Free Republic

It wasn't supposed to be this hard. The party elders had got all their Democratic ducks in a row, merrily quacking, to escort Ralph Northam, Virginia's lieutenant governor, to victory in this year's gubernatorial primary on June 13. Both of the commonwealth's United States senators endorsed him. His boss the governor endorsed him, and so did nearly every Democrat in the state legislature. Even the state's hard-charging and ambitious attorney general, his only plausible rival for the Democratic nomination, had been persuaded not to run. The field cleared. Everybody loved old Ralph. And then Tom Perriello showed up. Perriello spent...

Students and residents in Charlottesville, Virginia, protested Republican Rep. Tom Garrett’s first town hall Friday with a massive sign stating “no dialogue with white supremacy” and chants including “say it loud, say it clear: immigrants are welcome here.” Garrett met with protests both inside and outside of the building at the University of Virginia where he hosted the town hall, reports NBC 29. Both Showing Up for Racial Justice and UVA Students United organized the protests. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) “[W]e refuse to give him a platform to spout his politics of racial terror and white supremacy,” the Charlottesville chapter of Showing Up...

As opponents of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline continue to fight the project, others who believe it will stimulate the economy recently ensured their voices were heard, sending hundreds of letters expressing a positive view of the pipeline to U.S. lawmakers. The Mid-Atlantic Region of the Laborer’s International Union of America (LIUNA), a union of construction workers and public service employees, on Friday hand-delivered about 1,600 letters from workers to U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. The letters express support for the proposed $5 billion natural gas pipeline, which would run about 600 miles from West Virginia to North...

ST. PAUL—The youngest son of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's 2016 running mate, was one of six people arrested Saturday after counter-protesters disrupted a rally in support of President Donald Trump at the Minnesota State Capitol. Linwood Michael Kaine, 24, and four others were arrested on suspicion of second-degree riot after the "March 4 Trump" rally in St. Paul; a sixth person was cited for disorderly conduct. Counter-protesters clashed with Trump supporters in the Capitol rotunda after they attempted to disrupt the proceedings with air horns, whistles and chants. At one point, someone set off a smoke bomb....

The price of entry for the 2020 presidential primary is ferocious opposition to the president. The Democratic base is so roiled and enraged after only two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency that a take-no-prisoners posture toward the White House is emerging as the price of entry for the 2020 primary. An election that could have focused on economic inequality and the excesses of Wall Street — the issues that animate the left’s leading tribunes, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — is already shaping up as a contest about the intensity of the resistance to Trump. “In almost 20 years of...

On Tuesday's broadcast of MSNBC's Morning Joe, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said Democrats must take advantage of "public outcry against the [Trump] administration]." Kaine said Democrats must fight back in Congress, the courts, and in the streets. "What we've got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box, and now there's the momentum to be able to do this," Kaine said to Democrats. "And we're not afraid of the popular outcry, we're energized by it and that's going to help us do our job and do it...

In last week’s presidential election, Hillary Clinton lost nearly all the swing states. However, Clinton managed to cling to Virginia — the home state of her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D). Did Kaine’s presence on the ticket help save Virginia for the Democrats? We believe it did. Some political science research argues that vice-presidential candidates do not significantly impact the vote — even in their home state. In contrast, our research shows that VP candidates add an average of nearly 3 percentage points to their ticket’s vote in their home states. Our research relies on a new approach to...

President-elect Donald Trump alleged Sunday evening that there were “serious voter fraud” issues in three states during the election, calling out results from Virginia, New Hampshire and California.

Indian Americans are mostly Democrats in the U.S according to quantitative analyses but a large number of them voted for Republican Donald Trump in this election, anecdotal evidence suggests. And one of the main reasons that many cite for doing so is Huma Abedin, former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s close aide, who happens to be a Muslim. Some others voted hoping that Mr. Trump will cut taxes. Indian American leaders in the Democratic Party - candidates and major donors – have sought to create a larger Asian minority coalition in support of Ms. Clinton with Pakistani activists playing a significant...

“One of the things they need to hear from me is that the Virginia Republican party values religious liberty and we stand with them, and they’re part of this community too.” This is just more muddying of the waters. Religious liberty is not at issue in any way. Trump has not called for anything that would restrict religious liberty. Religious liberty is not a license to commit treason or sedition. It is not an all-purpose justification for subversion. These Virginia Republicans are not only disloyal to the leader of their party, but severely muddled thinkers. The All Dulles Area Muslim...

