dumbfounded that he (according to the polls) is poised to become the next governor of Virginia.
Ron Bailey
Allow me to explain. McAuliffe represents an unseemly slice of Washington. His primary role in politics for the past two decades or more has been raising money—most notably, for the Clintons. He cooked up the idea of essentially renting out the Lincoln bedroom during the Clinton administration as a fundraising vehicle, and he smashed all previous presidential fundraising records in the process. When McAuliffe was the Dems' top fundraiser, a campaign finance scandal besieged the Clinton White House. Coincidence? No. McAuliffe was all about pushing the envelope when it came to the political money-chase.
That alone might not be enough to render him a distasteful political candidate. What's different about McAuliffe is his brazen mixing of his campaign fundraising activity and attempts to enrich himself personally. Many of McAuliffe's business deals have come about due to his place in the political cosmos, not because he possesses a wealth of business skill. That tangled history has linked him to a long list of unsavory characters.
The rest of the story details many of those specific unsavory associations.
In other Virginia race news, revisit various Reason pieces examining surprisingly high-polling Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis, including hopes that he can cause permanent breaks in Virginia's crummily choiceless party system from Ronald Bailey and Skip Oliva, Nick Gillespie's stirring defense of Sarvis from accusations of allegedly stealing votes from a somehow worthwhile Republican, my interview with Sarvis from last month, and Scott Shackford on polls indicating that if he's "stealing" votes from anyone, it's McAuliffe, not GOPer Ken Cuccinelli.
