By Bre Payton | Watchdog.org, Virginia Bureau

The Tides Foundation is funding the efforts to get ex-felons registered to vote in Virginia.

ALEXANDRIA — Who is funding the efforts to get ex-felons registered to vote in Virginia?

Apparently it’s the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation.

The foundation has long supported felony rights restoration by writing large checks to groups that work with states to register former felons.

In the past, the foundation set up the Civic Participation Fund, which was aimed at aiding social-change organizations focused in new-majority communities that “need money, and need it fast,” says the Tides website.

The fund, formerly known as the Voter Action Fund, granted more than $8 million to advocacy groups “working to address the legal, procedural, and technological barriers to electoral participation.”

Two groups that have received funding from Tides — Advancement Project and the Virginia New Majority — are working with Virginia officials to restore felons voting rights, according to documents given to Watchdog.org by the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the politics behind nonprofit operations.

The Advancement Project and Virginia New Majority also are working to register the newly enfranchised voters by November, when the gubernatorial, lieutenant governor, attorney general, some state senate and all delegate seats up for grabs.

“I find it alarming that a radical left-wing group has anything to do with the governor’s office,” said Matthew Vadum, senior editor of the Capital Research Center.

The Tides Foundation would not confirm that it has given money to the Virginia organizations, but tax documents filed by the groups show they received the Tides grants.

Francisco Martinez, a philanthropic adviser to the Tides Foundation, wouldn’t respond directly to questions about the groups, but said, “Throughout our history, we have supported groups in almost every state, including Virginia. Like many foundations, we fund the strongest groups that we think would have the most impact in their communities and fuel the most civic participation.”

The Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, received  more than $895,000 in grants from the Tides Foundation from 2007-2011, according to documents provided by the CRC.

In 2011, Tides also gave $15,000 to Virginia New Majority, a civic-engagement group aimed at getting progressive voters to show up at the polls, CRC said.

When Gov. Bob McDonnell announced in late May that he would automatically restore rights to non-violent felons, he also called for a full review of Virginia’s traditionally low threshold for what constitutes a violent felony.

McDonnell has been seeking input from the Advancement Project throughout the evaluation process, said Edargo Cortez, director of the Advancement Project’s Virginia Voting Rights Restoration campaign.

The project also is assisting to help the state with its lack of a comprehensive database by providing a hotline for felons to call and get their contact information relayed to the governor’s office.

“I think we have been doing a lot to help provide information to the state so they can figure out the real world implications of what they’re setting up,” Cortes said. “Hopefully this can impact and restore rights to the greatest number of people as possible.”

The Advancement Project has been working in tandem with its statewide partner, Virginia New Majority, to ensure the highest number of previously disenfranchised people can use the newly automated system, Cortes said.

In a news release celebrating McDonnell’s announcement as a victory, the Virginia New Majority said the group was to have statewide voter registration drives to ensure that each newly enfranchised voter could cast his ballot in the November elections.

There are an estimated 350,000 people ineligible to vote in the state because of a felony conviction. About 100,000 of those would be eligible for automatic rights restoration, according to the governor’s office.

The estimates come from the Sentencing Project, which conducted a felon disenfranchisement impact study based on 2010 U.S. Census information. The study was funded in part by the Tides Foundation.

Bre Payton is an intern for the Virginia Bureau of Watchdog.org. Contact her at bre@watchdogvirginia.org

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EXPERT: After the Pocahontas Parkway turned out to be a failure, private tolling companies caught on quickly.

ALEXANDRIA — In the wake of the Richmond region’s struggling Pocahontas Parkway, which creditors wait to take over, the private industry has learned how to protect itself — and shift the risk to the state and its taxpayers.

Envisioned in the 1990s and completed in 2002 as the first project under Virginia’s Public Private Transportation Act of 1995, the 8.8-mile roadway connecting Chesterfield and Henrico counties over the James River was planned with the promise of new housing developments and increased traffic to Richmond’s airport.

It was the first venture into a transportation method that both Democrats and Republicans touted as a solution to Virginia’s road funding puzzle by placing much of the financing and risk on the private sector.

“When Transurban invested in 2006, it was largely based on the fact that there was a lot of development planned in this area,” said Pierce Coffee, spokeswoman for Transurban, the Australian-based toll road developer and operator that is now turning over the parkway’s assets to European creditors.

The roadway was doomed from its opening, critics say, and the troubled economy left  Transurban unable to turn toll revenues around.

