Governor Robert McDonnell, elected as governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2009, will serve one, and only one, four-year term. This is Virginia law.
I first heard his name years ago when he was running for the position of Commonwealth Attorney. When I saw his TV commercials, I recognized that he was a “stealth” politician. The commercials emphasized how McDonnell wanted to protect children from sexual predators. All parents, regardless of political persuasion, can get on board with such a policy: however, I immediately picked up on it as a coded message. Of course McDonnell couldn’t run on his other positions and still be elected. The counties of Fairfax and Arlington, Virginia, are blue and even neighboring Loudoun County has blue pockets. The safest course for McDonnell, as he and his advisers knew, was not to run under his true colors but to pick one noncontroversial position that would unite the electorate.
When McDonnell began his campaign for governor, I really thought his past might catch up with him. The Washington Post exposed the contents of the master’s thesis he wrote for his degree from Regent’s University. In it he decried the idea of women working outside the home and of course stated his opposition to abortion. These revelations caused a firestorm of publicity for a while, but in the end the utterly incompetent campaign waged by McDonnell’s Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds, led to a McDonnell victory at the polls.
Since then Virginia’s stealth governor has largely succeeded in his regressive agenda, with the help of a mostly Republican state house and an evenly divided senate. The legislature has just passed a bill repealing the one-a-month limit on handgun purchases in Virginia. Legislation to turn away gay and lesbian couples from adopting children is under consideration. Last but not least are the infamous bills mandating transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions and the personhood bill that states life begins at conception. McDonnell is going to sign the abortion bill, amended to require only external ultrasounds, and has said he will sign the personhood bill, should it pass.
Another firestorm of publicity ensued with the “transvaginal ultrasound” legislation. Last week the controversy lit up the blogosphere, occasioned hilarity on the part of late-night comedians such as Jon Stewart, and was discussed on cable TV shows, including that of Rachel Maddow. McDonnell, unnerved by the publicity, retreated on the transvaginal part of the mandated ultrasound bill; apparently he had “no idea” that anything like this would be involved. Yesterday he castigated the media for overlooking all the wonderful legislation passed by the Virginia legislature and focusing only on the controversial bills.
However, this morning’s Washington Post Metro Section confirms that this indeed has been McDonnell’s “macaca moment”: a group of outraged women has formed the Women’s Strike Force, bent on raising money to defeat antichoice politicians in Virginia. Just as ex-Senator George Allen’s “macaca moment” mobilized grassroots Democratic opposition that resulted in his defeat in 2006 by Jim Webb, so may McDonnell’s dreams of playing a role on the national stage as Vice President of the United States—and possibly even President—have been doomed for good.