Either Gerry or Leslie may be able to take him out in his own House seat before 2012. 

I think Leslie is more of a proven vote-getter because she's run in higher turnout elections. But I think any strong challenger can beat him. NOVA isn't just turning blue. It's already there. I think the Dem presidential nominee will carry his district by double figures next year. Not to mention Warner over Gilmore, that's gonna be a slaughter. Let's see Rep. Davis overcome that.

With all the VP talk about Webb, maybe Webb won't be around the Senate in 2012... Or maybe that's just my hopes and dreams getting in the way again.

Yes please.

Gov. Creigh Deeds
:)

Creigh is our next Governor, Chris. 

I just like Sen. Deeds and think he's our most appealing candidate statewide, following Warner and Kaine.

How about this...Gov. Kaine appoints Doug Wilder Senator, citing that they've both served as Mayor of Richmond or what not. But, due to his age, Wilder decides not to run for re-election, and Kaine runs for the open seat in 2010 after Creigh succeeds him as Governor.

Leslie taking the nomination guarantees another TD victory. How many races does she need to loose before everyone wakes up? Although I agree with most, if not all of her policies, its time to get away from party bosses selecting candidates and open up the process to first time candidates.

http://www.dougforco...

one of Doug Denneny's two fans appears. And look how eloquent they are: "Leslie and Gerry suck" If I'm Doug, between this and Dave Montoya I'm hoping that my "helpers" stop helping.

Doug is a great guy, and should add an outstanding dimension to the upcoming discussion about a nominee in the 11th...but if he or his supporters by proxy are the first to start lobbing attacks at other potential candidates he is going to have a much longer road to hoe than he already does.

It would be pretty funny watching someone trying to hoe a ROAD! :)

Everyone talks Connolly and Byrne, yet Hurst did the best against Davis (even being outspent 10:1) and hasn't ruled out a second run. 

Andy certainly could throw his hat in the ring, and this could easily turn into a 3-say or 4-way battle for the Dem. nomination. Fun times! :)

Like Connolly (and Davis, I guess) I'm focused on the next 20 days, but, assuming Connolly runs for the Dem nomination for VA-11, even Byrne would be mightily challenged, let alone Hurst or Denenny.  It was the Miller/Webb primary that drew my attention to this and the other left-leaning or otherwise entertaining (hi Ben) blogs.  A Byrne/Connolly battle will be brutal, ugly, and expensive.  The only silver lining, and it's a big one, is that the winner will be facing either a severely weakened Tom Davis or an unknown with no realistic chance.

I would love to see Andy run again.

He was SO refreshing and a regular guy running for office.

I would LOVE to see a Congressman Hurst!

Let's count Leslie's losses:
1. Loses as first term house member in huge wave year (1994)
2. Loses Senate primary to some loser named Warner
3. Loses to Bill Bolling by 23,000 votes while being outspent by over 2:1; in the 11th she won 54-45.

How do any of these losses guarantee a TD victory?

And I'm not sure where you get the idea that 'party bosses' selected her a a candidate - she won an open primary to be the LG nominee quite handily.

Mr. Denneny will have his chance to run and he certainly looks like an appealing candidate, but bashing Leslie won't win him any favors.

Okay, part of what you need to understand about her loss to Bolling is that it didn't occur in a vacuum--the same number of people who turned out to vote in the gubernatorial also could vote in Byrne's race, and since it was Tim Kaine at the top of the ticket, you not only have to compare her performance to Bolling, but also to Kaine.

In light of that fact, her 2005 performance wasn't nearly as rosey as some folks think.  She underperformed Gov Kaine by more than 69,000 votes statewide (she also underperformed Creigh Deeds by more than 13,000, meaning she has the distinction of underperforming both the top and the bottom of her statewide ticket in 2005).  She also dramatically underperformed both Kaine and Deeds in terms of fundraising that year--she certainly was outspent 2:1, but please remember that's the direct result of poor fundraising.

I'm not saying I don't think she'd be competitive in the district because that's not the case at all; the district leans heavily democratic, and she beat Bolling in VA11 by roughly a ten point margin.  And she's a perfectly nice lady; I voted for her in the four-way primary in 2005.  But please, if you're going to make a decision based on the numbers, be comprehensive.  It's irresponsible to say she's not a good person, but it's also irresponsible to cherry-pick statistics to make her sound like a stronger candidate on-paper than she actually is.

But for the sake of running a race in the 11th Congressional District, her total statewide results aren't really as relevant. She ran well ahead of Creigh in the 11th while trailing Kaine. So whether or not she ran well in what Tom affectionately "Alabama" doesn't matter - she can win votes in the 11th.

