By Trevor Baratko
Two Days of the Commonwealth is a gripping political epic, guiding and awing you through 48 historic hours that altered the course of a state, and then a nation.
Watch as journalists and pundits straight lose their shit over a first-in-history primary loss by a sitting House Majority Leader.
Ponder over a Democratic state senator’s decision to abruptly resign and hand over control of Virginia’s upper chamber to the GOP, imperiling healthcare for hundreds of thousands — not to mention the agenda of a controversial, first-year governor.
And get to know a former lieutenant governor, and ambassador to Switzerland, who’s on his way to Congress to replace a retiring liberal stalwart. All this and more in the smart, racy drama written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Kevin Spacey.
Someone get Harvey Weinstein on the line.
But for real, in less than 48 hours Monday and Tuesday, Republican U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor became the first House Majority Leader in the nation’s history to lose a primary contest, Virginia’s new Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe lost his party’s control of the state legislature, and a former lieutenant governor became the presumed congressman in Old Dominion’s 8th Congressional District.
“I literally can’t think of a bigger upset in my time covering politics,” commented Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post blog The Fix about Cantor’s loss.
“This is easily one of the most stunning primary losses in U.S. political history,” noted Taegan Goddard of Political Wire.
And Larry Sabato, the revered political scientist who heads the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, pointed to 1966 — when House Rules Committee Chairman Howard Worth Smith and Senate Banking Chairman A. Willist Robertson lost primaries — as the last time he could recall anything as astounding as the Cantor calamity.
Remarkably, the primary wasn’t even close. The House Majority Leader, and only non-Christian Republican in Congress, lost to Randolph-Macon College economics professor David Brat by 11 points, despite internal “polls” showing him with a lead of more than 30 percent. Lesson to reporters: Laugh at internal polls, or, at the very least, consider them with relentless, overwhelming skepticism.
What this means for Republicans in Virginia is uncertain, and anyone claiming it charts a definitive course the commonwealth’s conservatives is merely bloviating. While they got waxed in major statewide elections in 2012 and 2013, Republicans still hold a dominant majority in the House of Delegates and now appear to have the edge in the state Senate too.
“It is clear that there are deep divisions within the Republican Party,” former GOP Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling said on Facebook. “While these divisions may be inconsequential in an individual congressional district, they can be fatal in statewide and national campaigns. We must find a way to bring the various factions in our party together.”
But again, the week hasn’t been all bad for the VAGOP. Far from it.
On the state level, the tiresome budget battle over Medicaid expansion and Obamacare appears to be in its final round. On Monday, Democratic state Sen. Phil Puckett of Southwestern Virginia officially tendered his resignation from the then-evenly-divided chamber in order, he said, for his daughter to be able to accept a state judgeship. Virginia is the only state other than South Carolina where lawmakers choose who sits on the state bench.
But as various news outlets noted, there appears more to Puckett’s bowing out. The senator was reportedly in the running for a cushy gig with the Republican-chaired state tobacco commission following his resignation. After a very public backlash, Puckett said he wouldn’t accept the position.
Here’s how at least one newspaper put it:
“Bribe? Yes, bribe.”
Puckett’s departure likely means Republican lawmakers will get their wish of a state budget sans Medicaid expansion, though Democrats say they’ll carry on the fight, albeit without the leverage of a state spending plan.
Beyond the questions surrounding the budget and Medicaid, Puckett’s resignation raises dour questions about the remaining three and a half years of Gov. McAuliffe’s term should Republicans maintain control of the General Assembly — think President Obama working with two GOPHouses.
While McAuliffe said he was in “shock and disbelief” over the Puckett move, the governor, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and close friend to Bill and Hillary Clinton, wasn’t fretting Wednesday.
“In life you hit bumps in the road. Get over the bump, get up, get yourself up the next day, dust yourself off and get back in the arena,” McAuliffe said. “As you know, governor always has veto power. You’d have a hard time overriding my veto. But listen, what I focus on 95 percent of my day is jobs and economic development. I do believe at the end of the day that voters elected me because they thought I would be a job creator.”
Rounding out a trio of alluring story lines in Old Dominion, former Lt. Gov. Don Beyer bested a pack of challengers Tuesday in a crowded Democratic primary to replace Congressman Jim Moran of the 8th District. For months, eyes had been all over the primary in Virginia’s 8th, a strongly Democratic district, but the Cantor news widely overshadowed everything else Tuesday night.
A wondrous week in the land of Jefferson — and it’s only Wednesday.
In the Twitter words of veteran D.C. reporter Ben Pershing, Cantor’s fall is:
“A good reminder that none of us knows anything about politics.”
Trevor Baratko is a writer and Virginia News Group reporter based in Northern Virginia. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorBaratko.
