Posted on 11/08/2006 12:51:06 PM PST by areafiftyone
RICHMOND, Va. — Republican Sen. George Allen refused to concede defeat Wednesday, even as Democrat Jim Webb declared victory and began assembling a transition team.
With Republican Sen. Conrad Burns' loss in Montana, the Democrats would gain control of the Senate if Webb's lead holds. The margin between the two Virginia candidates was about 7,000 votes.
"The votes are in and we won," Webb declared. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Webb had 1,169,285 votes, or 49.6 percent, to Allen's 1,162,577, or 49.3 percent. Allen's campaign, however, said the Senator would wait for a full review of the Virginia vote.
"The conclusion of the canvass will be the final official results," said Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman and adviser to Allen.
Representatives from both campaigns and party officials were at polling places across Virginia as the canvass was under way. The state has until Nov. 14 to complete it, Gillespie said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Allen is not going to try to steal anything. He's just going to investigate suspicious activity and let all the counties finish and correct all their vote counts. How so many Virginians could vote for that weird little man Webb is beyond me.
What a coincidence huh? All last night I was watching the returns and Allen consistently kept a small lead. Then the last couple precincts come in overwhelmingly for Webb! Makes me sick! But as the saying goes, if it's not close they can't cheat and we should have done a lot more with regards to GOTV and Allen should have never said macaca! As it is he had to fight the MSM and the WaPo as well as the Dems and still came within an eyelash.
The fact that Allen made it very plausable to believe he was a flaming racist didn't help.
You're right. Have you heard the stories about the Florida recounts when investigators found a lot of chads with black dots on them in democrat precincts? Presumably that was because the chads were not pushed out by a voter with a stylus but instead were pushed out with a black pen in a ballot manufacturing operation. There were articles on this at Newsmax, iirc.
The "macacca" incident was an unfortunate mistake, but I don't think that had a significant influence on this election. This election was about Iraq. It's not that the casualties are that high, but the problem was the lack of progress on troops withdrawals and getting out of Iraq.
No way.
Allen was ahead big before macaca, in spite of Iraq. Then he insulted jews. Then he pandered to feminists. Then he showed he couldn't answer a straight question on Russert for no apparent reason.
The election was about many things, Iraq being a big piece of them, but this particular election was lost by one person: George Allen.
I tell ya, watching elections in this decade is like watching a coupe d'etat in slow motion run by the DNC and you know who. It's so frustrating. We have to find new ways to stomp the oppostion so that it's not even close and they can't cheat effectively.
We did a recount last year in our attorney general race. It's not that big a deal, and it changed things by some, but not by 7000.
There's little to get 'wrong' here, most of our machines are electronic so a "recount" doesn't mean much, just looking again at absentee ballots.
I'm sorry we let the country down, my own county went for Webb, and I feel it is my fault for not working hard enough (I'd feel worse if it was 300 votes).
We've had some big errors in "initial reporting" before, like numbers transposed, so I'm holding out slight hope. If a 6100 turns into a 1600, that's a big deal (something like that happened last year in the AG race, which put it VERY close, but that would be something I wouldn't expect to find, especially not enough for 7000 votes).
I'm sorry, but Allen had to find those 7000 votes BEFORE the election, not after. He just couldn't close the deal, which is a shocker since he was a very popular Governor, but it seemed he hooked up with the wrong crowd to run his campaign and they couldn't keep from shooting themselves.
In the end, I think we lost more than 7000 votes when Allen's campaign directly released the Webb fiction and claimed it was a major issue in the campaign. That was a fine thing for bloggers to mess with, but not for a campaign trying to be serious about governing.
A lot of military people didn't find Webb's writings particularly out of bounds, and they thought it wrong for Allen to be attacking a man for writing about the military in a way they related to. It solidified I think the "war hero" mentality among a small but important segment of the population.
Meanwhile, Catholics really jumped over to the democrats on the war, here in Virginia, and Allen really did nothing to appeal to them. In fact, Allen tried sometimes to run a positive campaign but in the end it just couldn't cut through the atmosphere here.
Maybe the late-day rain hurt him as well. You can see the absentee ballots didn't help us in several cases, we did a bad job getting our people out to vote and we had less people to GET out to vote this time to start with.
I can just see all of those who piled on the anti-Allen wagon - for his Senate race, nothing else - gleefully rubbing their hands together.
I saw some pretty ugly stuff around here the past few weeks, but what I saw yesterday, last night, and today has been appalling - and I'm not just talking about George Allen. The majority of the Dems I deal with on a Delaware message board had a lot more class than some of the so-called conservatives around here last night and today.
I know I'm sounding awfully tin foil today, but all potential GOP presidential nominees should start flying only on large commerical aircraft without making reservations. Just pay extra and buy the tickets an hour before departure. It's like paying a life insurance premium. That goes for Sanford too.
When did he insult jews? He said his mother grew up in a Jewish home in North Africa, iirc.
"Not sure of the dynamics here."
The only dynamic one needs to understand is that the wider world loves slime, filth, and porn. "We elected Webb, and that makes it OK to keep wallowing in our chosen preversions." He's OK, we're OK.
Catholics are in for a rude awakening when Webb and the Democrats start to filibuster pro-life judicial nominees.
What do you think Webb would have done if the numbers were reversed?
And OH GOSH! BY GOLLY! BY GEE! HE WAS THE ONLY FRICKIN' REPUBLICAN TO LOSE YESTERDAY!!!!!
Your assessment of the campaign is one born of 1) love for the MSM or 2) ignorance.
It's a free country.
You decide.
Our local Catholic church had "NO to Amendment #2" signs on its property. An active parishioner who lives across the street had Allen/Davis signs all across the yard.
I can't imagine any seriously practicing Catholics not understanding the difference between the parties, and the candidates who were running in VA. OR the consequences of a Webb vote for "Catholic issues.' So, if they voted for Webb, it's their bad.
No, he's not. But most that lost yesterday weren't ahead by 15% before he used a racial slur against a college kid.
I'm not sure of that. Webb's the kind of Democrat that could win in Virginia again. Hope I'm wrong though.
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