She told us so!

McAuliffe projected to narrowly win Virginia governor’s race

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has narrowly defeated Republican Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia’s governor’s race, according to NBC News projections.

The Democratic businessman and former political moneyman prevailed in a tight race with the state attorney general with Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis peeling off limited support from both sides.

McAuliffe, who failed to win the Democratic nomination for governor four years ago, maintained a consistent lead in polls this year in part due to Republican infighting that helped the deeply conservative Cuccinelli secure his party's nomination. And the Democrat tapped into the organization that helped President Barack Obama win the state in two consecutive elections as well as the popularity of his good friends – Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Cuccinelli had distinguished himself as a conservative stalwart during eight years as a state senator and most recently as attorney general. The Republican embraced the ascendant Tea Party movement early on, winning accolades from conservatives for his legal challenges to Obamacare, abortion rights laws and climate change research.

That endeared Cuccinelli to conservatives nationally, but turned some voters at home against him. McAuliffe highlighted more strident examples of Cuccinelli's views to swing voters across Virginia, a state which has become friendlier to Democrats in recent elections due to changing demographics in the state. 

Ken Cuccinelli talks about the "clear and contrasting positions" he and Terry McAuliffe have over Obama's health care plan in the state.

Cuccinelli also contended with backlash over the October government shutdown, which affected federal workers who reside in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs and throughout the state.

Virginia Bigot Says God Will Stop Blessing The Military Because Of Gay Rights

E.W. Jackson, the current Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia, said on camera that 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' was the only thing that kept the United States military in the Almighty's good graces. Now that it has been repealed and chaplains are allowed to wed gay couples, so too will God repeal his blessings.

"How in the world can we expect our military to be blessed by the hand of almighty God if we allow our military to become the equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah? God is not pleased."

Granted, Right Wing Watch reminds us, he said that two years ago in 2011, but it's important that Virginians be reminded of his past sentiments as election season approaches. While it's entirely possible he may have had a shift in opinion despite knowing better than the pope about gay issues, it seems unlikely even when considering his protests to the contrary.

More news from Virginia, via David Mixner:

A new poll released today by Quinnipiac Polling has sent chills down the spines of LGBT Americans. The poll shows extremist Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli gaining ground on Democrat Terry McAuliffe. There is a real gender gap with McAuliffe leading among women by 13 points and Cuccinelli leading among men by 6 points. 

If Republican Cuccinelli is elected he would, without question, becomes the nation's most anti-LGBT equality Governor in the country. His views on full equality for LGBT Americans are not conservative but extremist.

Virginia defies Democratic Party lawsuit and purges 40,000 voters before election

The Virginia Board of Elections said this week that it had purged nearly 40,000 names from the voter rolls before a U.S. District judge could rule on a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party. 

Earlier this month, the Democratic Party of Virginia had filed the lawsuit after learning that the state planned to purge 57,923 names from the voter rolls, according to The Associated Press. 

But before a judge could rule on the injunction on Friday, the Board of Elections said in a Tuesday court filing that it had already purged 38,870 names. Another 11,138 were left on the rolls based on the recommendations of county registrars.

The Washington Post reported that the state would designate 7,300 names as “inactive,” forcing those voters to cast a provisional ballot on election day in November. 

Virginia Democratic Party spokesperson Brian Coy told the Post that red flags were raised by the fact that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) was serving as a the Board of Elections’ legal adviser and was also on the ballot as the Republican Party’s nominee for governor.

Chesterfield County Registrar Lawrence C. Haake III said that he had defied the state and refused to purge any voters because he determined that nearly 10 percent of the names being removed from the rolls were eligible to vote. 

AHT: If all else fails cheat! The modern GOP!

Cuccinelli: My ‘Beliefs About The Personal Challenge Of Homosexuality Haven’t Changed’

Usually when you think of religious anti-gay bigots, the image of an older person, say someone in their 60′s, 70′s or 80′s, comes to mind. Think, the late Jerry Falwell or octogenarian Pat Robertson, or even Maggie Gallagher, who’s 52. And given that America’s Catholics today support same-sex marriage at a higher rate than the rest of America — the majority of America, about 55 percent, already support marriage equality — you wouldn’t necessarily expect a 44-year old east coast Catholic to be as a big an anti-gay bigot as Ken Cuccinelli is. And you’d be wrong.

Ken Cuccinelli, who is running for governor of Virginia against Democrat Terry McAuliffe, on Saturday morning told voters that he is standing his ground when it comes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. And that ground in the recent past has included comments that gay people have no souls, are self-destructive, and that “homosexual acts” are “intrinsically wrong.”

 

The radical right-wing Republican attorney general of Virginia was asked Saturday morning by PBS’ Judy Woodruff at the Virginia Bar Association gubernatorial debate if he still believes “same-sex acts are against nature and are harmful to society,” as he said a few years ago.

Cuccinelli’s response was straightforward:

“My personal beliefs about the personal challenge of homosexuality haven’t changed.”

But the married 44-year old Roman Catholic and father of seven didn’t expand on what “the personal challenge of homosexuality” actually is, leaving many, at least on Twitter, to wonder — and leaving Cuccinelli the laughing stock of the week.

Cuccinelli is so anti-gay that among his first acts upon taking office in 2010 was — literally unprovoked and out of nowhere — writing the University of Virginia Board of Governors to tell them that they did not have the constitutional authority to protect LGBT people from discrimination.

In the past, as a state senator running for AG in 2009, Cuccinelli said:

“My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

And in 2008 Cuccinelli, told the Virginia Family Foundation that when “you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.”

Watch (apologies — audio very low):