{"id":6603,"date":"2010-03-20T23:54:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-21T03:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=6603"},"modified":"2010-03-20T23:54:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T03:54:29","slug":"so-how-did-the-candidates-do-at-todays-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/20\/so-how-did-the-candidates-do-at-todays-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"So, how did the candidates do at today&#8217;s debate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All righty then&#8230; we just completed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/20\/random-thoughts-from-todays-republican-debate\/\" target=\"_blank\">some random thoughts on today&#8217;s 5th District debate in Danville<\/a>. It&#8217;s time to see how I think the candidates did.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll recap the candidates in the same alphabetical order that they sat at today&#8217;s debate.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ken Boyd &#8211; Today was the first time that I spoke to Ken Boyd, and he seems like a nice guy. I&#8217;m familiar with his political record from Albemarle County but I just didn&#8217;t like his opening statement that was pretty much &#8220;I can bring the votes in from Albemarle County, and the votes from Albemarle County are what kicked Virgil Goode out of office.&#8221; Ken, that&#8217;s not a good enough reason for me to support you. 95% of the people on Southside still have no idea who Ken Boyd is and he&#8217;s got to fix that quickly to get any Southside support in the primary. Ken Boyd is a guy that I could vote for in the general election, though. Boyd comes out of this debate EVEN.<\/li>\n<li>Ron Ferrin &#8211; First time for meeting Ferrin as well, but I was slightly taken back by a feeling that I had that he knows he can&#8217;t win this primary. Although I agree with that feeling, Ferrin&#8217;s got what it takes to make his opinions noted and he does so well. Ferrin&#8217;s a good guy but he&#8217;s not going to get the support needed to make a difference in this race. Being a person who likes to make others laugh, I&#8217;ve got some good vibes from Ferrin.\u00a0\u00a0 I did learn today that Ferrin&#8217;s not just comic relief in this race, he&#8217;s not going to win this primary. Because my thoughts of Ferrin went up, I&#8217;m going to say that Ferrin came out of this debate SLIGHTLY UP.<\/li>\n<li>Robert Hurt &#8211; He&#8217;s a politician. He knows how to play the politics game well and that&#8217;s not a bad thing in the long run. I know that some people &#8220;don&#8217;t want another politician&#8221; to win the primary but I do not share those sentiments. Hurt&#8217;s answers today were politically safe and that&#8217;s the way he needs to play it at this stage of the race. Hurt&#8217;s a smart guy with smart advisors and they all know that all he has to do is outlast the others and walk across the finish line. The only obstacle he&#8217;ll have to that primary finish line is if the other candidates combine their support on either one or two survivors. As for now, I don&#8217;t see that happening. Hurt comes out of this debate EVEN.<\/li>\n<li>Jim McKelvey &#8211; Money talks, and that&#8217;s obvious when you see Jim McKelvey. He&#8217;s got his own decorated bus and his mostly-self-financed campaign shows no sight out running out of money. However, McKelvey&#8217;s message just doesn&#8217;t ring true with me. McKelvey thinks that when he&#8217;s elected, the new wave of legislators that he&#8217;s with will swoop down and do their best on Making America Right. Washington doesn&#8217;t work that way. Along with others, I expect McKelvey will break out of this pack and declare himself as a third-party candidate. That would make him go from &#8220;no chance of winning&#8221; to &#8220;absolutely no chance of winning&#8221;. Like the others, McKelvey seems like a nice guy who really believes what he&#8217;s talking about. Unfortunately, what he&#8217;s talking about doesn&#8217;t work for me. McKelvey comes out of this debate DOWN.<\/li>\n<li>Mike McPadden &#8211; I continue to be highly impressed with McPadden as I was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/15\/mcpadden-steps-out-of-the-clown-car-and-into-contention\/\" target=\"_blank\">the first time I met him<\/a>. McPadden is the most well-spoken of the group and his message is very clear on the issues. McPadden is a strict constitutionalist and doesn&#8217;t make any bones about it. McPadden&#8217;s answers today were short and to-the-topic. His questioning of the effectiveness of term limits highly impressed me because he was talking to an audience that highly support term limits. If McPadden&#8217;s campaign can catch fire and get support from the other candidates, he&#8217;s going to be a force to be reckoned with come primary time. McPadden comes out of this debate UP.<\/li>\n<li>Feda Morton &#8211; Based on other people&#8217;s comments, I came into this debate expecting to see Feda Morton act like a meek mousy librarian who was way out of her league. I was wrong. Morton relatively held her own with the other candidates in her answers. Unfortunately for her, she still has done nothing to set herself out from the field. Her recital of people that have endorsed her means absolutely nothing to me because they don&#8217;t live in the 5th District. Morton&#8217;s got a lot of work to do but she did show me that she believes in her candidacy. Based on that, I&#8217;ll say that Morton comes out of this debate SLIGHTLY UP.