I think he should do Redskin colors.

I haven't heard anything, but I will so knock on doors for the honorable Ben Tribbet.  :)

Ben as Clerk of Court?  Does Ben even have a law degree?  Taken the bar exam?  Been a paralegal?  All anyone knows about him is that he gambles a lot and apparently has a lot of free time on his hands.

I can't answer all of your questions, but I will say that if Bush is qualified to be POTUS, then there are MANY MANY MANY Americans qualified enough to be anything they want to be, including Ben.

I think the past few years have proven that your argument is based upon a false premise: Bush was apparently not terribly qualified to be President after all.  Which is precisely the point of my question.

Bush isn't qualified to be POTUS and Ben certainly doesn't have the experience or the know how to be clerk of the courts.  His campaign will be a joke and it's an example of someone running for office, for the sake of having an office, and not to do a job which needs to be done.  This is a job which I think most folks can agree shouldn't even be an elected position hell not even a political position.  We could have Miller who will focus on efficiency and running the office well or we can have Ben who will over politicize the job and frankly prob screw things up.  I can see it now, all Ben would do is make life hell for Gerry.

What if he does have the qualifications?  Would you consider supporting him?

but he isn't a lawyer and he has never had anything to do with the clerks office.  This is a position which oversees 160 fulltime employees!  If Ben wins the primary we lose the general election to the Reps.  even the democratic friendly voters of fairfax won't elect an inexperienced person to this position, or at least i hope not.

What I DO know about Ben Tribbet is that he did a hell of a lot more to get Jim Webb elected than more than a handful of lazy electeds.  I don't have to tell my picking up the yard signs on the Sunday night before the election story again, do I?  MANY constituents would be greatly disappointed to hear that the person they voted for to represent them couldn't be bothered to put a sign for the Dem nom for Senate in their yard.  My thoughts on that?  DESPICABLE.

I don't know much about David Miller so I will ask here: what has David Miller done to qualify himself for the Democratic nomination?  What did he do to help Jim Webb?  Besides the qualifications people are questioning, why else should people vote for him?  And frankly (AND to play Devil's Advocate a bit), don't arguments like this (about qualifications and experience) hurt Obama?  ;)

for the last time just bc someone puts a fucking yard sign up doesn't make them a better dem than someone who didn't! Sure politics is about scratching each others backs but thats not the only way to look at it.  What did Jim webb do to help all those other dems before he got the nomination? We as Democrats need to put in quality people not just our political cronies!

Lucky here that Miller has been a good dem and has contributed time and money throughout the years.

People like Miller have been helping dems their entire life.

I said I don't know anything about Miller.  I gave you every opportunity to talk about his awesomeness.  Instead, you attacked me.

So, thanks for your great response.

I'm young and haven't been involved but since the 02 elections. I'm not trying to attack you just want to make the point that 06 isn't the only election that we have had in Virginia.

His head is like a database.  If he could put that to good use, I'm sure he'd be a fantastic Clerk of Court.  Alberto Gonzalez was a respected Attorney; does that mean he's qualified to be AG.  Apparently not.  Just pointing out that the occupation doesn't always make the man.

BUT BEN ISN'T AN ATTORNEY! I'm not saying that he isn't capable it's just that he doesn't have the correct foundation.

I don't see why we need to attack Ben for there being interest around him running. If you want to examine qualifications, lets do it all around the board.

We know Ben's been involved in campaigning for Democrats and NOVA politics in general for quite sometime. He knows the issues and he knows the lay of the land.

What about David Miller. I'll admit as an outsider I know nothing about the guy, but lets look at both sides here before we deem who is qualified and who isn't.

Haha good point on Obama, Jaime.

It's true obama isn't prob qualified to be president.  2 years in the senate, 6 years in the state house and no business or political experience before that... some people compare him to kennedy because he didn't have a lot of experience but remember that JFK, had earned a medal for bravery in WWII, won a Pulitzer prize, served 6 years in the house and 8 years in the senate before he was elected.

This time around don't we want to have an experienced person leading our country? 8 years of bush will be enough we don't need someone else will little experience taking over.

The difference between Obama running for President and ANYONE running for clerk is that Clerk of Court is a non-representative administrative office.  You don't need to know the issues; you need to know the office and the fine details of the Virginian judicial system.  A better analogy would be this: let's say we wanted to elect a surgeon general.  Would you want to elect someone who "knew the issues" and put up yard signs, or someone with a degree in medicine who had maybe run a hospital before?

