates women and wants to steal all our birth control.   What does it say for the voters of Fauquier County that he actually got this many votes when he had no real platform of his own and no job experience?  Harris pulled in $166,914 (as of 10/23/2013) slightly over half was from out of state sources.  As I wrote about earlier, actually over 70% of his donors were from Maryland, Washington DC, and California, but a massive donation from the Democratic Party of Virginia tilted his donation numbers back to make it look like he received more Virginia support than he really did.   Webert who got a last minute fundraising boost when all the Harris attack ads started surfacing, raised $146,955 (as of 10/23/2013), the vast majority of which came from in-state sources.  As of the last totals available Webert still had over $31,000 still on hand while Harris had spent almost all he had.  It was nice to see that Harris didn't win, but he still managed to buy a hell of a lot of votes.  

I can't believe its 2013 and the Democratic Party still can't lie their way out of a paper bag but they successfully get voters anyway.  What does it take to inject critical thinking skills back into Americans?  

A Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Fauquier

I am always interested in knowing how a 22 year old with no life experience thinks he’s going to be so helpful to me.   Colin Harris’s latest propaganda mailing which polluted my mail box yesterday focused on how Harris is going to find me a better job.  How nice!  I have two decades of work experience more than Mr. Dartmouth College, having started life by detasseling corn as a teenager, but he thinks he can get me a better job.  Super!  Maybe he means to provide me with a job at the Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, law firm in Washington DC.  You know, daddy’s firm.  

After all, the Virginia Access Project says, "Colin Harris reported a personal stake of more than $10,000 in the following businesses, partnerships, corporations and rental property" and that he was a "paid officer or director" of the firm as well.  Wow!  He's some go getter!  A paid officer or director in a law firm at 22.  For only being 22 years old, Harris is also quite wealthy.  Check out these apples, 'er investments.  

It gets even better.  Daddy, while a Harvard lawyer, is also a special kind of lawyer.  He was formerly the chief legal officer for the Department of Energy appointed by President Obama.   He brags that he "began the Department's first systematic effort to enforce its energy efficiency regulations."  How nice!  I'm sure the regular employees of the Department of Energy love hearing that they weren't doing their jobs before.  

Out of $115,607 in donations to Harris, it is interesting that only $8.001 has been received from Fauquier County residents (VPAP figures slightly out of date).   The largest amount of donations have come in from Washington DC, Maryland, and California.   Additionally, $36,800 in donations have come from the Law industry alone.  Just $250 was donated from agriculture.   What the hell does California know about Fauquier politics and economy?  Check out where the Harris contributors live.  Yeah, most of them don't even live in Virginia, let alone Fauquier.  

Contrast this to Michael Webert.  He has raised $99,081.   For personal wages and salary Webert reports that he has been paid by the Culpeper Farmers Cooperative and that he is the general manager of his grandmothers farm Locust Hill.   His donations have also come from a wide range of interests from Business, Energy, Finance, Agriculture, Real estate, Health Care, Technology, and others mainly all Virginia groups.  Additionally, his financial net worth at more than a decade older than Harris doesn't even compare.

And what about those campaign supporters?  Turns out most of Webert's supporters live in Virginia.  The out of state contributions mostly come from relatives.  

Again, the only major black mark on Webert's record is the "Va League of Conservation Voters PAC" an eco fringe group connected to George Ohrstrom.  Webert is the only republican to ever get money from that group.  99% of their donations go to democratic candidates.   Since PEC is playing both sides of the aisle in this campaign, that tells me they are nervous about all the exposes' that have been conducted on them this year.

But why here?  Why Fauquier?  Why has this no-nothing, done nothing 22 year old picked this race?   Yeah, he likes rockets.  So what!  Fauquier farmers and wineries are in the battle for their lives.   In the end it really has nothing to do with Fauquier at all.  The Democrats are looking to increase their control in the state and they carefully calculated how much of the Fairfax brain dead influence has entered Fauquier and might at last finally turn this county their way.   What it really comes down to is, is Webert as vulnerable as they think?   And has the Fauquier new money "We hate farmers" attitude destroyed Fauquier enough to throw a farmer out of office.  

The choice this election seems to be clear.  A Marshall farmer with in-state and local support or the wealthy son of lawyers with the majority of his support coming from Washington DC, Maryland, and California.  It's your vote, you decide.  