“When the toll revenue study was done many years ago, it was done on expected, future economic development, which did not occur to expectations. And so, it became a distress facility, as far as toll collections go,” said Tamara Rollison, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The Pocahontas Parkway, or Route 895, will continue to take tolled travelers, through some yet-to-be-determined toll operator once Transurban officially hands the project to creditors sometime around October. The state still owns the parkway and taxpayers won’t foot any of the financial fallout, per Transurban’s original agreement with Virginia.

“While it’s not ideal for Transurban from a commercial perspective, it is really the public-private partnership working, because there’s not going to be any impact to the Virginia taxpayers, and there’s not going to be a service interruption to the Pocahontas 895 customers,” Coffee said.

But thanks to 895, the private sector has had to come face-to-face with the reality of risk in partnering with state government.

“I don’t think the industry was as sophisticated about the risks involved,” said Jim Regimbal, a leading expert on government finance policy who has written two reports on the flaws of Virginia’s public-private partnerships, or P3s, as they’re called for short.

The Pocahontas Parkway, as Transurban says itself, is the example of just how a P3 project can encourage entrepreneurship in transportation without jeopardizing taxpayer dollars.

“From the taxpayer perspective, this is why — in a lot of ways, while it’s not a silver bullet — but why P3s can be really good because the state and the taxpayers are protected,” Coffee said.

But through the troubles of Pocahontas Parkway, the private sector has learned how to better protect itself by leveraging agreements with the state, said Regimbal, a former economic analyst for the Virginia Senate Finance Committee and the state departments of treasury and taxation. 

“That’s why you can’t get many private guys to put in their own equity and really do a PPTA project, where they put some of their money at risk,” Regimbal said.

One of the most criticized P3 undertakings in the state is the new Route 460, designed to increase access to Virginia’s port by stretching from Prince George County to Suffolk County. The private sector is risking just a few hundred million in the $1.4 billion project.

Why so little?

Because there’s already a Route 460 running that same route, free to motorists. And investors don’t seem to think the moderate traffic on that road warrants another, tolled road alongside it. So, even though the state is footing nearly the full bill for the project, riders will still pay tolls to the private group operating the booths.

“This project is an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars that will cause significant environmental damage,” Trip Pollard, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Land and Community Program in Virginia and five other states, told the Associated Press. “It is a boondoggle that is nowhere near the most pressing transportation need for Virginia, or even Hampton Roads.”

“I think 895, that lesson has already been learned,” Regimbal said. “That’s why nobody’s bidding on 460. They’re calling it a P3, but it’s just state money, just state debt.”

The Midtown-Downtown Tunnel P3 in Hampton Roads, a project with protections for the private industry, is another instance where taxpayers are getting gouged, Regimbal said. The Virginia Supreme Court will soon decide whether that project is even constitutional.

“That’s why you saw the Midtown Tunnel guys strike such a hard bargain,” Regimbal said. “They wanted all these concessions. They wanted to make sure that if there was any competitive road built that they would get reimbursed. All those are the result of what they learned from that project, that 895 project.”

Regimbal isn’t a critic of all P3 projects. In fact, the 495 Express Lanes project in northern Virginia, also run by Transurban, promises free-market elements — competition with the free lanes alongside it, no contract clauses protecting Transurban and plenty of congestion to keep the project running.

“I think that 495, as I mentioned in my paper, that road is actually one of the ones that I thought was a pretty fair deal,” Regimbal said. “They’re taking real risk.”

Transurban backing out of the Pocahontas Parkway won’t affect its credit rating or its other projects in Virginia, Coffee said.

But Virginians have to scrutinize each P3 contract carefully now more than ever, Regimbal said, because the private tolling industry is too smart for a bum deal now.

— Kathryn Watson is a reporter with the Virginia bureau of Watchdog.org, and can be contacted at katie@watchdogvirginia.org. 

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ON TOUR: Terry McAuliffe points the way for Haley Barbour, center, and Bill Clinton at GreenTech facility in Mississippi last year.

By Kenric Ward | Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau

ALEXANDRIA – Terry McAuliffe said he stepped down as chairman of GreenTech Automotive “when I announced I was running for governor.” That would have been Nov. 8.

TIMING BELT: McAuliffe continued to represent himself as car company’s chairman long after he supposedly resigned.

“I resigned when I announced I was running for governor because I’m running for governor full time. From the second I got in, I walked away from my active business interests,” the Democrat told WUSA Channel 9 News in Washington, D.C. on May 9.