I suspect underperforming by 69,000 votes statewide is a symptom of something about her performance or work-ethic as a campaigner. However, you are correct to point out that she underperformed Kaine in VA11 with a much slimmer drop-off than she did statewide (which is much more relevant than the percentage differential between Bolling-Byrne because that was never going to be a close region for Bolling to begin with).

On the other hand, you didn't address her underwhelming results as a fundraiser, which almost certainly says something about either her performance or work-ethic as a campaigner.  Which makes me wonder, what's going on?  What's the specific weakness?  What didn't I see when I voted for her in the 2005 primary?

I'll admit that I'm not particularly aware of her fundraising woes. But I'll say two things in that regard. First, at Larry Sabato's Women in Politics event a year ago, it was widely viewed by women on both sides of the aisle that woman have more difficulty fundraising. Second, the DCCC is flush with cash and will certainly look at the 11th as an prime pickup opportunity.

I have to admit that I'm not aware of any statistics on that front, and I only have annecdotal evidence to support or contradict it, so we'll leave it aside.  As far as DCCC money goes, federal campaigns don't work like statewide campaigns because they have different finance rules; DCCC can run buy its own TV time to talk about how much they hate Tom Davis, but they can't just come in and give the nominee in the district a giant novelty check.  She'll have to come up with $2 million on her own to be competitive.

She might be able to do it, but if not, well, it's not like DCCC hasn't ignored this district before, right?

Davis won in 2006 only because he outspent Hurst 10-1. That won't happen next time.

Assuming Chap wins, and I am optimistic, Davis will look like damaged goods.

Assuming we take back the legislature, the Republicans will go into 2008 in very bad shape indeed.

There is no way Davis could be Webb. Davis has all of Webb's weaknesses and none of his strenghs.

The only sort of Republican with a chance of beating Webb would be someone like Linwood Holton, someone will genuine appeal to women and minorities. I think that wing of the party was driven out of the Republican party decades ago.

Nothing would please me more than to have the opportunity to work on another Andy Hurst campaign.  In fact, it just might help to restore my faith in the process. Andy is a wonderful person who ran for all the right reasons..he saw wrong and wanted to be a part of making it right.
His decision not to take PAC money made sense to him as he saw PAC money as part of the problem. Sadly, elections are all about money and until that changes, should he run again, he needs to make his peace with that,get elected and then work for change.
Andy would also be a far wiser candidate this time around.
There were those who could have done far more to help him but did not do so.
A neighbor of mine made an interesting comment about the never ending she did, he did mailers from JMDD and Chap's campaign....He said this is all old news..it was in the Post and that "nice young man you wanted to replace Davis
had much to say about it"  Little did he know how much more Andy could have gotten out in the public arena had the funds been available to do so.

If only the Wash Post had done a little bit more closer to election day on their expose of Davis Inc.  Then, as they've done this year with their absurd endorsement of Mrs. Davis, they endorsed Mr. Davis.  At least this time around, they said a lot of good things about Chap.  It was the way the Post endorsement treated Hurst like he wasn't even running that caused me to cancel my 20+ year subscription.

They analogy of how she performed state wide in the LG race is moot.  Look how she performed in that race in the 11th.  She won!

Bill Bolling is very different from Tom Davis.

Davis' virtually dropping out of next year's Senate race in his remarks at the National Press Club yesterday combined with his wife's losing her re-election bid 20 days from now will cause both Davises to disappear from public life.  Why the mainstream media is so confident that Tom can make a fortune on K Street is beyond me.  We'll have to see how eager Jeannemarie's employer is to continue to pay her $80,000 a year for part-time work once her employer no longer has a special relationship with an important member of Congress to drum up business.  And, if Jeannemarie does get fired, I guess it'll put the lie to the notion that she added any value to the company apart from being married to that very important member of Congress.

n/t

Not to toot my own horn, but I've been at the helm of votechapdumpjeannemarie.blogspot.com for a while now, and my adult daughter and I plan to take off work on election day to get out the vote for Chap.  Every poll I've heard about shows Chap comfortably ahead.  Moreover, people are putting money where their mouths are as Chap outraised Jeannemarie in the quarter just ended and is almost even with her with cash on hand.  Finally, I think the contrast between Jeannemarie's negative ads and Chap's positive ones indicates how relatively desperate Jeannemarie perceives her campaign to be.  So, while I may be a little hyperbolic in predicting Chap's victory and the consequences for the Davises with an air of certainty, I'm taking nothing for granted.

