{"id":7275,"date":"2010-11-03T01:29:52","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T05:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=7275"},"modified":"2010-11-03T01:29:52","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T05:29:52","slug":"some-thoughts-about-tuesdays-congressional-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/03\/some-thoughts-about-tuesdays-congressional-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts about Tuesday&#8217;s congressional elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So that happened. Now that my self-imposed gag order has expired since the elections are over, it&#8217;s time to say some random thoughts about what happened in Southside&#8217;s Congressional elections.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here we go&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>5th District Thoughts<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tom Perriello was doomed from the start of this election season, but he fought hard until the end. Sitting across the interview table from Tom last Thursday, I could feel the passion of his talk, along with a slight bit of desperation because the clock was running out. I don&#8217;t give a damn if you stand for the exact opposite of everything Tom Perriello stood for, Tom Perriello has earned my highest respect for truly believing in (and standing behind) his actions.<\/li>\n<li>Likewise, Robert Hurt was in the driver&#8217;s seat from the day he declared his candidacy. Robert Hurt surrounded himself with smart people who knew how to play the political game, and it worked perfectly. Chris LaCivita is a political genius, no matter if you like what he does or not.<\/li>\n<li>Robert Hurt and his handlers ran a campaign that I just simply didn&#8217;t like, but damn, did it work. As a person, he was very hard to make contact with and he didn&#8217;t do much with the &#8220;little people&#8221;. But when you&#8217;re ahead of a sitting incumbent all throughout the campaign, the correct gameplan is &#8220;Don&#8217;t Make Mistakes&#8221;. Hurt didn&#8217;t make any mistakes, and he&#8217;s the new Congressman.<\/li>\n<li>I am immediately pissed off at the &#8220;OMG The 5th District Made A Horrible Decision And The Sky Is Going To Fall&#8221; attitude that I&#8217;ve started to hear from the extreme-partisan part of the losing side. Extreme-partisanship sucks, no matter which side of the aisle you represent. The world isn&#8217;t going to end. We&#8217;re going to be just fine, just like we would have been if Tom Perriello had won. Your guy lost. Let&#8217;s move along and work together with everybody. Together, we truly can make this a better place. Just to make it clear, I would have said the same thing about the Extreme-Republican side&#8217;s inevitable same type of whining that would have came out if Hurt had lost.<\/li>\n<li>Robert Hurt is a conservative. Anybody who said otherwise during the campaign was full of crap.<\/li>\n<li>Tom Perriello wasn&#8217;t a liberal. Anybody who said he was during the campaign was full of crap as well.<\/li>\n<li>Jeff Clark&#8217;s candidacy turned out to be perfect for everybody. He got his point across and neither of the major parties can say he ruined things for them. I truly hope that Jeff Clark stays around in the political way of life and would be very interested if he runs for Danville&#8217;s City Council in 2012. Jeff Clark earned my respect for what he did during this campaign, despite a few missteps along the way.<\/li>\n<li>If you voted for Jeff Clark because you believed what he stood for, you did the right thing. If you voted for Jeff Clark because you thought Robert Hurt wasn&#8217;t conservative, you were an idiot.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Enough about the 5th District&#8230; let&#8217;s talk about the 9th District.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wow. Rick Boucher lost. Wow again. I never thought it was possible, even when Morgan Griffith started running one hell of a campaign.<\/li>\n<li>One vote can make a difference. I&#8217;m not talking about an individual&#8217;s vote, but Boucher&#8217;s vote for the &#8220;cap-and trade&#8221; legislation. No matter how Rick Boucher tried to explain that he did it for the coal industry, the voters saw it as a vote against his own people. &#8220;Cap-and-trade&#8221; ended Boucher&#8217;s 28-year career as a Congressman.<\/li>\n<li>Although I&#8217;ve got a firm position against out-of-area political candidates, there&#8217;s no way I could paint Griffith that way considering his property line was the 9th District boundary, and the fact that he&#8217;ll be in the 9th District after redistricting. Boucher&#8217;s &#8220;He&#8217;s not from here&#8221; advertisement simply pissed me off.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>More &#8220;thoughts&#8221; coming about other election results soon&#8230;<\/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>So that happened. Now that my self-imposed gag order has expired since the elections are over, it&#8217;s time to say some random thoughts about what happened in Southside&#8217;s Congressional elections.<\/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-7275","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-1Tl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7001,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/09\/5th-district-republican-primary-final-thoughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":7275,"position":0},"title":"5th District Republican Primary &#8211; Final Thoughts.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So that happened. It's over, yet we've only just begun. Final (?) thoughts coming up... BAM! I was right on pretty much every prediction. With the exception of one local race (looking at you, Mike Newman!), SouthsideCentral is the place to come for your best political commentary. We attempt to\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":6954,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/27\/jim-mckelvey-flings-some-crap-at-the-wall\/","url_meta":{"origin":7275,"position":1},"title":"Jim McKelvey flings some crap at the wall","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"May 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In the recent mailer he sent out, Jim McKelvey tries to say that Robert Hurt is sorta like Tom Perriello. Riiiiiiiiight. I rarely look at anything political that's direct-mailed to me. (Who uses the mail anymore?) A good friend of mine tipped me off on this one, and I'm glad\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":5441,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/01\/so-whos-going-to-run-against-tom-perriello-in-2010\/","url_meta":{"origin":7275,"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":7038,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/20\/5th-district-happenings-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7275,"position":3},"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":6779,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/17\/tom-perriello-opens-danville-campaign-office\/","url_meta":{"origin":7275,"position":4},"title":"Tom Perriello opens Danville campaign office","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"November 2nd is a long way away, but the first campaign office has opened in Danville. (Caution: This is in the OpinionCentral category for a reason.) Over 100 people turned out at 437 Man St. in Danville today for the grand opening of Congressman Tom Perriello's campaign office. I'm smelling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Danville&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4939,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/05\/some-thoughts-about-tonights-tom-in-your-town-event-in-danville\/","url_meta":{"origin":7275,"position":5},"title":"Some thoughts about tonight&#8217;s &#8220;Tom In Your Town&#8221; event in Danville","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"August 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Tom Perriello came to Danville's O.T. Bonner Middle School for his \"Tom In Your Town\" meeting. Things didn't go quite as advertised. Well, let's start out with what it was supposed to be... During the August district work period, Congressman Perriello will be visiting every locality in the 5th District\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Danville&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275","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=7275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}