That was news to the public and the media.

In fact, McAuliffe’s departure from GTA was not announced until April 5, when company president and CEO Charles Wang said he had accepted McAuliffe’s resignation, effective Dec. 1 — nearly a month after McAuliffe announced his gubernatorial run.

Yet in the months after Nov. 8, McAuliffe made several appearances in which he spoke proprietarily about the company. In each case, he failed to correct the impression that he was GreenTech’s chairman.

On Dec. 3, for instance, two days after GreenTech now says McAuliffe had resigned, a corporate news release posted on GTA’s website identified McAuliffe as chairman. That reference, since removed from the site, was reported by the Washington Post.

Two days later, on Dec. 5, speaking with reporters at the Capitol in Richmond, McAuliffe talked about GreenTech’s decision to locate an electric-car assembly plant in Mississippi, instead of Virginia. Significantly, he was still speaking about GreenTech as if he were a company executive.

“We had sites, we had meetings, and (Virginia) chose that they weren’t going to bid on it. I have to go where, obviously, they’re gonna, you know, put incentives, but the only incentives are: if I create jobs, then I get incentives.

“So it’s a win-win for them and for us. I would love to have it — at full production it will be a thousand employees.”

A month later, on Jan. 9, McAuliffe spoke at the “Green Energy Business Seminar & Trade Show,” at George Mason University, where he was billed as “Chairman of GreenTech Automotive” – a characterization that remains posted online.

On Jan. 22, McAuliffe told a breakfast gathering of the National Federation of Independent Business in Richmond, “I’m building electric cars now.”

On Feb. 8, WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi asked him about GreenTech. McAuliffe didn’t take the opportunity to reveal his resignation from the firm. Instead, McAuliffe continued to discuss GreenTech’s decision to locate in Mississippi.

On April 3 — two days before Wang publicly announced McAuliffe’s Dec. 1 resignation — the Washington Examiner reported the gubernatorial hopeful saying:

“I’ve been involved in business my whole life. I’ve started a lot of businesses. I’ve invested. Some businesses work, some don’t,” McAuliffe said, adding that it wasn’t a concession that GreenTech has failed.

On April 4, Watchdog.org received a letter demanding the retraction of articles it had published about GreenTech on April 1 and April 3. On April 5, GreenTech announced for the first time that McAuliffe was not the company’s chairman — and had not been since his Dec. 1 resignation.

News of McAuliffe’s Dec. 1 resignation surprised many.

On April 6, the Richmond Times-Dispatch quoted McAuliffe as saying he “told everybody who asked” that he had stepped down as chairman of GreenTech.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli pounced on that assertion.

“Why would anyone ask?” the Cuccinelli campaign said in a statement. “Not only did numerous news articles go uncorrected, but he continued to speak as if he was chairman after his resignation.”

McAuliffe spokesman Josh Schwerin told the Associated Press on April 5 that: “… Terry has been focused on running for governor full-time as he travels around the Commonwealth to hear the best mainstream ideas to grow Virginia’s economy.”

On April 8, the company filed an $85 million lawsuit against Watchdog, alleging that the news stories defamed GTA and damaged relations with investors.

Though McAuliffe spoke with reporters at a campaign event in Arlington on May 9, his staff rebuffed Watchdog’s request for an interview there.

McAuliffe’s tax returns might settle the matter. But the candidate won’t make them public, preferring instead to offer summaries.

“His secretive departure from GreenTech Automotive calls into question his sincerity,“ said Virginia Republican Party executive director Pat Mullins.

“Is he still collecting money from any of the numerous corporations and partnerships that own GreenTech and Gulf Coast Funds Management and their EB-5 ‘investments’ for visas program?”

State Delegate Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, added, “We just got to figure out if (McAuliffe) was so proud of the fact he was the head of GreenTech in January, why did he actually resign in December?”

McAuliffe’s actions have taken heat from the left, as well as the right.

“Questions about GreenTech’s financing and incorporation and performance and taxes — not to mention McAuliffe’s decision to quietly resign the company’s chairmanship sometime late last year—are being used to chip away at his self-presentation as a proven job creator,” Michelle Cottle wrote May 9 on the liberal website, the Daily Beast.

“Team Terry’s lackluster response to such attacks has Dems fretting about his savvy as a candidate,” Cottle concluded in the article, titled “How Terry McAuliffe and the Dems Lost Virginia.”

