McAuliffe maps road to capital

The News Virginian
Published: September 18, 2008

As plywood Greek columns rose from the stage at Invesco Field last month in Denver, comedy unfurled in the fashion of “The Clouds”: Terry McAuliffe, dean of the Democrats’ school of Thinkery is contemplating a run for Virginia governor. But if the heavens cannot contain McAuliffe’s egoism, how can Old Dominion?
An occasional resident of McLean, McAuliffe spent most of his previous 18 months running Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, resulting, most remarkably, in the defeat of an experienced frontrunner at the hands of a politically pubescent junior senator.
Undaunted, McAuliffe remains lashed to the wobbling legs of Clinton celebrity, as evidenced by his recent memoir, “What A Party! My Life Among Democrats, with Special Guest Bill Clinton.” Somewhere between his recollections of chatting with Spain’s King Juan Carlos and sitting at the president’s table near Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, McAuliffe gushes, “Bill Clinton has always been an inspiration.”
Duly inspired, McAuliffe may now pursue the next logical stop: Running for governor of a state he scarcely knows. So, by all means, let’s elect him. And then point him to Richmond. “If he runs,” Tucker Martin, a spokesman for Republican state Attorney General Robert McDonnell, told The Washington Post, “remind me to send him a Virginia state map.”
McDonnell likely is the one to blame for a prospective McAuliffe candidacy. In a Public Policy Polling survey on the gubernatorial race released in June, McDonnell held leads of 5 and 6 percentage points over two Democratic contenders, state Sen. Creigh Deeds, of Bath County, and Del. Brian Moran, of Alexandria.
Deeds lost to McDonnell by just 323 votes in the 2005 attorney general election, giving the Democrat reason to believe he can make a formidable run for governor in 2009. Moran has served in the legislature for 13 years, rising to House Democratic Caucus chairman. Both Deeds and Moran have regional appeal. But some Democrats doubt either can derail McDonnell and Republicans who on the subject of the gubernatorial race appear to have accomplished a rare feat of unity.
This is where McAuliffe comes in, and where he should go out.
He is a prolific fund-raiser, having generated $500 million for the inspiration known as President Clinton. But of what use is this unless McAuliffe plans to solicit donations to help cork the flow of red ink brought on by the floundering economy and rosy state revenue projections. Before venturing into politics, McAuliffe shined in business, starting banking and real estate companies, so perhaps he can point the feds to their next bailout recipient.
Backers of McAuliffe draw parallels between him and U.S. Senate candidate Mark Warner, another multimillionaire entrepreneur who had never held office before becoming governor in 2002. But Warner’s political experience differed substantively from McAuliffe’s. Warner ran in a losing race for the U.S. Senate in 1996 and served as chairman of the state Democratic Party and manager of Douglas Wilder’s winning 1989 campaign for governor. Warner, in other words, knew Virginia and its politics.
Not so McAuliffe. Virginia is the place where jet sets drop him between excursions to exotic locales such as the Dominican Republic for stays with Hillary and the gang “at Julio Iglesias’s spectacular oceanfront estate.” As his memoir explains, McAuliffe is a man enamored of party of the types political and social. Virginia needs a leader who knows the way to Richmond rather than Rio.