Hillary Clinton is one state away from losing the presidential election, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver said Sunday. While the Democratic presidential nominee has a 65.7 percent chance of winning the presidency on Tuesday, she is not "in a terribly safe position," the pollster said on ABC's "This Week." "The electoral map is actually less solid for Clinton than it was for Obama four years ago," Silver said. Silver came to notoriety by correctly predicting President Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012. Clinton is weaker among Midwestern voters, while Obama had leads in states like Ohio....

As a national security leader said to me, "Donald Trump's victory may not be the conservative movement's victory, but his defeat is America's defeat. His win gives us room to maneuver, while his defeat seems poised to end our liberties." As progressives erode and weaken what is exceptional about America, I worry we may not have four more years to spare. I fear we are sliding toward "the darkness" Ronald Reagan warned of when he said, "We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the first...

WikiLeaks has twice warned Tim Kaine that he might be in for a "surprise" – but the vice presidential candidate says he's not worried. Despite multiple warnings from the organization that has been steadily publishing stolen emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton's running mate says he isn't threatened by the possibility of his correspondences going public, since he is a "regular human being" with nothing to be "overly embarrassed about." Nasty emails are "not my norm," the Democratic vice presidential nominee told the Associated Press on Saturday, adding, "I do have a temper so, I mean,...

RICHMOND — Republican Donald Trump, never short on campaign shockers, pulled one off Saturday simply by setting foot in Virginia. Trump’s rally in Virginia Beach, part of a renewed push here that included a $2 million television ad buy, flabbergasted political analysts and GOP strategists who’ve considered the swing state off the table for months. Trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton by double digits in the latest Virginia polls, Trump will dispatch key surrogates — his children — for series of visits to Northern Virginia this week. His campaign said Trump and runningmate Mike Pence will return to the state “a lot”...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton confidant, helped steer $675,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an FBI official who went on to lead the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email system, according to a report. The political action committee of McAuliffe, the Clinton loyalist, gave $467,500 to the state Senate campaign of the wife of Andrew McCabe, who is now deputy director of the FBI, according to the Wall Street Journal. The report states Jill McCabe received an additional $207,788 from the Virginia Democratic Party, which is heavily influenced by McAuliffe. The money...

HARRISONBURG, Va. -- Mike Pence, coming off his biggest night of the campaign, suggested to a gathering of supporters here Wednesday that "some people think I won" the vice presidential debate. "Donald Trump called me late last night from Nevada to congratulate me on the debate," Pence said at the first rally of his four-day, four-state bus tour. "That really meant the world to me. Some people think I won. But, I'll leave that to others." In this conservative town in the Shenandoah Valley, Pence kicked off the rally at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds to the cheers of several hundred...

Gravis Marketing poll of Colorado. Trump +4, 41% to 37%

WILLIAMSBURG — The old capitol of Colonial Williamsburg served as a backdrop to Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence, as he took to the stage in the midst of a downpour before a crowd of about 650 for a rally Tuesday evening. "This is what we call a moist evening," Pence said. "Tonight we're showing the media and we're showing the world, this is a movement that is going to elect Donald Trump." Ronald and Ella Weiss drove from Olde Towne, Portsmouth, for Tuesday's event. They've been Trump backers from the start. Ella Weiss said they like what Trump stands for,...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is surging in battleground states Iowa and Virginia in newly released polls, consistent with the national trend reported this week by Reuters-Ipsos and other major polling operations. A handful of swing states—experts always mention at least five, and no more than eleven—will determine the winner of the presidential race, mainly concentrated in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Southwest. Polling numbers from two of those states seem to fit a larger trend over the past two weeks of improving chances for Donald Trump to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton....

At one point in the past month, competing in Virginia looked like Mission Impossible for Team Trump. The WaPo/ABC poll in mid-August put Hillary Clinton up eight points, and Quinnipiac had Donald Trump down twelve, leading Team Hillary to focus their efforts elsewhere. Two new polls this week show the race in a virtual tie, however, and the latest from Emerson College has the race within a single point among likely voters, 44/43 Hillary. The most surprising finding? Adding Tim Kaine to the ticket has been a bust in the Old Dominion, at least thus far: A new Virginia poll...