Right now, Republican Mark Obenshain is facing a dwindling lead in the race for attorney general in Virginia. Today, most counties processed provisional votes and submitted totals. Obenshain’s lead is down to just a few dozen out of over two million votes cast. (See my PJ Media piece, “Obenshain, a Reason to Vote in Virginia Tuesday.) The review isn’t over, with Fairfax County waiting until Tuesday to complete the process.
Mark Obenshain
PJ Media spent 2013 reporting how Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell teamed up with the Soros-funded Advancement Project to ram through administrative changes to ensure thousands of felons would be automatically allowed to vote in this election. Senator Obenshain led GOP opposition in the Virginia Senate to the legislative change, and McDonnell’s proposal thankfully died in the Virginia House.
That didn’t stop Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Taking a page from President Obama’s executive-order playbook, McDonnell rammed through, by edict, what the legislature would not give the governor power to do: automatically approve felons to participate in the 2013 election. The Virginia governor even put out a press release quoting the notoriously leftist Advancement Project and praising himself for teaming with the left to rush through felon voting by executive decision. Seriously.
Why would he do this? As I wrote at the Washington Times:
Republican elected officials must realize that when it comes to election process issues such as felon voting and voter photo identification laws, they are regularly outsmarted by the organized left. Republicans who support their opponents’ election law agenda will gain no friends, at least not friends they should want.
Some Republicans think they can gain love from the left. They don’t realize the left is out to destroy conservatives and the GOP, not make friends. And some Republicans start acting strangely when they are facing possible federal indictments for corruption. Remember Illinois Governor George Ryan?
Bob McDonnell
Felon voting is a top agenda item for the sophisticated election left. The unsophisticated fall for it. The advocates of felon voting know that if felons had been allowed to vote, three Republican presidential victories would have been reversed and the GOP would have not held the U.S. Senate for many other years.
Felons empirically vote 9:1 for Democrats.
Bob McDonnell apparently never saw this data when he decided to hire six salaried government employees to push through felon voters in time for the November election, including Candice Reid, the “Restoration of Rights director.” Reid’s job is to work closely with leftist groups to speed through as many felon voters as possible, all from within Governor McDonnell’s administration.
PJ Media will find out if felon voters indeed will cost Mark Obenshain a seat as Virginia attorney general. If felons end up making the difference in the race, that’s another reason for Virginia Republicans to blame Bob McDonnell for the shellacking of November 2013.
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