For those who don't know, Lowell Feld (lowkell) has decided to shut down Raising Kaine at the end of this month. You should stop by while you can. And many thanks are due to Lowell for the years in which he has put in 4 or more hours a day to ensure the site had good content to inform people about politics in Virginia.
No ONE PERSON has stepped up to replace Lowell, who is irreplaceable. But several who were active at RK (as we came to call it after some disagreements with the Governor over policy) took the lead in organizing a new site, which is already up.
As one of the key editors of the new effort, I want to invite you to visit Blue Commonwealth | Virginia's Enduring Voice of Progress. And below the fold I want to tell you a bit about our organization and intent, including how we will ensure coverage of ALL key races across the Old Dominion during 2009, a key election year.
That's right, 2009 is a key election year in Virginia. We are one of only 2 states (the other being NJ) electing governors next year. We also elect a Lieutenant Governor (it is a separate and independent race, which is why even with Dem. Tim Kaine in the top spot we have a conservative Republican, Bill Bolling, presiding over the State Senate as Lt. Gov.), Attorney General, and all 100 seats of the House of Delegates (we currently control the State Senate, 21-19, and they are not up until 2011). We would like to hve complete control, given that this election will likely determine control of the redistricting process after the 2010 census, unless we could get a non-partisan redistricting process through the General Assembly, which is not likely.
On the Democratic side we expect as of now primary contests in all three statewide races. nd we are hoping to reproduce the idea of Howard Dean's 50-state strategy by seeing as many of the current Republican and Republican-leaning independent Districts challenged as we can.
In order to ensure complete coverage, we have organized into teams in three broad categories. We have regions of the state (Nova, Hampton Roads, Central VA, Southwest, Shenandoah, and Southside) - this will cover all parts of the state, and ensure that we have stories on legislative races in particular, but all on matters of local interest. We cover the key statewide contenders, currently three for Governor (Brian Moran, Creigh Deeds and Terry McAuliffe). two for Lieutenant Governor (Jody Wagner and John Bowerbank), and two for Attorney General (Steve Shannon and John Fishwick). And we have teams responsible for particular issue areas (Global Leadership - Responsible Foreign Policy; A Secure America - Economics, Progressive Taxation, Domestic Security Policy; Green Economy, Energy Policy, Environment; Healthy Communities - Sustainable Development, Services, Police,Courts, Education; Social and Economic Justice - Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Voting Reform, Media Reform, Net Neutrality Radical Right-Wing Agenda; Corruption and Incompetence in Government and Media; Progressive Poltics and the Fall of Conservative Hegemony; Obama transition, administration, early battles, legislation, and General Obama; and General editorial).
We already have more than 50 poeple committed to helping with this process, to ensure a vibrant and meaningful contribution to progressive politics in Virginia.
I hold leadership of two teams. Because I am friends with both Delegate Steve Shannon and his wife Abby (who served as LA who handled education for my friend Rep. Nick Lampson), I am responsible for coverage of his race. And here I note that I am already in regular contact with the campaign staff to ensure that I get access to events wherever possible (if not myself, one of the team) including open fundraisers, and am on the distribution list for both press releases and messages to supporters. We hope to develop similar relationships not only with the statewide candidates but also with those running for House of Delegates. And you will note that we are ensuring that in the case of primary contests we have coverage of ALL contenders to better serve the voters of Virginia - and remember, that means ALL the voters, even in a primary, because in Virginia we do not register by party.
My other leadership role is responsibility for general editorial. NO, I am not responsible for grammatical nit-picking and typos - anhone who has read my diaries here would know why that would be an ill fit for me :-). Instead, if someone is posting about editorials and op eds, that falls into this category. That seemed a logical responsibility given the range of my interests and the number of columnists I tend to follow. And given the breadth of Virginia, and differences among the regions, it may at times be important to note changes in editorial positions in papers around the state. For example, one key in the recent Perriello defeat of Virgil Goode is when the Danville newspaper endorsed Tom, after having endrosed Virgil every other time he had run, as a Dem, an independent, and a Republican. When a paper that is a long-term supporter announces that you have lost touch with the district, that is important news which we want to be able to disseminate.
All of us are volunteers, and no one is being paid. Each has made a commitment to a certain level of participation, and one point of the team leaders is to ensure that we have balance in our coverage. This is an experiment. It is, as far as we can tell, a new approach to covering a state through a single blog. We do not claim to have reinvented the wheel, because we are aware of many superb state blogs around the nation. We do think that the number of our participants and our organization represents something qualitatively different. We also believe that it is very much in tune with the kind of bottom up politics that has made such a difference, not only in Virginia, but across the nation.
The background of our key participants includes those who have had paid positions in campaigns, those who work for campaign service organizations, people who have been key volunteers, lawyers, school teachers, experienced and well-known (at least in Virginia) bloggers ) and at least one candidate for the House of Delegates (whose primary responsibilities include the issues about which he is passionate, but not his own race, although of course he will be welcome to write about that).
Virginia is likely to be political ground zero in 2009, given the number of our political contests, and given that we took the state presidentially this year for the first time in almost half a century. Democrats have hopes of building on recent successes (including the statewide wins by Mark Warner in 2001 and Tim Kaine in 2005 for Governor and Jim Webb for Senate in 2006 and winning the state Senate last year ) and fully turn this state the blue it should be. Those of us participating in Blue Commonwealth want our title to be indicative of the politics in our home state. And we plan to be active far beyond our efforts online.
We welcome you to our site - please come and visit Blue Commonwealth. Bookmark us. Perhaps contribute some content. Explore our features (which are constantly being improved).
And perhaps start doing something similar for your home state, or your home city or county. Blogs can be a tool - for organization, for educating people on candidates and issues, for disseminating important information.
And thanks for taking the time to learn about Blue Commonwealth.
Peace.