Contact Kenric Ward at kenric@watchdogvirginia.org or at (571) 319-9824. @Kenricward

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QUIET CAR COMPANY: A TV news didn’t find much activity outside GreenTech’s leased facility. The crew was prohibited from going inside.

By Kenric Ward | Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau

FREDERICKSBURG — A new television news investigation reported this week that the GreenTech Automotive company formerly chaired by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe remains stalled in Mississippi.

NBC-5 Memphis’ news segment, titled “Missing Jobs,” recounted the hoopla over McAuliffe’s announced $60 million car production facility in Tunica County.

Following the Virginia governor’s race? Click here.

But nearly a year after the event attended by former President Bill Clinton and then-Gov. Haley Barbour, reporter Michael Clark declared, “The party is over.”

Clark said the only evidence of recent activity at the yet-to-be-built Tunica facility was mown grass.

Based on last year’s announcement, GTA’s operations “should be booming by now,” Clark said.

The NBC camera crew went to GreenTech’s leased facility in neighboring DeSoto County and found little to see there.

“Model cars are gone from the outside of the plant, and the only evidence Action 5 News investigators found of any electric-car production were a couple of cars whizzing around the parking lot — after we started filming,” Clark reported.

NBC-5 said it made “repeated requests” to enter the DeSoto facility, but was denied each time. Vice President for Sales and Marketing Marianne McInerney said 78 employees worked there. Clark quoted McInerney as saying the company was now “shooting for” completion of the Tunica plant by early 2014.

To meet the terms of a financial-incentive agreement with the state of Mississippi, GTA must invest $60 million and create 350 jobs in Tunica by the end of 2014.

Virginia state Sen. Tom Garrett, R-Louisa, told Watchdog.org on Tuesday that he’s still waiting for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to respond to his concerns about the investor-visa program that GTA is using to raise funds.

“It’s nice that GreenTech has cut the grass. I can only hope that the federal government is doing what it should have done five years ago and look into this EB-5 program.

“I’m not asserting criminal wrongdoing, but if Terry has done nothing wrong, let’s open up the books on EB-5 funding,” said Garrett, a Virginia lawyer. “It’s about time.”

Kenric Ward is chief of the Virginia Bureau. Contact him at kenric@watchdogvirginia.org or at (571) 319-9824. @Kenricward

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‘TERRORIZED’: Virginia farmer Martha Boneta battles the IRS.

By Kevin Mooney | Watchdog.org

After clashing in court with a powerful Virginia environmental group, farmer Martha Boneta faced a second threat: an ominous U.S. Internal Revenue Service audit notice she received in the mail.

Boneta suspects the events are related, that her struggle to protect her property rights is part of a larger national story involving IRS harassment of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. A former IRS commissioner who serves on a council that has sparred with Boneta over her property said the concerns are unfounded.

“You are humbled and terrorized by the whole process,” Boneta told Watchdog. “You wake up every day with a terrible feeling, and initially you don’t want to tell anyone what has happened. But as I gradually began to speak out, more people began to join with me. Anyone who is a farmer, or a concerned citizen, has a stake in this fight. But I came into the process very reluctantly.”

As Watchdog previously reported, Boneta’s name is now synonymous with the fight for property rights in Virginia. The Boneta Bill (House Bill 1430), which is designed to strengthen and clarify the state’s Right to Farm Act, passed the House of Delegates in a 77-22 vote in February.

The legislation was later blocked in the Senate Agriculture Committee in an 11-4 vote, but Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodbridge, has vowed to reintroduce the bill next year.

Inside the barn on her 70-acre property in Paris, Va., a small rural village in Fauquier County, an hour’s drive west of Washington, D.C., Boneta told Watchdog the IRS notice followed a fight that began when the Piedmont Environmental Council began working with county officials to rezone her property. PEC officials threatened to sue Boneta in 2009 for a variety of supposed violations before focusing their complaint on the presence of an apartment on the property.

Boneta and PEC settled in 2011, but by then, Fauquier County planners, prompted by PEC, had changed zoning laws to specifically ban Boneta’s sale of fresh fruit, vegetables, beverages and homemade handicrafts from her on-site farm store. That change led to the Boneta Bill.

It also led, in April 2012, to county citations against Boneta – each a claim that Boneta was violating the county’s planning ordinances.

IRS Building in Washington D.C.

Then came the IRS notice saying that Bryon C. Jose, an IRS agent based in Fairfax, would audit Boneta’s 2010 and 2011 tax returns. Boneta calls that time frame “highly suggestive” because it coincides closely with the heavily publicized litigation concerning the operations on her property.

