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Virginia Democrats are Bad at this Politics Thing

Rich Meagher | October 11, 2018

Topics: Democrats, DPVA, gerrymandering, GOP, Republicans, U.S. Constitution, VA Republicans, Virginia Democrats

While I’m teaching, I find myself restating the same point to my students over and over again: Republicans are better at politics than Democrats. We just saw it recently play out at the national level (welcome, Justice Brohim). And it’s certainly true in Virginia, especially after last week’s redistricting debacle.

Here’s the rundown in case you missed it:

A federal court ordered Virginia to redraw the lines of 11 state legislative districts, arguing that they sorted voters by race in violation of the U.S. Constitution. After the General Assembly called a special session to respond, Democrats offered a new map that seemed designed to help Democrats win more seats — Republicans called it a “partisan power grab.” They then responded with their own map. This plan garnered some bipartisan report, including from the aptly-named Portsmouth Democrat Steve Heretick, who criticized his own party for “corrupt gerrymandering.” The Governor vowed to veto the plan, so the Republicans cancelled the session.

While the Democrats get what they probably want anyway – the courts redraw the lines, probably in ways favorable to Democrats – the GOP gets to paint them as partisan hacks.

We can learn two big lessons from this mess:

First, redistricting remains an important battleground in the national Vote Wars between the two parties. Ever wonder why Republicans scream to the hilltops about voter fraud, despite the lack of any evidence that it’s occurring on a wide scale? Or why Democrats across the country are challenging a number of Republican-drawn district maps in the courts?

It’s the Great Game, played out at a national, state, and local level, in the courts, statehouses, and media, over the basic rules of our electoral system. It includes district lines, but also a number of laws and rules that govern access the polls, like voter ID and polling locations. And the Democrats have been getting their asses kicked in all these arenas for years.

Which brings us to Delegate Heretick, and the second lesson we learned last week; again: Democrats are terrible at politics.

Part of that is individual. Heretick may be a great person, and even a great legislator — but in criticizing his own party, he comes off sounding at best naïve and, at worst, a dupe for the GOP.

It’s great that Heretick supports an independent redistricting process. It’s also great that he wants to “work across the aisle” and find some bipartisan common ground. But he’s operating in a hyper-partisan environment, engaged in a fundamental battle over the rules of the game. Heretick sandbagged his own caucus in the middle of an important political confrontation, and acted like he was the hero of the story. In an interview with the Virginia Mercury’s, Ned Oliver, are Heretick’s own words:

“In other words, the federal court order ordered us to redraw the 11 affected districts … and yet [Democrats] were using this opportunity for a blatantly partisan purpose, and that is to try to weaken Republican incumbents.”

Oh my heavens! How shocking that your political party was practicing…politics (gasp)!  Heretick sounds like a Pollyanna in the middle of a red light district.

But this isn’t entirely the Delegate’s fault; it also doesn’t help that Democrats seemed to bungle the whole process of informing their own caucus. In his interview with Oliver, Heretick complained of a “mysterious” process, including caucus phone calls where he didn’t even know who was on the line. Worse still, the Democrats’ proposed map cut into Heretick’s district, likely reducing his possible margin of victory in the next election. If you want your people to take one for the team, you have to make sure they know why and what they’re getting in return.

The one thing the Democrats did do well was the thing which they were most criticized: offering a blatantly favorable map at the start. You don’t begin negotiations by giving away everything, and a “neutral” map would have meant they were starting the process from the middle — allowing the GOP to chip away at lines until they got something more favorable. Heretick’s complaints about his party’s own gerrymandering just gave political top cover to the GOP who, of course, were engaged in the same kind of gerrymandering on the other side.

It’s obviously not a good thing that this kind of political battle rages in our state legislature. The basic rules of our democracy should not be up for grabs in a power struggle among partisan forces. This is why good government groups like One Virginia 2021 have been so vocal in advocating for redistricting reform: the rules of the game are too important to be determined by the players, especially the ones who are winning.

And everyone who wants bipartisan reform and fair rules have to favor the losing side right now; Democrats have the incentive to change how district lines are drawn because they’ve lost so much ground to the GOP in that battle.

But Heretick was acting last week like the game had already been reset. The Democrats who run his caucus didn’t help him understand this very well. If the Democrats want to avoid even more political losses, they need to get their act together — or, to put it more bluntly, they need to get their heads out of their you-know-whats. I’m not holding my breath.

