NRO's Jim Geraghty opens for all the contradictions of Creigh Deeds, his lack of depth and his use of partisan politics all the while pretending to be above it. its a good read. Here's a few quick snippets:
On non-partisan redistricting:
Yet Deeds owes his first election to public office, in 1991, to blatantly partisan redistricting — “brutal,” in the words of the Post — that paired 14 Republican incumbents against each other and one Republican against an independent incumbent. Then there was four-term Republican delegate Emmett Hanger, who found after redistricting that “just a handful of precincts” were left from his old district — grafted onto heavily Democratic areas, some of which were several hours away.
“It was definitely gerrymandered to create an opportunity for Creigh,” says Hanger, now a state senator. “He was then Commonwealth’s Attorney, letting it be known he would like to be governor someday.” Hanger says he bears Deeds no ill will, as the defeat gave him time to spend with his family, rejuvenated his business, and eventually led to his election to the state senate. But he notices that bipartisan redistricting only “became a part of [Deeds’s] agenda when Republicans exercised gerrymandering in 2001.” In fact, there seems to be a proportional relationship between Deeds’s interest in bipartisan redistricting and Republicans’ power in the state.
On ethics . . . and this is a charge that needs to be brought in because as hard as Deeds tries to play the aw-shucks Huckleberry Hound of Virginia politics, he's not. He clearly tried to change the rules to help himself politically and financially. And it doesn't matter how small the lobbying operation was, when your a public servant you owe it to obey the rules like everyone else. This was the infamous "my political journey" mea culpa he gave.
In October 2006, Deeds joined Hirschler Fleischer P.C., a Richmond-based law firm with a small lobbying presence. Shortly thereafter, the Virginia State Bar’s standing committee on legal ethics erased a 50-year-old rule that prohibited state legislators from working alongside lobbyists at law firms. At the time, the Washington Post explained that “without the proposed change, Deeds would be violating state ethics rules.” This was a generous way of saying that he either had already violated or was about to violate those rules, and he wanted the restrictions to be loosened and the committee to grandfather in his employment. Deeds later denied that he had pressured the state bar to change the rule, but conceded that if it hadn’t done so, he would have had to quit the firm. Deeds assured the public, “If I thought I were doing anything unethical, I would step away from it.” In fact, Deeds did step away from that firm in June 2007, moving to another firm that didn’t employ lobbyists.
In this year’s Democratic primary, Deeds criticized one of his rivals, former delegate Brian Moran, for taking money from “tainted” defense contractors, even though Deeds himself had sought donations from those same contractors just four days earlier. When pressed, Deeds “clarified” his accusation: The taint on Moran, he said, came from the defense contractors’ ties to his brother, the controversy-attracting U.S. congressman Jim Moran. (Jim Moran, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, had steered earmarks to clients of the lobbying firm PMA Group, a major donor. The FBI is now investigating PMA Group.) “I don’t have a brother in Congress,” Deeds said, “and I guess that’s just sour grapes on my part but I don’t think it’s an unfair criticism.” In other words, the companies’ donations to Moran were tainted, but donations to Deeds would have been clean.
So yeah. Creigh Deeds as our next governor is a troublesome idea. Luckily it seems that Bob McDonnell is really taking control of this campaign, really controlling the deabte and getting issues out on his terms. So I feel guardedly good right now.
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