Boneta asserts the IRS audit is the latest event in a “coordinated effort” aimed at forcing her off her farm.

It’s not just timing that makes Boneta suspicious of the IRS audit, or even the fact that the audit asks for information that was key to the lawsuit PEC filed against Boneta. It’s the presence on the PEC board of directors of Margaret “Peggy” Richardson, a Clinton-era IRS commissioner.

Richardson dismissed the idea that Boneta’s audit is the result of a coordinated effort, but said she understands why Boneta and her supporters see a connection.

“I could understand, given the external climate, that people might think there is something amiss,” Richardson told Watchdog. “I think that’s a stretch, but I understand why people might feel this way.”

While it may be difficult for people in Fauquier County familiar with the Boneta case to believe the IRS audit is a mere coincidence, this is very likely the case, Richardson said.

“Coincidences do happen.”

Contact Kevin Mooney at kmooney@watchdog.org and follow him on Twitter @KevinMooneyDC

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By Kenric Ward | Watchdog.org

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering upping the ethanol requirement in gasoline this summer — a move that threatens to ignite a new fuel war.

“The dialogue should be to repeal the renewable targets and let the market decide,” Charles Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said at a conference last week.

Opposing requirements to blend more corn-based ethanol and other renewables into their fuels, the petroleum industry says government dictates increase production costs and hike consumer prices.

Oil companies say if they are forced to sell gasoline with the proposed 15 percent ethanol content – up from the current 10 percent – they’ll take their product elsewhere.

“One way to comply is to export ever-increasing amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel, or otherwise just simply shut down the refineries,” Andy Lipow, an oil industry consultant, told National Public Radio recently.

The Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the corn ethanol industry, says the gas companies are bluffing, and wants the EPA to call them on it.

While the EPA bullishly promotes ethanol, some agency officials are wary of stepping on the gas. They note concerns over rising food prices, driven in part by burning evermore corn for fuel.

“When Congress wrote this (renewable-fuel) law, Congress anticipated that the market would solve this problem,” Christopher Grundler, the EPA’s director of the office of transportation and air quality, told a House oversight committee hearing.

“Clearly, it has not been resolved,” he acknowledged.

Though ethanol has not turned out to be the panacea its promoters envisioned, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wasn’t wrong when she declared, “We will be sending our money to the Midwest, not the Middle East.”

Some $7.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies and tax credits for ethanol went to the Corn Belt in 2010 alone. On a unit basis, ethanol subsidies can exceed the total cost of a gallon of gasoline.

“Ethanol is a total waste,” said T.J. Rogers, chairman of SunPower Corp. “The bottom line is that it takes between one and 1.3 gallons of gasoline equivalent energy to produce one gallon of ethanol.”

“Mandating a switch given current technology would increase, not decrease, pump prices,” added Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow specializing in energy policy and environmental protection at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

The high cost of the ethanol program stems from inefficiencies. Because ethanol absorbs water, it cannot be shipped by regular petroleum pipelines. Instead, it must be segregated from other motor fuels and transported by more expensive means — truck, rail car or barge.

Ethanol also produces inferior gas mileage, which more than offsets any negligible (subsidized) savings at the pump. An EPA decision to raise the ethanol content would further erode fuel efficiency, studies show.

With more than 40 percent of America’s corn production already turning into fuel – and food prices on the increase – even liberal environmental groups are questioning the value of ethanol subsidies.

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute; Carl Pope, executive chairman of the Sierra Club; and green energy investor Jeffrey Leonard, chairman of the Global Environment Fund, have said it’s time to eliminate all energy subsidies in the tax code and let the best fuel win.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at Cato, reports that the impact of the nearly decade-old ethanol mandate has been marginal. Indeed, ethanol amounts to less than 1 percent of America’s total oil imports.

“We could plant subsidized corn on every square inch of available land, and we would not significantly reduce our reliance on imported oil,” Tanner said.

Taxpayers for Common Sense calls corn ethanol the “historic trifecta of federal subsidies.”

“A production mandate and an import tariff, combined with agricultural subsidies that increase as agribusinesses engage in riskier production practices and convert more land to corn, has resulted in higher costs for consumers, taxpayers and other industries.

“While ethanol proponents such as the National Corn Growers Association promised several years ago that corn yields would keep up with the additional corn required for ethanol production, they failed to meet expectations. In fact, while corn ethanol production increased nearly eight-fold over the past decade, yields failed to keep up since corn production only increased by 25 percent, mainly due to an increase in corn acreage.”