Congressman McEachin and House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer Rock Shockoe Atelier

Landon Shroder | October 8, 2018

Topics: congress, Congressman McEachin, Democrats, denim, Jeans, richmond, RVA, Shockoe Atelier, Steny H. Hoyer

Congressman Donald McEachin and House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer toured Shockoe Antelier (Shockoe) in Richmond earlier today. The visit, part of  Hoyer’s Make it in America tour, has been focusing on job creation, entrepreneurship, and how government can help grow and support small businesses: which makes Shockoe Atelier a great local establishment for a fact-finding mission. One of Richmond’s premier establishments for denim couture, the business has a back-story that is uniquely American, being founded by immigrants from Romania and France.

Shockoe is a unique spot for fashion in the River City, as their denim is handmade in a workshop attached to their showroom. Touring the workshop floor, the Congressmen eagerly listened to stories from owners Anthony, Pierre, and Brigitte Lupesco along with their operations director, Robert Nolley. Along with chatting to workshop employees, the Congressmen took in Shockoe’s process, learning how their denim is sourced, supply chain issues, and how their business has grown in the 21st Century economy.

House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer

Sitting down for a roundtable after the tour, the Congressmen congratulated Shockoe on their success. McEachin opened the roundtable by saying it was time Congress did some nation building at home, and that “we need to create more well paying jobs that grow the Middle Class.” He also said that policymakers needed to create economic conditions that allowed companies like Shockoe to be competitive and thrive.

“American small businesses can out-compete anyone in the world, they just need a level playing field,” said McEachin, before saying that Congress has missed opportunities to help small businesses gain access to capitol. “I believe we can change that in the next congress, that’s why we’re here. We want to hear the challenges you are facing…and take those insights across the country.”

In the Shockoe Atelier Workshop

Hoyer who was in town stumping for 7th District Democratic Candidate for Congress, Abigail Spanberger, spoke next after an introduction from McEachin. Observing the minimalist and stylish interior of Shockoe, Hoyer noted that it was refreshing to be in a place that wasn’t overly pretentious.

“Normally, I come into these fancy buildings and everything is brand new, but that is not how 90 percent of businesses start,” going on to say, “what you’ve done is taken an old place, and made it vibrant and new.”

He was quick to articulate that the U.S. needs to make sure jobs are available to make quality American goods that people around the world want to buy.

“We’re five percent of the world’s market, but 95 percent of the market is outside our borders,” he said. Addressing this challenge, he said his Make it in America agenda focuses on three interdependent issues: skills training, entrepreneurship, and infrastructure, and that the name of this program was a play on words; moving away from the old idiom “made in America,” as a way to better reflect the goals of small businesses succeeding in 2018.

Congressman Steny H. Hoyer and Pierre Lupusco

Given the immigration story of Shockoe, Hoyer spoke extensively about the immigration experience in the U.S. and how it has always been a positive force in the American economy. Referencing The New Colossus poem on the Statue of Liberty —  which reads — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” — Hoyer said, “She was dead flat wrong. We didn’t get the wretched refuse, we got some of the most entrepreneurial, courageous, risk taking, and ambitious people in the world.” Looking at Pierre and Brigitte, he said, “You two are two of those people.”

“I love your slogan, made in America by immigrants.”

Asked “Why denim?” by McEachin, Anthony said it was about legacy and taking his parent’s legacy and making it American.

“There is not much more of an iconic American product than a pair of jeans,” he said. Building on this, Brigitte pointed out that moving to the U.S. gave their family more options than staying in her native France, where the opportunities to engage in fashion design were predicated exclusively on who you knew (as opposed to the quality of your product).

Shockoe Atelier Roundtable

As the roundtable ended, both Congressmen were interested to learn that the majority of their business was done online, with Shockoe’s primary fashion markets being located in places like New York, Los Angeles, U.K. and Europe.

“We got a lot of support from the Richmond community,” said Anthony, when Hoyer asked about how they connected to capitol to grow their brand. “We don’t have a fabric source in the U.S. anymore,” he said, highlighting that their main supplier went out of business. “So all of our fabric is imported from Italy or Japan.”

Acknowledging these challenges, especially with finding quality denims, Anthony said there is a still a fair amount of boot-strapping with a scrappy fashion brand like theirs — which is precisely why the House Democratic Whip and Congressman McEachin showed up at their shop in the River City this morning.

