That’s my take on today’s political landscape.
Even though I stick to local political shenanigans, Governor
McDonnell’s ties to Virginia Beach, Regent University
and the cadre of evangelical angels who have somehow transformed into
mainstream politicians behoove me to write about the Guv.
Take the Guv. Please. What a guy.
He returns gifts, pays for his free flights and pays the
loans he received from his generous benefactor, Star Scientific, a company on
the verge of something -- feuding with the state over taxes; under
investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government
watchdog.
Meanwhile, the Guv insists that he has done nothing wrong,
nothing illegal – but maybe a moral and ethical lapse, perhaps.
But today’s column isn’t about the Guv’s personal failures.
It is about his future.
This is my take.
Should McDonnell step down as governor, his political career
will end. If he ran for another office, voters will remember him as the governor
who accepted gifts and loans for favors.
They won’t remember that he paid off the loans and returned
the gifts; or they may remember that he did all this while insisting that he
was innocent. Voters don’t like Bi-Polar disorders.
But if McDonnell stays in office for the next five months, he
will survive. He will go away for awhile after his term ends. He will go into
self-imposed exile. Everyone will forget his indiscretions. Until he emerges
from his forty days and forty nights in the political desert. Repentant. A new
man.
In a poll I posted this week, readers were asked if
McDonnell should step down as governor.
Earlier in the week, the yeas and nays were about even. Then
the nays pulled ahead.
But as of this morning, 54 percent of readers (who took the
poll) responded that McDonnell should step down. The remainder, 45 percent,
said he should not step down.
Let us ponder, for a moment, the political future of Anthony
Burfoot, Norfolk Vice Mayor and deputy City Treasurer.
It is no secret that Burfoot has very high political
aspirations. He aspires to be Norfolk City Treasurer Nov. 5 of this year,
general election day. After that, he aspires to sit in Congress. After that, he
may aspire to be president.
But it’s no secret that Burfoot, a driven man, has been
tarnished, though perhaps not of his own doing.
His ties to the defunct Bank of the Commonwealth its
executives, who will soon be sentenced, have unraveled his bow tie somewhat.
His ties to Dwight Etheridge, Tommy Arney and others
complicit in the bank’s bizarre attitude, have wilted his image.
In another poll I posted, I asked readers if they would vote
for Burfoot for Norfolk City Treasurer.
Those who responded, except for one reader, said, no, they
would not vote for Burfoot. The poll will be posted for another four days.
So, let us assume that McDonnell survives, if he stays in
office; I have no doubt that he will weather the storm and live to see another
day in his political career.
But let us make the assumption that perhaps Burfoot will not
survive, that his political career will dive.
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