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State Sen. Mark D. Obenshain(R) will concede the race for Virginia attorney general to Democrat Mark R. Herring on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the decision. Obenshain’s announcement will put an end to a drawn-out contest that, on election night, was the closest statewide election in history. Obenshain campaign spokesman Paul Logan did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Wednesday. Herring had significantly widened his slim lead over Obenshain in a statewide recount that began Monday and was scheduled to finish on Wednesday.

Stealing elections is an old game politicians play. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, got to the U.S. Senate in 1948 by “winning” the closest race in Texas history by a margin of 87 votes out of more than a million cast. An election judge in tiny Alice, Texas, said he counted more than 200 names on the voting roll for Box 13 that were written in alphabetic succession in the same hand, same color of ink. When a federal court subpoenaed Box 13, it was discovered to be “lost.” LBJ took his seat in the Senate. Voting machines were...

Despite the reticence of most of Virginia’s Republican legislators to talk about it and the best efforts of outgoing Gov. Bob McDonnell to shoot it down, the possibility of the GOP-dominated General Assembly stepping in to decide the winner of the closely contested attorney general race is not a dead issue. You’ll recall that Republican Mark Obenshain narrowly lost the Nov. 5 election to Democrat Mark Herring by an incredible 165 votes out of more than 2.2 million ballots cast. Electoral boards across the commonwealth are gearing up to begin a week-long recount process to make certain the ballots were...

Republican Mark Obenshain is trailing Democrat Mark Herring for attorney general by 164 votes. Obenshain could win with as few as 71 — with not a single one cast by an ordinary Virginian. It is a nuclear option that takes the election out of the hands of the electorate. Obenshain could initiate what state law calls a “contest” in which the 140-member legislature decides the attorney generalship by a majority vote. That would be a minimum of 71. They shouldn’t be too difficult for Obenshain to round up. There are 87 Republican legislators. Many of them don’t like one bit...

The Democratic candidate for Virginia attorney general has maintained his thin lead over the Republican hopeful after the state certified the Nov. 5 ballot. The State Board of Elections in Richmond completed its certification Monday, showing Mark Herring with a 165-vote edge over the GOP's Mark Obenshain. Herring held a 165-vote edge over Obenshain before the certification. Obenshain has 10 days to decide whether he'll seek a recount. Both men have dug in, with each announcing transition teams. Virginia has no automatic recount, but the trailing candidate can seek a recount at taxpayer expense if the margin between winner and...

The state Board of Elections on Monday certified Democrat Mark Herring as the winner of the Nov. 5 election for Virginia attorney general. Herring, a state senator from Loudoun County, beat state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R), by 165 votes out of more than 2 million votes cast.

<p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Sen. Mark Obenshain says he's going to outline his next steps in the nearly knotted race for attorney general.</p> <p>The Harrisonburg Republican has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday in Richmond. Unofficial state election results show Democratic Sen. Mark Herring with a narrow lead over Obenshain.</p>

Democrat Mark R. Herring widened his lead Tuesday over Republican Mark R. Obenshain in Virginia’s nail-biting race for attorney generalWith Herring up by 163 votes over Obenshain, the Democrat declared himself the victor, while Obenshain refused to concede. He said he will wait for the State Board of Elections to certify the Virginia-wide vote on Nov. 25. “Voters in Virginia have spoken, their voices have been heard and I am honored to have won their votes and their trust to become Virginia’s next attorney general,” Herring said in a statement. While the vote was close, he said, “Virginians have chosen...

Democratic state Sen. Mark R. Herring took the lead in the extraordinarily tight Virginia attorney general race Monday evening, after he picked up more than 100 previously uncounted votes in Richmond. Herring had started the day trailing his Republican opponent, state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (Harrisonburg), by a mere 17 votes out of 2.2 million cast. But as jurisdictions across the state continued to scrub their vote counts, the State Board of Elections showed Herring with a 117-vote lead late Monday. Lawyers from both parties have descended on elections offices in Fairfax County and Richmond. Meanwhile, the campaigns said they were...

As we've heard in news reports, "corrections" in absentee ballot totals in Fairfax County and Richmond City have wiped out what was a 1,262-vote lead for Republican Mark Obenshain and given Democrat Mark Herring a 117-vote lead. Now that I have that piece of misery out of the way, among the takeaways from this are a couple bad-news and good-news elements. First the bad news... as mentioned above, Obenshain now trails Herring by a razor-thin margin of 117 votes, and Fairfax isn't finished with its counting.. However... (and comes the good news) This morning, I did a county-by-county check on...

In an attorney general’s race that remains too close to call, Republican Mark D. Obenshain began today with a 17-vote edge over Democrat Mark R. Herring. But by afternoon, the pendulum had swung the other way when the numbers in four Richmond precincts were updated, putting Herring ahead by 115 votes out of more than 2 million cast statewide.

Republican Mark Obenshain held a 219 vote lead in the race to be Virginia's next Attorney General, with results in from all the state's 2,558 precincts.The count is even narrower than Bob McDonnell's 327-vote lead over Creigh Deeds in the 2005 race to be attorney general, but it's as certain to end in a recount.Meanwhile, of the four House of Delegates seats where less than 1 percentage point separated the candidates with a handful of precincts still outstanding last night, the GOP has held onto three. One race, where John Bell is challenging Del. David Ramadan, R-Loudoun is still neck...

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, in Saturday's GOP weekly address, lambasted Obamacare as an "unconstitutional" law that was "fundamentally broken even before it started." "Obamacare represents one of the largest and most reckless expansions of government in the more than 200-year history of our nation," said Cuccinelli, who is in a hotly contested race for Virginia governor against Democratic challenger Terry McAuliffe. “I believe that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. I believe it’s an affront to the freedoms and liberties our founding fathers fought to establish on our behalf." Cuccinelli pointed out that he was the first attorney general in the United...

My Endorsement February 27, 2009 Dear xxxxxx, As we approach the end of the General Assembly Session, it is now time to turn our attention to the races for statewide office and for the House of Delegates. While we must elect Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling as Governor and Lt. Governor, it is also critical that we elect another Republican as Attorney General. Today I am writing to ask you to support Ken Cuccinelli's campaign for Attorney General by becoming a delegate for Ken to the Republican Convention on May 30th in Richmond. Please set that date aside on your...

CHILDREN OF TRAGEDY COMPETE IN VIRGINIA August 2 was the 25th anniversary of a tragedy that dramatically changed the course of modern Virginia political history. Two months after he won a thrilling convention battle to come the Republican nominee for U.S. senator from Virginia, lawyer and former State Party Chairman Richard Obenshain perished when a twin-engine Piper PA34 carrying him to a campaign appearance crashed in the trees a fraction of a mile short of the Chesterfield County Airport. Killed with the 42-year-old candidate were pilot Richard Neel, also 42, of Alexandria, and 28-year-old flight instructor Ronald A. Edden of...