Politics in Fauquier is just as Transparent as Glass

I got a funny thing in the mail today.  I’ll get to that in a minute.  Let’s back up.  During the last election I voted for Michael Webert with reservations.   He seemed a likable enough young man but as we all know, many farmers in Fauquier are not real farmers.  I had reservations about Webert and whether or not he was a real farmer.   While he talked a lot about Angus cattle, he also manages a 3,500 acre thoroughbred racing farm for his grandmother which didn’t fit my definition of a real farmer.  My family arrived here with nothing.  They were not wealthy English families with thousand acre land grants from the King.   They arrived in the hull of a ship with almost nothing.  They did take advantage of the 1862 Homestead Act settling on 160 acre tracts of what had formerly been Indian prairie.  They were the first farmers to break the land for row crops.  Now that was farming.  The work was brutal, the weather harsh, and the lifestyle not safe.  .  No “slave” or indentured servant broke the land for them, they did it themselves.  Part of my family was wiped out in the 1862 Dakota Uprising near Mankato, Minnesota.  That is farming.  That was my family.   Webert won election to his first term and is now running for his first re-election.  Now I had already written but not yet published an article on his performance in office as a freshman.  I was not impressed with his filing of at least a dozen frivolous legislative actions wasting my tax payer money.  The Sheriff does not deserve any official legislative pat on the back for solving a murder case that the West Virginia police solved for him years ago.  Given the rivalry between Virginia and West Virginia, the Sheriff should be ashamed, not bragging, that West Virginia got our man but we didn’t.  An official Richmond thank you is nothing but pandering to a Sheriff that is widely loathed in this county.  I don’t care if these little frivolous bills are tradition or not.  I care about every single penny that is wasted in government because that's my money.   Well its election time and I still have hesitations about Webert, his background, and his job performance in Richmond.  To add to the fun, he was endorsed for office by a PEC front group.   That gives him a major black mark in his book in my mind.

But then the fun and games begins in typical Fauquier politic tradition.  First I noticed the Marshall area wallpapered with signs for a candidate named Harris.  A total unknown.   Webert lives in Marshall.  Now Marshall is full of the ignorant, the clueless, and they aren’t southern hillbillies as outsiders might think.   I have a whole bunch of neighbors that moved in from Fairfax who don’t know a lick about Fauquier’s long history of corruption and they have Harris signs in their yard.   Typical, they ruined Fairfax, moved out to get away from it and now want to ruin Fauquier (though Fauquier doesn't have far to fall).  It’s sort of like all the Californians who destroyed their own state and then moved out and started meddling in their new home states to make them more like California.  So just who is this Harris?  I had already received some campaign mailings from him, covered in fake hunting pictures proclaiming this Ken Doll looking candidate was some sort of serious hunter.   Great comedic material.  I love Fauquier! The County shenanigans make me laugh on a daily basis.  Turns out Harris, is a 22 year old son of two lawyers who is attending Dartmouth College majoring in government.  Great!  He's twice as useless.   The offspring of lawyers (which seem to wallpaper Fauquier) should be sentenced to working at McDonald's at minimum wage as penance for their background.  Do we really need any more clueless lawyers in government screwing things up?  Most of Congress are already lawyers and look at how inept and useless they are. 

But on to today.  In today's mail I have a brand new flyer polluting my mailbox.  Right on the front cover is the following quote, "I am a lifelong Republican with deep roots in Fauquier County, and I believe that Democrat Colin Harris will give Virginians a government of which, once again, we can be proud."  Hope Porter.

Hope Porter?   Right next to the quote is a photo of Harris posing with the dear old bat.

I don't know what is funnier, Hope Porter throwing her support behind this guy or the fake L.L. Bean style hunter ad on the other side.  Here's Harris posing in camo gear that you can see the creases in.  Creases?  A hunter out in the field has creases in his camo?  What arty-farty yuppie irons camo gear?  Harris kills me.  I haven't see a propaganda mailing this funny in a long time. (Amazingly enough I haven’t received a single campaign ad for the hot state Governor’s race between sleazy Clinton Pal McAwful, the Cooch, or the young Libertarian running who’s polling at 10%).  His shirt looks to be straight off the hanger.  His hat is no better.  The blaze orange baseball cap also looks to be brand new.  Since I am no expect on fire arms I'll refrain from commenting on the rifle he's so carefully carrying but let's say that pose doesn't look remotely realistic and he gives off the vibe that he's afraid of it.  Every inch of him is spic and span spotless from top to bottom yet I’m supposed to believe this is some sort of image of him out hunting in the field?  Where’s the dirt?  An L.L. Bean catalog ad looks more realistic than this. 