The farm bill moving through Congress plows the same old ground, while boosting subsidies for sugar – another ethanol source – as well as dubious government-backed crop insurance programs.

“The subsidies encourage farmers to obtain so much coverage that they take risks no prudent operator would take. They plant on unsuitable land, knowing that if a crop fails, they can make a claim. They usually plant corn, the nation’s No. 1 cash crop, which is in demand partly from companies that brew it into ethanol fuel — an industry that owes its existence to more government subsidies,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

Jamie Radtke, a tea party activist and 2012 U.S. Senate candidate from Virginia, said, “The fact that some in Congress want to regulate the methane gas that comes out of the back end of a cow is preposterous.

“So, I guess it is only slightly less foolish that Congress wants to pay farmers to stop growing food for eating and, instead, use it to produce expensive fuel that destroys our cars. These are prime examples of government on steroids,” she told Watchdog.

Citing concerns over costs and the ability of some engines to run on E15 blends, two states are pushing back.

Florida this month repealed its Renewable Fuel Standard and Maine lawmakers approved a bill banning ethanol blends, as long as two other nearby states do the same. Maine leaders also supported a resolution asking the federal government to block E15 (alternately known as E85 flex fuel).

The American Automobile Association, meanwhile, wants to suspend the sale of any E15 gas.

Attempting to wean farmers off their corn-fed fixation, U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, introduced H.R. 1959 to permit natural-gas based ethanol to compete with corn- and switchgrass-based ethanol.

“The Renewable Fuel Standard’s singular focus on corn ethanol has translated into higher feed costs for livestock producers and higher food costs,” Olson said.

Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., one of a dozen cosponsors, added, “We cannot keep gambling our nation’s energy and food security on a broken policy. The Renewable Fuel Standard has injected uncertainty into our economy.

“Our bill will help stabilize feed prices and create some sanity in this policy through diversifying sources for ethanol production.”

Contact Kenric Ward at kenric@watchdogvirginia.org or at (571) 319-9824. @Kenricward

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Virginia seal

By Kathryn Watson | Watchdog.org, Virginia Bureau

ALEXANDRIA — Tuesday’s primary election set the Democratic ticket for November, but that’s the only clarity Virginia voters saw this week. Here is your week in review.

The post Week in Review: Votes cast uncertainty for November appeared first on Watchdog.org.

ALEXANDRIA — The selection of state Sen. Ralph Northam and Mark Herring as Democratic nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general, respectively, could dramatically alter the balance of power in the Senate.

The state Senate has seen a 20-20 split on party lines since the 2011 elections, leaving Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling the tiebreaker on all legislation, except budget issues.  Rules say a lieutenant governor does not vote on budget issues.

But should Northam or Herring win their statewide elections, the Democrats would lose the deadlock in the Senate, lessening the role of the lieutenant governor plays in bill passage.

TOUGH SPOT: Democratic lieutenant governor nominee, state Sen. Ralph Northam, could give Republicans an advantage in the state Senate should he win the election.

The governor would call a special election to fill both seats, but the date of that election is anyone’s guess. Virginia Statute 24.2.682 states that special elections must be held on a Tuesday and no less than 55 days before a primary or general election.

Depending on the circumstances, this means the special election could be held any Tuesday between December and February, possibly leaving the seats vacant during the General Assembly and giving the GOP a two-vote advantage. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve both fall on a Tuesday in 2013, likely eliminating them as potential election days.

“If you are looking at this holistically, perhaps it wasn’t a great thing for Democrats that their two candidates ended up being state senators with a 20-20 tie in the state Senate,” said Geoff Skelley, political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said.

“Both of those districts are pretty tight. Both of these guys won their last elections by relatively close margins. I think the districts would be competitive and a Republican could win either of them.”

In 2011, Northam beat Republican Ben Loyola, Jr. 56.75 percent to 43.13 percent to retain his seat in the 6th District, while Herring bested Patricia Phillips 54 percent to 45.81 percent in the 33rd District.

But in the 2012 presidential election, Northam’s district split between Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Barack Obama. Herring’s district also was competitive, but ultimately went to Obama.

The competitive nature of the districts sets the stage for a contentious race that would have to be run quickly. The most recent example of this scenario was in 2009, when Ken Cuccinelli had to vacate his Senate seat after winning the attorney general’s race.

In a race held on Jan. 12, 2010, Democrat Dave Marsden defeated Steven Hunt. Marsden was sworn in the following day.

