Lando 
Posted on 11/07/2006 10:01:57 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -
Republican Sen. George Allen, bedeviled by his own mistakes and an unpopular president, battled for his political life Tuesday against Jim Webb, whose disgust with the GOP made him a Democrat.
Final independent polls in a Virginia race that could determine whether Republicans keep control of the U.S. Senate showed the two candidates were about even.
Reports from around Virginia early Tuesday indicated an extraordinarily high turnout for a midterm election, with perhaps 65 percent of registered voters expected to cast ballots, a state elections officials said. That would double the midterm turnout in 2002.
In Roanoke County, registrar Judy Stokes said turnout in the Republican-leaning county was very heavy Tuesday morning. Two precincts hadn't reported their figures.
"They've been so busy they haven't had time to call in," she said.
Jean Jensen, the board's secretary, also reported "several instances" of what she called voter intimidation in several localities and relayed the complaints to the Virginia attorney general's office and the U.S. Justice Department.
Arlington, a Washington suburb, had seen a steady stream of voters, much like a presidential election.
"This is a record turnout for a Senate race," registrar Linda S. Lindberg said. The race in 1994 between Sen. Charles S. Robb and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North also saw a heavy turnout, but "this is comparable and may surpass that." Robb won re-election.
Virginians also decided whether to re-elect the state's 11 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and whether to put a ban on same-sex marriage in the state constitution.
A former governor once popular for abolishing parole, Allen was expected to cruise to a second term this year as a warmup for a presumed 2008 presidential run.
His solid conservative credentials and his sunny persona invited comparisons with the archetypal Republican, Ronald Reagan. As of late July, Allen led Webb by 16 points in the year's first independent statewide poll.
Then came Aug. 11, the day Allen pointed out S.R. Sidarth, a 20-year-old Virginia-born man of Indian descent working as a Webb campaign volunteer, and introduced him at an all-white rally as "macaca," an obscure racial slur that denotes a genus of monkeys.
Sidarth was tracking Allen across the state, videotaping his public appearances, and his video of Allen's macaca moment was among YouTube's most-viewed within hours. It was a major national political story and grist for late-night comedians and cable talk shows for weeks.
Allen eventually apologized personally to Sidarth, but not until after the comment had provoked international scorn. By then, the political damage was done, and there was more to come.
In mid-September, Allen berated a reporter for "making aspersions" about his religion when he was asked at a debate whether his mother was Jewish. The next day, Allen, 54, who was raised Christian, confirmed that his maternal grandparents were Jews, but said his mother kept it secret from him and his siblings before revealing it to him in August.
Then came allegations from some former teammates from his University of Virginia football days in the early 1970s that Allen had commonly used a six-letter epithet against black people. Allen denied that the word was ever part of his vocabulary, and other teammates came forward to rebut the claims.
As Webb tied Allen to President Bush and the deadly U.S. occupation of Iraq, Allen battled back. He accused Webb of denigrating women in a 1979 magazine article decrying the admission of women to the U.S. Naval Academy. Allen later tried to portray sexual descriptions in Webb's six bestselling war novels as demeaning to women.
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There is always high turnout in Northern Virginia, I lived there for 20 years. They are highly educated voters with professional jobs that allow them to take their time voting. They are also overwhelmingly Democrats except for a handful of GOP precincts. So it tells me nothing that there is heavy turnout in northern Virginia. I want to know about the turnout in Richmond, Norfolk, and Roanoke.
_____________
oh, okay.
Then it is good news for Allen, if the Roanoke election worker quoted is accurate.
I agree entirely with your assessment. NoVA heavy turnout is not necessarily good for us at all. People close to Webb tell me he has to have a heavy NoVA turnout.
To be completely fair, that is an accurate sentence.
>Nothing sexier than two ugly white guys mud wrestling. <
Hey, quit talking about Corker and Ford like that!
Lando
Well...we have Arnoold out here in Kalifornia...married to the Kennedy Clan...but he was better than the alternative....
I'm in a rural precinct - I was voter 172 in the A - L line at 8:30 this morning. There are ~3200 registered voters in my precinct. In 04 I took off to work the polls, voted first and turnout in the AM was much lighter than this.
Good News!
Wonder how Steele is doing in Maryland?
I have voted in my tiny little precinct in Palmyra, Virginia (Fluvanna County) for years. I have never seen a turnout like this one before. This is our first time with electronic voting machines, but it was going smoothly. IDs were checked at the polling station YAAAAHHH!!!
6 or 7 machines in my precint and line of 5 people ahead of me at 11:50am today in Northern VA. Webb volunteer outside asked my 4 year old if he was voting. I glared at him and told him not to encourage voter fraud.
I think 82% is a low number.
92% of the Washington press corps voted for Bubba in 1992.
My 12 year old daughter and a friend were distributing Repub Sample Ballots at a poll this morning in Richmond, VA. She handed one man a sample ballot and he said "you girls really shouldn't be here, doing this", my daughter said "where should I be, at home, unemployed eating government cheese?" What a girl!!!
AP = Always Pimping
Ronald Reagan is a fine example of a life-long Democrat who turned Republican. I'm sure glad he made the change. He used to say something like, "I didn't leave the Democrat party. The party left me."
Give that girl a Gold Star...
Live in Loudoun County. I voted just now. There were only 2 people in the line ahead of me. Didn't have to wait at all. There was nobody there giving out Democrat Sample Ballots. There was a Republican there though. I voted for Allen, Wolf, and yes to the marriage amendment. I voted No on all the bond issues with the exception of the one for improving the highways.
Thanks for the info....I am pulling for Allen.
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