VCC Magazine Summer 2017

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Virginia C apitol Connections, Summer 2017
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Warner created an Exploratory Committee and then just decided
that it just wasn’t his time. It was a personal thing. He pulled out in
part primarily because it was a personal family timing issue.
It just wasn’t Tim Kaine’s time in terms of being the VEEP
candidate on the ticket with Hillary Clinton. I don’t think he had
done anything up to that point. Kaine is a situation where probably, it
was a personal timing moment. He did not express his own personal
ambition to being president or vice president and although he had
ambition he wouldn’t have said ‘yes’, he did not personally push his
name out there. After leaving the governorship, he indicated that his
real ambition was to go teach at the University of Richmond. He then
got persuaded to run for the U. S. Senate.
Terry McAuliffe is in many ways like Jim Gilmore in the sense
that he is early and often has put his name out and has indicated
an ambition for running for president in 2020. I’m not comparing
his governorship with Gilmore’s. There seems to be a very similar
level of obvert ambition on the part of Terry McAuliffe as with Jim
Gilmore, although George Allen and Bob McDonnell both expressed
that same level of ambition at some point in their careers.
The bottom line is that as Virginia has become more competitive
at the federal level especially at the presidential level, the political
value to being governor has grown, has increased and it’s that
political value that makes these people who are governor think more
ambitiously beyond their life in Richmond and that some ambition
sometimes takes them to the U. S. Senate, sometimes it takes them to
other things. It has also taken them to thinking about a larger place for
themselves in national politics.
This is a situation where the one-term governor in an off-
year election in a state that is now among the five to seven most
competitive in the country isn’t much of a hindrance as it might
otherwise be. Although, we can say none of the Virginia governors
have been successful and perhaps none of the reasons is that four
years in Richmond simply isn’t enough time to build a network and
develop the policy credibility that one might need to successfully run
for president.
Stephen J. Farnsworth, Ph.D.
University of Mary Washington
Virginia is in theVERY unusual position of having three plausible
candidates for president in 2020, and all three of them are Democrats.
Mark Warner took a few trips to Iowa to explore a 2008 run, but
the former governor chose to run for the Senate instead once Senator
John Warner decided to retire. The current Senator Warner’s high-
visibility role in investigating possible Russian meddling in the 2016
election strengthens his hand for a more serious run for the White
House in 2020, should he decide to give it a go.
Senator Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee,
would be a serious contender should he decide to run for president
in 2020. He acquitted himself well as on the national stage last year,
and has become an increasingly visible senator since his time on the
ticket.
Both come with the advantages of considerable experience
as both a senator and a governor. But Kaine and Warner may not
be sufficiently angry enough to satisfy the most active parts of the
Democratic primary base.
Governor McAuliffe, who leaves office in January 2018, will
be more able than most potential 2020 presidential candidates to
spend large amounts of time in Iowa and New Hampshire, the early
states on the nomination calendar. He would be the most likely
successor coming out of the Clinton wing of the party, and would be
a particularly formidable fundraiser, a key measure of a candidate’s
viability in the early going.
The shut-out of Republican state-wide office holders in recent
has limited the ability of Republicans to offer a viable candidate
for president in 2020. Former Governor Jim Gilmore ran with little
success four years ago, and former Governor Bob McDonnell’s
history of sordid finance issues may not have led to a prison sentence
but it did make it impossible to run for office as a credible national
candidate. George Allen, a former senator and governor, hasn’t been
a viable candidate for national office since he lost his re-election bid
in 2006.
The GOP field, of course, will depend on if President Trump
chooses to run for re-election and if so what his approval numbers
might look like in a few years.
Geoffrey Skelley
Associate Editor, Sabato’s Crystal Ball,
University of Virginia Center for Politics
George Allen’s 2006 Senate reelection loss ended speculation
about his 2008 presidential aspirations. Since then, he lost another
Senate bid in 2012 against Tim Kaine and has largely exited the
political world, at least as a prospective candidate. There is zero
expectation for him to seek office again, much less the presidency
in the future.
Jim Gilmore made a quixotic presidential bid in 2016, one that
attracted very few votes. Even in his home state of Virginia, Gilmore
only managed to win 0.06% of the vote. There is no reason to think
that he would have any luck in a future presidential bid, and no one is
going to pick him as a running mate.
Mark Warner may long to run for president and could probably
mount the resources for such a bid; someone with his moderate
profile might struggle in a Democratic presidential primary.
Nonetheless, Warner could try to use his post as vice chairman of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to attract national notice
as it delves into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential
election. Although he nearly lost reelection in the GOP-friendly 2014
cycle, Warner remains quite popular among Virginia voters. He could
conceivably run for president or be a vice presidential pick, but it
doesn’t seem incredibly likely, at least at this point.
Bob McDonnell is hard to view as anything other than damaged
goods at this point, at least politically. While the court system
eventually exonerated him, he was found guilty of improper action
by the court of public opinion (not to mention a jury). Given this
toxicity, no one would pick him as a running mate, and if McDonnell
were to run on his own accord, he would forever have to handle tough
questions regarding his acceptance of gifts that led to the corruption
charges.
Tim Kaine was his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2016 and
is obviously going to show up on lists of possible future presidential
candidate. For the time being, Kaine appears unlikely to run, having
said that he will not seek the presidency in 2020. Still, he’s running
for reelection in 2018; if he wins reelection, Kaine might change his
mind once the 2020 campaign cycle starts in early 2019. Still, given
his attachment to a disastrous Democratic result in 2016 and the
possibly crowded Democratic field in 2020, it’s safe to view him as
unlikely to run. And having taken the VP nomination once, would he
do so again? Hard to say.
Terry McAuliffe actually might be the most likely to run for
president. The incumbent Virginia governor can’t run for immediate
reelection, so he might position himself as a possible national
candidate going forward. He’s has a decent approval rating, has major
fundraising chops, and knows everyone in the party. Plus, he does
have some progressive accomplishments that he could cite in an effort
to inoculate himself to left-wing attacks for being too establishment
(e.g. his mass restoration of voting rights for felons who have served
their time). Nonetheless, he is heavily connected to the Clinton’s,
which will be a first-paragraph mention in any candidate profile in
2020 should he run. That might hurt him with Berniecrats and anti-
establishment Democrats.
Michael E. Belefski is a politics reporter for VCC and President
of CPC CORPORATION, a Business, Law and Political
Communications and Public Relations Firm. He can be contacted at
or .
Highest Aspirations from page 7
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