But back to the dear old bat.  If Hope Porter is against Michael Webert, then my first knee jerk reaction is that I am now 100% FOR Webert.

But the real question is, what is going on here?  Locals I'm sure remember the last elections and the brutal Peter Schwartz - Michele Noel race.   Slick con man and locally hated Peter Schwartz barely held on to his seat.  He is also a hard-core environmentalist Democrat along the lines of Al “Crazed Sex Poodle” Gore who runs as an “Independent” to get the vote in a Republican district.  I’m amazed how many clueless Marshallers fell for Schwartz the “Independent.”  Two elections in a row!  I did not vote for him.   Even though I knew absolutely nothing about Michele Noel, that automatically made her a better choice for the Board of Supervisors than Schwartz.   A dead tree would make a better Supervisor than Schwartz.  Hope Porter famously wrote a piece for the County Bird Cage Liner saying that no one should vote for Michele Noel because she, Hope Porter, didn't know her.  Seriously? 

  What the hell is in the water on Wildcat Mountain?  Hope Porter, her family, and pals have been behind trying to stop not only all development in Fauquier but also advocating to shut down the wineries.  Perhaps Hilleary Bogley the Fauquier Gauleiter should draw her eagle eye here since Porter’s daughter is a dog breeder.  Got a permit for that?  Fauquier is literally the most anti-dog county in the Commonwealth with neighboring Warren County running a close second (Botetourt is challenging their top spot).  Yeah, Warren County is notorious for hating dogs no matter what spin they put in the media.  What on earth is in the water around here?  Its okay for members of the Porter family to engage in this type of “business” yet everyone else faces receiving a letter from local zoning thug Kimberly Johnson threatening them with criminal prosecution for having a litter of puppies.  

 

But back to Harris’s campaign mailing.  If the outside was a laugh a minute, the inside is better.  Fully one half of the inside features a large smiling photo of Harris himself, posing with what else?   Three women!  (would that be because McAwful is running on the campaign platform that the Cooch hates women?   When the Cooch has 5 daughters?) In fact every ad in this mailing where he is posing with someone always features a woman.  There isn’t another male featured on this mailing anywhere.  Additionally, the supercilious smirk as he looks at someone who appears to be speaking to him just leaps off the page.   It’s beyond obviously a staged photo.  If he looked like that at me in person I’d be tempted to slap him with a wet trout just to get real emotion on his face.    

Harris’s campaign platform is even funnier.  He’s running on a campaign of 2^nd Amendment, Birth Control Rights for Women, “ethics”, jobs, and “local control” of schools.    Doesn’t that sound lovely?   Obviously he missed the Constitution 101 classes that would have hopefully informed him that Virginia is a Dillion Rule state.   Good luck trying to change the constitutional organization of this state.   Besides which, didn’t our County high schools just announce they have the highest graduation rates in recorded history right now?  Just how is this smuck going to improve upon that?  Or is he just trying to buy the teacher and PTA Mom vote with this ad?  And hey, his sponsor, Hope Porter, is a one woman job killer all on her own so there goes his platform on jobs.   As for birth control, my insurance takes care of that for "free" these days.  I don’t need the government to interfere any more between my doctor and me.  They already interfere way too much.   Virginia government is not trying to take away your Birth Control, they are only trying to avoid a Kermit Gosnell situation.   Isn’t that a good thing?  Why the outright lie Mr. Harris?  The constant Democratic slander that Republicans hate women is insulting to me as an educated woman.  If you want my vote, flatter me with facts. 

I hate the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils, because the winner is still evil.   But I think this Harris campaign ad has pretty much made up my mind for Webert.  I hate lies and fakery and this Harris ad is a fake from side to side. What else can you expect from a 22 year old with absolutely no experience in the world who already thinks the taxpayer owes him an elected seat in government.  Not on my dime Mr. Harris, not on my dime.