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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I'm in Fairfax County, the largest county in Northern Virginia. It's a blue county in a red state.
>>the woman running against Jim Ryun-the runner- in Kansas is another.
Nancy Boyda. I dislike her so much that I did something I've never done before. I voted for every Republican on the ballot even those running unopposed. Normally, I vote straight Republican but I never vote for unopposed candidates. Had to do something to vent and show my disgust no matter how small the action might be.
Well, my precinct (Byrd Middle School, western Henrico County outside Richmond) was basically empty when I got there around 9:00 am. About 5-6 people voting and 2-3 more checking in. I was in and out in six minutes.
}:-)4
So did they tell you who is going to win? :-)
Northern VA is extremely populated and extremely blue. It's raining steadily here now, which will hopefully keep some of them home.
The only way conservatives will ever stop it is for us to cancel our subscriptions to the lib newspapers.
I'm smack dab in the middle of the state. Predominantly Republican.
Voted in McLean. Heavy turnout in a precinct, which went to Kerry in 2004. Hopefully, Allen can make up the difference outside Northern VA. No poll watchers from either party. 900 voters as of noon.
Voted earlier this morniing at Navy precinct. We've been trending very blue recently, it's heartbreaking. Anyway, turnout was a steady trickle ... no long lines, maybe a 5 minute wait to vote. No problem with the machines that I saw. There were two adorable young girls handing out Republican sample ballots and two older women handing out the Democrat ones. It was much less crazy than '04 but busier than '02.
I was the fourth in line this morning at my polling place here in Springfield--we had a squad of Republicans getting sample ballots before the first Democrat showed up. I can say with certitude that the first 4 votes at Hunt Valley Elementary School were for the GOP.
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