The Best (or weirdest) Political Ad of the Mid-Term Season Has Just Arrived

Landon Shroder | September 20, 2018

Topics: Attack Ad, Bigfoot, congress, Creative Agencies, Democrats, Mid-Terms, Political Ads, politics, Republicans

While Virginia had its own political controversy with the mysterious cryptozoological phenomenon earlier this summer with the great Bigfoot Erotica scandal of 2018, peak Bigfoot has now been achieved in the contest for Minnesota’s 3rd District. Apparently all that was needed for the creature to reveal its existence to the world was the ongoing political climate. The ad, released by Democratic challenger, Dean Phillips, uses the North American Yeti to make the point that his challenger, incumbent Republican Erik Paulson, is more elusive and harder to find than Bigfoot himself.

The ad starts with Bigfoot wondering out loud: “I thought I was good at hiding,” before saying “Then Erik Paulson comes along.” The arc of the story only grows more ironically hilarious from there as Bigfoot opines: “How can you have tens of thousands of people looking for you all the time, and not one of them find you. I started to wonder, does Erik Paulson even exist?” From there Bigfoot sets out on a quest to find the Republican Congressman, armed with nothing more than a classic Ford T-Bird, a roller cooler, and an old school VHS video camera. Narrating the video in first person, Bigfoot tells the viewers his plan, “Paulsen takes piles of money from big pharma and votes to erode essential healthcare protections. So the most likely place to find him is at a big pharmaceutical company.” Staking out the lobby of one such company, Bigfoot eventually finds his man, telling the audience that he was prepared to stay there for weeks, but that “it took seven minutes,” before coyly smiling at the camera.

The ad has already been viewed 48, 358 times on YouTube and an additional 144,000 on Phillips’ Facebook page and has been widely lauded in marketing and advertising news, and even more conservative publications like Forbes, who called it, “fantastic”. According to Ad Week the campaign video was made on something of an ad-hoc basis with volunteers from the campaign and various agencies pitching in creative direction. There is no doubt that this campaign ad will be remembered as one of the greats, and in an age of visceral attack ads that are often deeply personal; this combination of film making, thematics, and irony was an interesting reimagining of how attack politics can be done in a way that is light-hearted and contemporary.

So, #2018.

Republican PAC Launches Bogus Attack Ad Against Abigail Spanberger

Landon Shroder | September 6, 2018

Topics: 7th District, abigail spanberger, CIA, Congressional Leadership Fund, Dave Brat, Democrats, Republicans, Security Clearance, USPS, virginia

The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the controversial Republican PAC linked to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has just released an attack ad against the Democratic candidate for the 7th District, Abigail Spanberger. CLF is the same PAC, who only last week, released Spanberger’s un-redacted security clearance forms in a move that was highly controversial and condemned by the national security establishment. The documents showed that Spanberger, a former CIA case officer for counter-terrorism, was briefly a substitute teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax, Virginia. The international school, before closing, was funded by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, who is an ally of the U.S. in all counter-terrorism efforts.

Spanberger told RVA Mag last week that she only taught at the school briefly and according to her campaign, she was only at the ISA for a year.

Nonetheless, the video starts by asking the question: “What is Abigail Spanberger hiding?” before saying, “Spanberger doesn’t want us to know that she taught at an Islamic school nicknamed, ‘terror high’, a terrorist breeding ground.'” While two students at the ISA were implicated in terrorism cases, the claims made by the CLF video do not pass scrutiny. A timeline prepared by the Spanberger Campaign shows that Spanberger left the ISA in 2003, almost six years before these men were implicated in any kind of terrorism charges.

First CLF ad in #VA07: For the last year, Abigail Spanberger hid from Virginia voters that she taught at “Terror High.” https://t.co/fzKVukjH7k pic.twitter.com/cjS10F9st9

— Congressional Leadership Fund (@CLFSuperPAC) September 6, 2018

In a statement released this morning Spanberger said, “For a Republican Super PAC to question my national security credentials and integrity based on the time I spent as a long-term substitute, teaching English to children at an embassy school in Northern Virginia, is desperate and weak, and it shows just how terrified they are of having an independent voice representing this community in Congress.”