There are more important things than partisanship in politics: there's also making sure that government is run efficiently and effectively on behalf of its constituents.  This is not a game, ladies and gentlemen; the difference between a competent and an incompetent Clerk can be the difference between whether or not the evidence makes it to the court room the day of the trial or whether it takes one month or three to get a child custody hearing.

(If you look at the link from the OP, GoALP, Miller has a JD from--if I remember correctly--GMU)

"This is not a game, ladies and gentlemen; the difference between a competent and an incompetent Clerk can be the difference between whether or not the evidence makes it to the court room the day of the trial or whether it takes one month or three to get a child custody hearing."

And as Bush has proven, an incompetent President can mean the live or death of thousands of people.  Yeah, I don't care about politics in the Clerk's office.  I'd prefer to see it more and more out of the Presidency.  That was just REALLY bad argument, dude.  How can one argue that administration is more important to the CoC that the CiC?

The clerk of the court in Fairfax has a huge $58 Million budget and HUNDREDs of employees. The position entails the mechanisms and staff for jury trials, court operations with bailiffs and security officers etc. etc. etc. Those taking this positions usually stay in the role for several LONG terms.

That's all I'm saying.  The comparison sucked, that's all.

An intelligent discussion, and I stress intelligent, would be the qualifications and experience of each candidate.....period.  (The American public should have done that in 2000.)

I give Ben crap all the time because...well, he's Ben.  But I'd honestly like to see one of our own (bloggers) have an elected office.

we elect people because they are going to be good for the job not because they are a political friend on the internet.

He'd do a good job, AND be a friend to the blogosphere. 

From what I can tell, Miller has never voted in a Democratic primary before...that's strange.

I've known Ben Tribbett since he was a teenager.  There is no more dedicated Democrat.  I remember when he and my husband spent twelve hours in a driving, cold November rain staffing our precinct during one election.  The difference is my husband was an adult.  Ben was a kid.  How many teenagers have that kind of dedication?  They both got colds afterwards, by the way.

And Ben is brilliant.  And he may prove qualified to run for this job.  Let's have a primary and see how it plays out.

But some of the arguments for supporting him have frankly been beside the point.  I want to hear from him and hear his ideas and also learn more about what qualifications are needed to be a clerk of the court before making up my mind.

But I won't support somebody for a job like that who isn't qualified.  I don't care how much he did for Jim Webb.  And I like Jim Webb a lot too. 

But personal loyalty and cronyism are not qualifications for an office like clerk of the courts.  Or why else do we go around mocking every Bush screw up by saying "Heckuva Job, Brownie?"  Because competence counts in government, that's why.

And I spent too much time in the early years in my former blog - before people in Virginia read it - criticizing how cronyism leads to incompetence and corruption. 

If you want to support Ben do it because you believe he's honestly capable of doing the job, not because he put up signs for Jim Webb.

And check - is a law degree an actual qualification?  Or does somebody simply have to be a good administrator?  Is the ability to analyze office procedures, streamline processes, and create a more efficient system more important than legal knowledge?  Are those skills Ben has or can aquire?  Those are the questions we all need to be asking.  Of both Ben and any other candidate.

In my profession I deal with Circuit on a daily basis. There is absolutely nothing worse than an entrenced incompetent "elected" Clerk who treats the position as a mini-fiefdom, and who is repeatedly re-elected because 1) nobody else wants the job or 2) there are way too many favors (political and otherwise) out there to overcome the stranglehold.

While new blood is a good thing, some experience is crucial. Many facets of the job require knowledge of the system. I don't think it is just a partisan thing but a competency issue.

If Tribett has the qualifications, he should go for it, but it certainly has nothing to do with Webb signs.
If that was all it took, there would be a lot of us on the ballot.....

"But personal loyalty and cronyism are not qualifications for an office like clerk of the courts.  Or why else do we go around mocking every Bush screw up by saying "Heckuva Job, Brownie?"  Because competence counts in government, that's why.

And I spent too much time in the early years in my former blog - before people in Virginia read it - criticizing how cronyism leads to incompetence and corruption. 

If you want to support Ben do it because you believe he's honestly capable of doing the job, not because he put up signs for Jim Webb."

I don't think anyone can really find anything more to add than that.

In answer to your question at the end, I've never met any Clerk of Court who didn't have prior legal experience.  That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a set-in-stone qualification the way it might be for a Commonwealth's Attorney candidate.