{"id":7253,"date":"2010-10-05T23:42:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T03:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=7253"},"modified":"2010-10-05T23:42:52","modified_gmt":"2010-10-06T03:42:52","slug":"5th-district-happenings-update-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/05\/5th-district-happenings-update-2\/","title":{"rendered":"5th District Happenings (Update #2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a long time, hasn&#8217;t it? Let&#8217;s get this update started with a statement on why it&#8217;s hard to talk about political topics, then we&#8217;ll get to what&#8217;s been going on.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As many of you know, I&#8217;ve taken a job in broadcast media. Because of that job, I&#8217;ve had to work with a lot of political candidates regarding advertising so I have to deal with ethical conflicts of interests when I make political observations. Next, I try and stay as objective as possible when I am representing the TV station, both when on-air and out in the community when I&#8217;m covering the news. Although I have made it clear to my readers that SouthsideCentral is my personal site when I express my personal opinions, I&#8217;d be a fool to believe that all of my readers are able to make that distinction. That&#8217;s another thing that I have to consider. (By the way, my employer is perfectly happy with me continuing to express my personal opinions and observations, to some of my detractors&#8217; dismay.) When I combine all of these potential pitfalls, I have to tread carefully but I am continuing to produce SouthsideCentral content. That being said, I am reminding my readers that the following is my personal opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s get started with observations about the three candidates in the race.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tom Perriello<\/strong> &#8211; Money talks. Perriello&#8217;s got plenty of money and although some rumors floated around that he was going to lose funding as being in a &#8220;non-winnable race&#8221;, I firmly believed that was a load of horsecrap the moment I heard it. Perriello&#8217;s campaign is rolling along quite well and it&#8217;s being guided on the right path. He&#8217;s mostly doing the right things and is in the race to win it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Robert Hurt<\/strong> &#8211; Hurt&#8217;s running a well-oiled campaign as well except for one major flaw. The &#8220;refusing to debate if Jeff Clark is present&#8221; may be perfect political strategy, but it&#8217;s coming at a cost to his campaign. Hurt needs to get one high-profile debate in with both of his opponents to shut up the people who are claiming he&#8217;s cowardly. Once that happens, Hurt would be able to point to that debate and say &#8220;I gave him a chance.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jeff Clark<\/strong> &#8211; Even if you&#8217;re totally against Clark even being in the race, you&#8217;ve got to give him credit for sticking it out despite being outgunned &amp; out-funded.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s get this thing started in the semi-dreaded (Very) Random Thoughts format!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One of my callers last week made a good point by saying none of the candidates are telling her why she should vote for them.<\/li>\n<li>With one month to go, let&#8217;s play &#8220;Follow The Money&#8221; and see where donations and finding comes from.<\/li>\n<li>WMDV caught Robert Hurt at his Danville fish-fry event on Monday and he said that he would come on WMDV for an hour show.<\/li>\n<li>Unsurprisingly, I&#8217;m seeing a lot of the &#8220;I&#8217;m Republican but I don&#8217;t like Robert Hurt&#8221; people showing support for Robert Hurt. I told you so.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s a funny story from the last Danville Tea Party meeting. Angry Old Man stands up and says &#8220;Jeff Clark says he&#8217;s a tea party guy but he&#8217;s not one of us!&#8221; (or something like that, but you can feel the get-off-my-lawn outrage in his voice). When it&#8217;s pointed out that Jeff Clark is sitting two rows behind him and that he is welcome to talk to Clark, Angry Old Man sits down and shuts up. Lesson learned: Shouting at a telephone pole is fun when the telephone pole can&#8217;t point out your shortcomings.<\/li>\n<li>Hurt&#8217;s latest attack ad just pissed me off by calling the health care reform the &#8220;Pelosi-Perriello Healthcare Plan&#8221;, however if there was a Full-Truth In Negative Advertising law, there wouldn&#8217;t be any negative ads. Why confuse the voters with the truth?<\/li>\n<li>As a voter, your job is to pick the best candidate. If you truly feel that Jeff Clark is the best candidate, you should vote for him. There&#8217;s no shame in that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s enough for now&#8230; thanks for the patience as WMDV gets going!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a long time, hasn&#8217;t it? Let&#8217;s get this update started with a statement on why it&#8217;s hard to talk about political topics, then we&#8217;ll get to what&#8217;s been going on.<\/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":"closed","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-7253","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-1SZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5166,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/30\/60th-district-house-race-update-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":7253,"position":0},"title":"60th District House Race \u2013 Update #3","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"August 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Update: 60th District House Race - Update #2 So what's changed in this race? Everything. Dave Guill dropped out of the race this weekend leaving Edmunds by himself (for now). Let's look at who could replace him on the ticket. People with previously declared interests: Ted Bennett - He's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Halifax County&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Halifax County","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/halifax-county\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4804,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/26\/60th-district-house-race-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7253,"position":1},"title":"60th District House Race &#8211; Update #1","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Clarke Hogan isn't running for reelection, so let's take a look at the upcoming election. James Edmunds (R) - Ups: Name recognition, organized grassroots, good at fundraising, political experience. Downs: Asinine uranium position, land-use tax controversy. Dave Guill (D): Ups: Political experience. Downs: No fundraising, no campaign activity. Thoughts: This\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":5062,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/17\/10th-district-house-race-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7253,"position":2},"title":"10th District House Race &#8211; Update #1","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"August 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This Virginia House of Delegates race is on the edge of our primary coverage area but it's got an interesting twist. The 10th District is the section of Henry County west of Martinsville, all of Patrick County and 2\/3 of Carroll County. Ward Armstrong (D) is the incumbent with 18\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Henry County&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Henry County","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/henry-county\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7603,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2012\/09\/11\/2012-5th-district-house-race-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7253,"position":3},"title":"2012 5th District House Race &#8211; Update #1","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"September 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's get back to the political side of SouthsideCentral with a look at the race for the 5th District House of Representatives seat... Two years ago, there was a hotly contested race that ended with Republican challenger Robert Hurt defeating one-term Democratic incumbent Tom Perriello. This year, we've got 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":7038,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/20\/5th-district-happenings-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7253,"position":4},"title":"5th District Happenings (Update #1)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Conventional wisdom says that the few weeks after a hard-fought primary should be downtime for the candidates as they rest up for a long general election run. That hasn't happened in Virginia's 5th District. Let's kick off a series of updates on what's going on... The first blunder of this\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":5637,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/18\/14th-district-house-race-update-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":7253,"position":5},"title":"14th District House Race \u2013 Update #2","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Update: 14th District House Race \u2013 Update #1 It's a strange political season when a city's Sheriff's and Commonwealth Attorney's election get more attention than the House of Delegates' one does. Thoughts: Incumbent Danny Marshall is facing challenger Seward Anderson in a race that's much different than 2 years\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\/7253","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=7253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}