“I would be willing to bet you there will be a Democrat who currently sits in office who would run (for Senate),” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.

“Because they realize they just can’t give those seats up. Basically, what it would mean is between the November election and the start of the General Assembly, we would still have to decide who was going to the in control of the Senate.”

Even if candidates can mount a quick campaign, Skelley said capturing the electorate’s attention for the race would be challenging.

“Those races would have incredibly low turnout, and it’s tough to say just what would happen,” he said. “I think a lot of it would come down to who each side nominates.”

Until the outcome of the general election, there’s no way of knowing how the situation will play out, but it could make for a challenging 2014 general session.

Contact Carten Cordell at carten@watchdogvirginia.org.

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ALEXANDRIA — The Virginia lieutenant governor’s race may quickly overshadow the widely-watched governor’s election for the most diametrically opposed candidates of the year.

The difference between establishment Democrat Sen. Ralph Northam and GOP grassroots rebel E.W. Jackson in campaign style is less like gubernatorial foes Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli and more like Charlie Rose and Liberace.

“In my mind, there couldn’t be a greater contrast between two candidates,” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. “The only thing they have in common is that they are both from Hampton Roads.”

Jackson rode to GOP nomination on the wings of dynamic speeches and impassioned delegates, but has been waylaid in the press over the past month for controversial comments, numerous bankruptcies and even misspelling the title of his own book.

Republican lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson will face a challenge in Democratic nominee, state Sen. Ralph Northam.

Meanwhile, Northam overcame a large campaign funding deficit to Democratic opponent Aneesh Chopra in the primary to swing 54 percent of vote and claim the bulk of northern Virginia.

The contest could help widen an already expansive gulf between the Republican and Democratic tickets this fall, pushing the parties to define their campaigns on potentially polarizing issues and controversy.

“It’s really a ticket now of passion versus strategy,” Kidd said. “Ken Cuccinelli is passionate, he’s cause-oriented and knows who he is and what he’s about. I think the same thing about E.W. Jackson and, to a lesser extent, (GOP attorney general candidate) Mark Obenshain.

“Terry McAuliffe is strategy-oriented, and Ralph Northam and (Democratic attorney general candidate) Mark Herring represent consistency. So it’s a ticket of passion and cause versus strategy and consistency.”

The gubernatorial battle between Cuccinelli and McAuliffe was already projected to be contentious, with McAuliffe leading 44 to 41 percent in a June 10 Rasmussen poll. But Jackson, who has spoken out in opposition of issues like abortion and gay rights, can frame the election on stark ideological divides.

“This really does set up, I think to some extent in all three races, an ideological debate — certainly, at least, on social issues. There is no question on social issues,” said Harry Wilson, director for the Institute for Policy & Opinion Research at Roanoke College.

But while the Republican ticket is backed by a passionate, issue-driven base, the trap Democrats will try to lay is defining the GOP by Jackson’s stance on social legislation, said John McGlennon, government professor at William & Mary University.

“I think that the Democrats will certainly be arguing that the Republicans represent a preference for ideological purity, and focus on social issues, while the Democrats will say that they’re looking to deal with the issues confronting the electorate — jobs, in particular,” he said.

In this strategy, Northam is the perfect foil to Jackson. A pediatric neurologist, Northam has focused his campaign on his repudiation of the social legislation recently brought to the General Assembly by Republican lawmakers.

“I am sure Terry McAuliffe will love to talk about that more,” Geoff Skelley, political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said. “He sees it as a position where he can go after Cuccinelli, so I think Democrats would love to make the race about (social legislation).”

Jackson tried to stem the recent controversy at a press conference Wednesday where he explained the reasons behind a serious of bankruptcies and admitted to drug use in his youth.

Sensing the Democrats’ shift to focus on his stance on social issues, the minister tried to head off attacks in a statement released shortly after Northam’s victory Tuesday night.

“While Northam wants to campaign on divisive social issues and a commitment to violate our Second Amendment rights, I look forward to continuing the conversation with Virginians about better education through parental choice, strengthening our economy through jobs and economic liberty, creating a fair playing field for all businesses in Virginia by ending corporate welfare, and seeking real solutions to reduce costs and improve healthcare by standing against Obamacare.”

Skelley said Jackson’s inexperience puts him at a slight disadvantage, though it’s too early in the race to predict outcomes.

