Voting for Governor Who Cares

As we now get past the election season it’s pretty easy to see how people get elected. In many ways it’s like the person who tells his cohort that you don’t have to run faster than a Cheetah in order not to get killed by it, you merely have to run faster than the person next to you. And so it is with elections and politicians, you don’t have to be the best possible selection you just have to be better than the person who is running against you.

Why is it, do you suppose, that we continually seem to get contenders who have plenty of ambition and perhaps not very much ability? Like Francois Villon recounts in his ballad about long lost loves, “where are the snows of yesteryear?” I say, where are the politicians of yesteryear?

Our current harvest of politicians isn’t much better than the blue crab harvest in the Chesapeake. They run small, Napoleonic, and immature. They pay millions to get elected to an office that pays a few hundred thousand and expect the electorate not to make the connection that something else must be going on. Can you say pandering?

Do I believe that the vast majority of elected officials take advantage of the positions that they are in? Really, do you need to ask? After all, in this day and age, it’s human nature. Whether it’s accepting a plane ticket, getting some hard to find tickets to a sporting event, or just a freebie Rolex it’s really all the same. No way would these people be getting such gifts if not for the positions they are in; iIf not for the sense that they may in some way influence some item the quid part of quid pro quo desires.

Call it influence peddling if you have to put a name on it. The only thing, I think, more prevalent than the unabashed acceptance of graft in our political system is the rife and growing sexual exploitation of kids in our society. And perhaps, like most officials like to say, it’s merely the media who are responsible for keeping this kind of news in the headlines. Never mind that things like Governor McDonnell’s legal woes, Jerry Sandusky’s life sentence (yeah, it’s only 60-odd years, but do you think he’ll live to 120?), and the raft of small-time payouts that litter local politics happen with a regularity that is astounding.

How many Richmond City Council members have gone to prison over the past few years?

Then City Councilwoman Gwen C. Hedgepeth was found guilty of four felonies by a Federal jury. Three counts of bribery and one of lying to the FBI, which in reality shouldn’t be a charge at all. Who wants to tell them anything?

Then there’s the sad story of Saad El Amin, a city councilman who surrendered his law license in 2002, following a 1999 Virginia State Bar suspension. He followed that up with a 2003 tax fraud conviction.

And who could forget Leonidas Young, who was sentenced in 1999 for mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and filing a false tax return—all of which have that curious aroma of plea agreement. I mean, after all, they charged him with 14 felonies.

Now take a look at what’s going on today.

Are we so naïve that we believe these previous cases have rooted out all the problems with politicians on the take in Richmond, not to mention Virginia and Washington D. C. It’s really just very hard for me to swallow that politicians in general are not out for themselves and the constituency be dammed. They may make a good case during the election process, but in the end it’s all hope and change—in other words, lies.

So, as we get down to the nitty-gritty in voting for the Next Governor of the Great State of Virginia it seems no one really wants to endorse either Ken Cuccinelli or Terry McAulife. Sure they are getting support from their respective parties, Republican and Democrat, but do we really think either one is better than the other? Maybe the best way to know is to elect one of them, you know like the best way to know what is in the Affordable Care Act is to pass the legislation. And that worked out just fine now, didn’t it?