Chairman Sean the Political Guru

Over at Too Conservative, they have a post about Sean Connaughton's opinions as to the past election. He has some good comments about how alot of GOP strongholds went democratic this time and how the GOP needs to pay more attention to NOVA. He says he will have his analysis of what the GOP can do to avoid this problem again next week.

One thing I want to point out. Alot of people in the GOP are in panic mode as a result of us losing Loudoun, PWC, Henrico, Chesapeake, and Va Beach. If you look at the returns, Kilgore is the only one who lost those locales. Bolling lost Loudoun out of that list, but won the rest. McDonnell won them all. I don't think the GOP has lost its suburban appeal, just had a bad candidate. Also, as a result of Kilgore's weakness the downticket guys probaly lost votes in those areas. One more thing, Henrico is the political barometer in Virginia. The election has went the way of Henrico County in every statwide race since Gilmore in '97 (that included downticket races).

I personally do not think this governor's race was an accurate assessment of the political leanings of the Commonwealth. I think it was an isolated event that resulted as a "perfect storm" for the dems. Also, we had two candidates win statewide even after losing Fairfax county big. Granted, it was against a communist and a guy from Bath county, but it still shows that GOPs can eek out a victory statewide even when losing NOVA.

In the future we certainly need to address the problems that face NOVA in order to get their vote, but rest assured that the Virginia GOP is still strong and has a relatively strong political position statewide.