I write on blogs, too; doesn't make me a political genius. ;-)  But yes, my point (which I perhaps should have elaborated on rather than putting 'n/t') was that while Chap may be doing well, it's a stretch to extrapolate from that Tom Davis' entire political future from today until eternity.

Way to go getting your daughter out to volunteer all of election day!  Start 'em young, I say! :-)

My apologies for my self-righteous tone.  Thanks for the emoticons.  I don't know what "n/t" means.  And, while I'm admitting that I really don't think my blog is all that influential (I was mostly trying to publicize the cleverly named URL :)), I might as well admit that it was my daughter who got me into active campaigning, not the other way around.  I grew up in Dem machine dominated Cook County, Illinois, where they'd even vote for you if you didn't.  It wasn't until my daughter joined the Young Dems while in college (Yay UMW!) and met such luminaries as Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, and Chap Petersen that I began to get involved as more than a voter.

net lingo dictionary for the definition of N/T:

No Text

An acronym. It is placed at the end of a newsgroup posting's title or the e-mail subject line to indicate there is "no text" within the message. This saves people from having to click on the message with the intent of reading it, because the title says it all.

I think you are on to something. There is a rumor that Davis has a standing offer from the NFIB. A retiring congressman probably gets a more lucrative offer than a discarded one. In the end Davis will follow the money.

That is why it is so critical to not only elect Chap, but take back the General Assembly. If we do that the writing will be on the wall. It will put us in position to not only take back the 11th, but also the Second, Fifth, and Fourth, assuming we have a candidate in the fourth.

Or a heinous ethics violation.  You can't offer jobs to sitting members or their staff members--it's considered bribery.

...After the Post endorsed Jean Marie. I wonder how much schmoozing old TD had to do with his drinking buddies at the Post to get them to endorse yet another Davis--Jeanmarie Attoinette. I've heard through sources that the GOP expect her to loose to Chap. And that she has made a lot of enemies in the GOP. Could it be the old flip flop from Right winger to so called teacher endorsed?

As for Jim Webb. He's the man. I am not sure about the so called current ratings. People like what they hear from him nationally and know that the GOP is blocking all the good ideas coming from him. Very intelligent man!!

I'm surprised by how few folks here are talking about the real story here, which is that Davis is carefully extricating himself from the U.S. Senate race. 

If he does run again, would Connolly run against him?  Seems like Gerry's been waiting for Tom to retire, and hasn't shown any inclination to get into a brawl with him in the meantime.

BTW, there is no question that Davis would make a fortune on K Street.  They pay these former Congressmen millions of dollars to make phone calls to their buddies.

Davis has been considering leaving since 2005. He was offered a mil a year to head up National Federation of
Independent Business. I understand he and John Warner had a discussion about his future. Warner told him he was going to retire and to hang in there.  Now, with Mark Warner in the picture, it is clear he isn't going to run. As for his comment about Webb, I doubt that will happen. My bet is he little interest in even running for his current seat again and that lack of interest has nothing to do with Leslie, Gerry or whomever....There comes a time to move on. As for JMDD,whether one likes her or not, I am told she is no dummy and her IT smarts have value in the marketplace separate and apart from being Tom's wife.

I think the only reason he was holding out for so long was that he was waiting for Old Man Warner to retire.  But now, with Mark in the race, there's not really any reason to hang around.  Especially since he's no longer in the majority.

And I kind of doubt he's serious about challenging Webb.  I mean that won't even begin until 2012, and the VA-11 is already being eyed hungrily by the DCCC.  And anyway, I have to believe Davis has been offered a LOT of lucrative civilian jobs by now.

His arrogance about 2012 might seem odd, but totally in character.

Whatever happened to this assessment of the landscape by the noted grand strategist Tom Devolites-Davis in the April 2006 Washingtonian Magazine (http://www.washingto...):

"I'm absolutely electable statewide. In fact, once I get the nomination, I'm probably not touchable statewide."

The best part of the article though is his feeling about the breakup of his first marriage.  Despite not being in control of his House schedule, he found time to manage Jeannmarie's campaigns:

Davis puts much of the blame for the breakup on his job: "It's very tough on the family. It's miserable on a family-absolutely miserable.

"The worst part about this job is you're not in control. . . . You're sitting here at night. You're going home at 6, then it's going to be 7, then it's 8, and some guy has a tantrum on the [House] floor, and you're there, and the dinner party is wiped out."

Davis recalls arriving home "one night on time. I said, 'Why are you headed to the movies?' And she responds, 'I can't count on you for anything.'

"They just had to plan their life around me," Davis says. "I don't blame them for that.

"I still cry about it."