Justin Jones, Communications Director for the Spanberger Campaign, reached out to RVA Mag to talk about the video saying, “Attacking her for being a substitute teacher is ridiculous. Abigail has nothing to hide, she received top-secret security clearances based on her background, experience, and integrity and faithfully served our country for over a decade as a federal law enforcement and CIA officer.” He went on to say that the ad was also based off of information that was “illegally disclosed” by the United States Postal Service in a freedom of information act request made by an organization affiliated with the CLF.

Beyond the veracity of the CLF’s claims, this is an obvious attempt to drum up anti-Muslim sentiment as a way to score political points. According to FBI data released in November 2017, religiously motivated crimes against Muslims made up 25 percent of all reported hate crimes, which was a marked increase from the year before. Pew Research released a study about the rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in July 2017; among other things the study said, “Overall, Muslims in the United States perceive a lot of discrimination against their religious group, are leery of Trump and think their fellow Americans do not see Islam as part of mainstream U.S. society.” This attack ad against Spanberger by the CLF only fuels this distrust and as the study went on to show is part of the reason why a third of Americans believe there is a “fair amount” of backing by U.S. Muslims for extremists or a “great deal”.

Virginia Politics Has Now Hit Peak Weird with Bigfoot Erotica

Landon Shroder | July 30, 2018

Topics: Bigfoot, Bigfoot Erotica, congress, Democrats, Denver Riggleman, Leslie Cockburn, Mid-Terms, Republicans

Virginia politics has now entered a new phase. Bigfoot erotica, a new subgenre of cryptozoological inquiry in which the elusive creature is pictured in sexual situations, has popped up on the Instagram account of Republican Congressional Candidate for the 5th District, Denver Riggleman. While Riggleman’s account is apparently set to private, his Democratic challenger, Leslie Cockburn, allegedly found the images and they do not disappoint. Cockburn has now taken to Twitter questioning the candidate’s suitability in running for high office, saying, “He has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill.”

While Bigfoot erotica makes for questionable credentials for high office, Cockburn, in the same Tweet, also claimed that Riggleman is an acolyte of Republican Senatorial Candidate, Corey Stewart. “My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist.”

The Bigfoot erotica of Denver Riggleman

According to The Daily Progress, which broke the story, Riggleman has penned at least one book on Bigfoot called, “Bigfoot Exterminators Inc. The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006.” The campaign manager for Cockburn, responding to the viral tweets, has said, “Leslie has been traveling throughout the district meeting with real people about real issues that matter to them…Meanwhile, Mr. Riggleman is home scrubbing his social media of ‘Bigfoot erotica’ and who knows what else.”

For his part, Riggleman denies any association with Bigfoot erotica and claims the posts were a joke played on him by his military friends, claiming he never thought they would be used against him “politically”; clearly misreading the political climate of 2018. One of the erotic images had a big black box covering the elusive forest creature’s penis and was captioned with, “Cover art for #matinghabitsofbigfoot almost complete. I hide nothing in this magnificent tome. Don’t erase the censor box…”

Cockburn’s tweets have now gone viral, being shared over 4,000 times, and were met with some colorful commentary from the Twitter-verse, the best of which can be found below:

For more on Bigfoot Erotica, check out this article by Buzzfeed. Don’t ever say RVA Mag didn’t do anything for you, Virginia.

Bigfoot’s New Mate by Soichiro Irons
Bigfoot Depravity by Robyn North

Former CIA Agent Abigail Spanberger is on a Mission for Virginia’s 7th District

Landon Shroder | May 3, 2018

Topics: 7th District, abigail spanberger, dan ward, Dave Brat, Democratic Primary, Democrats, Republican, virginia

When asked about making the jump from intelligence professional to civilian politics, former CIA agent and Democratic primary candidate for Virginia’s 7th District, Abigail Spanberger, had a very distinct answer. “My whole role was to become a subject matter expert on a variety of different topics at a variety of different times.” As an intelligence professional, Spanberger had to use her analytical skills to cover issues like nuclear mitigation, science, technology, and narco-trafficking. 

While these skills on the surface might seem to apply only to the world of a professional spy, Spanberger explains how they have prepared her for life on the campaign trail. “What is the most transferable of these skill-sets is understanding really complicated topics that have inter-related challenges and then communicating them back to other people.” And as a legislator, this is how she would assess the most critical issues that her district and the US faces; as a series of policy initiatives that connect across issues.  