“I think the general consensus is that E.W. Jackson is running a little bit uphill,” he said. “Unless there is a major shift in this race where Ken Cuccinelli gets a large lead that can pull Jackson along, he may be always sitting in an underdog position.

“But to a large extent, the voters don’t know who these guys are, so the (goal) for each of them is to define the opponent.”

 Email Carten Cordell at carten@watchdogvirginia.org.

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BABYSITTERS: U.S. Supreme Court justices will decide whether Virginia and other states still need the feds’ approval to change voting processes.

By Kathryn Watson | Watchdog.org, Virginia Bureau

ALEXANDRIA — Does Virginia still need a babysitter to make sure it doesn’t discriminate against minorities in its voting process?

As the commonwealth’s primary season ends and campaigns ramp up for statewide races in November, that’s up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide.

Virginia is one of just 15 states — most of them southern — in which the federal government has to sign off on any changes to either their local or statewide voting processes, no matter how incremental or monumental, under a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act meant to keep in check states with histories of racial discrimination.

So, even though Virginia’s lawmakers voted to require photo ID at the polls in this spring’s legislative session, the law is nothing more than a piece of paper until the U.S. Department of Justice signs off on it.

The fate of Virginia’s new voter ID law and entire election sovereignty under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, or the “pre-clearance” requirement, now rests in the hands of the nine Supreme Court justices in a case called Shelby County (Alabama) v. (Eric) Holder.

“The issue before the court is whether or not the modern pre-clearance requirement is what’s called congruent and proportional — a fancy term for does it still make sense under the Constitution?” said J. Christian Adams, founder of the Election Law Center, in a conference call last week with reporters.

Congress renewed the Voting Rights Acts’ Section 5 for another 25 years during the George W. Bush administration in 2006. Now the Supreme Court has to decide whether Congress overstepped its authority in doing so.

“Obviously, if it’s unconstitutional today it was probably unconstitutional when it was passed,” said Reagan George, president and founder of the Virginia Voters Alliance, an election watchdog group.

The law currently covers Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — plus scores of counties and cities in other states.

Those who want the law struck down say the federal government has no right to intervene in states’ election processes anymore — if it ever did at all.

“There is no reason for states like Virginia to continue to have to get the pre-approval of the federal government for any changes in their voting laws, particularly given the partisan use of Section 5 by the Holder Justice Department,” said Hans von Spakovsky, an expert on elections and voter fraud with the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Supporters of the status quo, like the NAACP and League of Women Voters, say pushes for photo ID prove the need for Section 5 now more than ever.

“Oh, absolutely, particularly given the wave of voter suppression legislation that we have seen, particularly in the covered jurisdictions,” Elizabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters, told Watchdog.org in an interview. “The voting rights act has been a tremendous tool for organizations like the league that are still trying to protect the vote after all of these years.”

But minorities actually turn out at the polls in greater numbers in the so-called suppressed states, according to Section 5 critics and even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Do you know which state has the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African-American voter turnout? Massachusetts,” Roberts told a government lawyer during oral arguments. “Do you know what has the best, where African-American turnout actually exceeds white turnout? Mississippi.”

And that just might be the undoing of the pre-clearance requirement.

“I think the Supreme Court during the oral argument phase of this was really hitting the government attorney pretty hard about the fact that there’s certain states singled out and other states that aren’t, and that government didn’t really have any proof that showed that the states that are currently being raked over the coals by this law” are performing poorly, George said.

Something else that might be the DOJ’s undoing? Recent controversies over things like Benghazi and tapping phone records, on top of internal problems in the DOJ unit that reviews Section 5 issues, Adams said.

“A recent inspector general report, by the DOJ inspector general, revealed that inside the Section 5 unit that’s reviewing things such as voter ID, there is an individual who’s reviewing these laws who has committed perjury,” Adams said. “And you can read this in the IG report. It’s not a mystery — it’s right there in black and white.”

MacNamara said Section 5 is still a strong preventative tool against discrimination.

“Well, we certainly are hoping that the court will do the right thing and will keep the system in place that has been enormously successful in eliminating discrimination,” she said.

But George said the Department of Justice is the real discriminating bully in this scenario.

“In a lot of cases, the Justice Department has been using this law — just like the IRS against the tea parties — has been using it as a tool to try to stop photo ID, even though they know that, for the most part, the American public wants it and that it does not suppress the vote or discriminate in any way.”

The court’s opinion is due any day now.

Contact Kathryn Watson, reporter with the Virginia Bureau of Watchdog.org, at katie@watchdogvirginia.org. 

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