<\/li>\n<li>Laurence Verga &#8211; For all of the people that say Robert Hurt is a &#8220;politician&#8221;, Laurence Verga has that same aura even though he&#8217;s never held elective office. Verga knows how to work the crowd and talk to the people. I just don&#8217;t know how to take his message though as he came off as &#8220;slick&#8221;. I don&#8217;t vote based of the looks and mannerisms, but there&#8217;s just something about Verga that just looks way too smooth to me. To top it off, it just didn&#8217;t work for me. Verga has to get his image and his message going quickly. Verga comes out of this debate SLIGHTLY DOWN.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And there you go&#8230; Ups, Downs and Slightlies. That&#8217;s a good mix.\u00a0 Coming up later, SouthsideCentral is going to revisit the 5th District Food Chain and how things have changed from last time.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All righty then&#8230; we just completed some random thoughts on today&#8217;s 5th District debate in Danville. It&#8217;s time to see how I think the candidates did.<\/p>\n<p> [&#8230;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinioncentral","category-politicscentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-1Iv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6608,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/21\/food-chain-5th-district-candidates-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":0},"title":"Food Chain! &#8211; 5th District Candidates &#8211; Update #1","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"March 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We did a Food Chain! on the candidates for the Republican 5th District nomination ten weeks ago, so it's time for an update. This time, we'll promise to get all seven candidates in there the first time. ;) Here's the list of candidates after being randomized: Feda Morton, Ron Ferrin,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Food Chain!&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Food Chain!","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/food-chain\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6324,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/29\/food-chain-5th-district-candidates\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":1},"title":"UPDATED: Food Chain! &#8211; 5th District Candidates","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We made it six days without a political article, so let's get everybody upset at us with our first \"Food Chain!\" that ranks the candidates for Virginia's Republican nomination for the 5th district. Let's start it out as fairly as we can. Here's the list of candidates that's been randomly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Food Chain!&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Food Chain!","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/food-chain\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5441,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/01\/so-whos-going-to-run-against-tom-perriello-in-2010\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":2},"title":"So who&#8217;s going to run against Tom Perriello in 2010?","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We've got five people that have already declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination. Will there be more? Quick history lesson: Tom Perriello pulled off a giant upset victory over Virgil Goode in 2008 in a 50-50 election. Goode's campaign imploded over the final six weeks and Perriello used a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6975,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/01\/5th-district-republican-primary-update-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":3},"title":"5th District Republican Primary \u2013 Update #3","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(Last update: 5th District Republican Primary \u2013 Update #2) Seven days to go until this election is decided is decided in the voting booth. Let's do a quick update on whats happened in the last two weeks. Let's look at each candidate (in random order)... Feda Morton - Morton seems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6247,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/23\/lets-recap-fridays-tea-party-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":4},"title":"Let&#8217;s recap Friday&#8217;s Tea Party Debate","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Five of the six candidates for the 5th District Republican nomination met in Charlottesville last night. So what happened, who won and who lost? Laurence Verga, Feda Morton, Ron Ferris, Mike McPadden, Ken Boyd & Jim McKelvey attended the debate, with Robert Hurt passing on this one due to General\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6924,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/19\/5th-district-republican-primary-update-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":5},"title":"5th District Republican Primary \u2013 Update #2","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"May 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(Last update: 5th District Republican Primary \u2013 Update #1) Ten days from our first update, let's see what's been going on in the 5th District. Let's kick it off with an update on each of the candidates (in random order). Jim McKelvey - McKelvey is starting to spend (his own)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}