Campaign Mural

Spanberger, like her primary opponent Dan Ward, stands out in this election cycle because of the vast foreign policy credentials she gained while working abroad. A former law enforcement officer for the US Postal Inspection Service, Spanberger went on to become a core collector with the CIA, responsible for enlisting sources and gathering intelligence that informed national security policy. To obtain this position, recruitment can take anywhere between 12-18 months and includes extensive background checks and polygraph testing, along with medical and mental evaluations. 

RVA Mag caught up with Spanberger at her campaign office in Henrico to take the temperature on what is happening around the globe and how her experience abroad is playing out on the campaign trail. 

“My experience in foreign policy and in the intelligence world would be incredibly unique,” said Spanberger, when asked if she would tackle foreign policy in Congress. Indeed, her experience is unique and she is only one of two other women with these spooky credentials running for Congress this cycle. The other being Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat running in Michigan who was also in the CIA. Despite this, she was quick to clarify that her passion for serving was not only her commitment to country, but also helping people understanding complex things. 

My interests can easily pivot from North Korea nuclear policy to Latin American leadership issues to health care, tax policy, and mental illness,” said Spanberger.  

Nonetheless, a lot is happening in the world, and it is not often that one hears directly from a former CIA agent running for Congress about the dangers lurking in the shadows.

“We are at a point of strange instability,” commented Spanberger, expanding on her worldview and the challenges the US faces. “In particular for other countries, you could always generally always guess where the US was going to go as it related to foreign policy. You could always generally understand the ribbon that tied all of our actions together.” Like most, she was quick to comment on the President Trump’s Twitter feed, acknowledging that US strategy now varies “tweet to tweet”. She summed up this kind of foreign policy as “wholly phrenetic” and lacking the continuity that foreign countries need to “engage with us diplomatically.”

Because of the frenzied inconsistency of this strategy, foreign policy professionals have been at a loss for how to conduct business. Yet from a certain perspective, gains have also been made, such as the announcement that North and South Korea will officially end hostilities after 65 years. This presents a problem for Democrats running on foreign policy credentials, something Spanberger was pressed on in terms of how the administration should be credited. 

“This is more complicated than it outwardly looks,” she replied, before admitting, “It is to strange of a turn of events. There is a play somewhere and a variety of options as to what it can be, maybe that is a little too pessimistic. Normally I am an optimist.” 

Campaign HQ

One of the defining features of this political age is the way in which fringe messaging which borders on the conspiratorial has become mainstream, and this year’s election cycle in Virginia is no exception.  

In fact, the sitting incumbent for the 7th District, Congressman Dave Brat, has been called out more than once for re-tweeting conspiracy theories, most notably after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Spanberger has not been immune to this messaging either, being pinged by publications like The Gateway Pundit as being part of a “deep-state conspiracy” due to her CIA background. 

“So I have gotten the deep state narrative,” she said. “I would write something on Facebook about healthcare and they would write ‘you’re deep-state we shouldn’t listen to you’.” This messaging has only been emboldened by a roster of up and coming Democrats who have foreign policy and intelligence credentials, along with Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department claiming they are engaged in a deep-state conspiracy against his presidency.

Goals

“There are a couple of us running and the Washington Post ran an article about Elissa and me, and that got a lot of play and that’s when it picked up.” In an age of foreign-based social media campaigns, Spanberger was quick to point out that these were not Russia bots, but people living in Virginia’s 7th District. 

While foreign policy is built into the DNA of the Spanberger campaign, her focus still remains local.

Asking about her priorities if she makes it to Congress, she was quick to name three: financial stability, gun-violence prevention, and healthcare; something she spoke enthusiastically about, “We find ourselves in a place where premiums are continuing to rise, estimates are thousands of people in the 7th District are going to lose their healthcare.” Explaining how healthcare can be addressed, she commented on the need to bring back the individual mandate as a way of strengthening the Affordable Care Act, along with allowing Medicare to negotiate its own prescription drug prices. “There is a variety of things we can do to positively impact someone’s life as it relates to healthcare, and we need to be doing all of it.”  

Before closing out, Spanberger was asked what her message is to young people and her answer was reflective of 2018. “Everything is political. Whatever it is you care about it is linked to politics..nothing will change until the people who want it to change get involved.”

Photos by Landon Shroder

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