Hurt puts the hurt on 5th district's wannabes
Establishment candidate Robert Hurt prevails.
FILE PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE
Conventional wisdom prevails as Tea Party target and State Sen. Robert Hurt wins the 5th district Republican primary race with 48 percent of the vote and will face Rep. Tom Perriello (D) in the fall.
Wealthy Hook-dissing lady’s man Jim McKelvey came in second with 25.8 percent, fly-boy unknown Michael McPadden comes in third with 10 percent, local BOS-man Ken Boyd gets 7.3 percent (Boyd won among County voters, but came in third in the City), hot-headed “family values” candidate Feda Morton Kidd gets 4.6 percent, Thelonius Monk lovin’ conservative political novice Laurence Verga gets 2.2 percent, and long-shot Reagan worshiping funny man Ron Ferrin gets 1.6 percent.
However, the big story may be how little anybody cared about this primary. Just 8 percent of active voters in the 5th district bothered going to the polls, and in Charlottesville just 2.3 percent gave a hoot. Fun fact: In the County 5,219 people voted compared to just 649 in the City.
34 comments
Verga is the big loser in this election. He spent something like $342 per vote and came in second to last. That's not counting the last three weeks because the fec filings are several weeks behind.
Candidate, Votes, Percentage, Money Spent (Most Recent Filing 5/19/2010)
Robert Hurt 17,129 48% $387,789
Jim McKelvey 9,137 26% $156,558
Mike McPadden 3,440 10% $105,651
Kenneth Boyd 2,613 7% $86,344
Feda Morton 1,661 5% $72,452
Laurence Verga 802 2% $275,373
Ron Ferrin 578 2% $5,752
Robert Hurt insisted on a primary, and he got one. It cost the local governments of the Fifth District about $300,000 to indulge him. In Charlottesville, early estimates were that it cost $18,000. With 649 votes cast, that works out to almost $30 per vote. District wide, about 35,000 votes were cast -- that makes it about $9 a vote.
Why doesn't the party that inflicts those costs on the government have to pay at least some of the costs? The candidates spent about $2 million between them; too bad the taxpayers have to suck it up.
"Why doesn’t the party that inflicts those costs on the government have to pay at least some of the costs? The candidates spent about $2 million between them; too bad the taxpayers have to suck it up."
Um, maybe because we live in a country where the right to vote is enshrined in the Constitution. How 'bout we charge those resource-wasting Republicans a poll tax, too?
Oh, Hook, the low turnout in the City could be the result of the fact that you had to be a registered Republican to vote.
I sent the City my absentee ballot for McPadden, but I'm okay if Hurt mops the floor with Perriello in the fall too. Tom P. seems like an earnest guy and he's working hard, but just as he was able to cruise in on Obama's coattails in '08, any GOP nominee is going to be able to ride the anti-Obama wave this fall. Regardless of what the People's Republic of Charlottesville thinks.
If you steal a car, you go to jail, if you steal someones life savings, they make you CEO. I hope Perriello continues to hold the district.
There was a primary today? A republican primary? Was Sarah there? Oh, yeah, who cares!?!?
Perriello is a goner. The only support he has is in "The People's Republic of Charlottesville". He sold us all out, to meet his guru Obama. Now it is time to throw him out. Southside Virginia will carry the day in November. Thank god they are in the same district as C-ville. They should build a fence around C-ville and make it the state zoo. This city is a freak show built on trust funds.
" Thank you, once again, for making Americans the laughing stock of the world."
Would that be more laughs than Clinton, just as many as Obama or almost as many as Kennedy?
Mark: It was an open primary. I'm a registered Independent and I voted for Feda so my man Tom P. could easily win in November. And I know a registered Democrat who voted for one of the candidates.
I suspect the low turnout was because so few people actually care about the country and its leaders. Most folks just inhabit their private universe of which they are each the center.
Hey cvllelaw! Did you whine this much when the Dems had their primary before the last presidential election? Many Republicans wanted a primary--not just hurt--to keep the radical part of the party from continuing to serve up unelectable candidates. Looks like it worked, too, because Hurt can whit Perriello while none of the other guys/lady stood a chance.
Increasingly, I sense a hopelessness about our individual ability to make a change or be heard by our elected officials. I wish more Americans could travel to other countries and learn to appreciate what a privilege it is to be able to vote.
Perhaps the Hook would like to loan everyone a few trillion to pay for the massive expenses the Democratic party is saddling us all with.
It must be nice to be able to be cheerful and enthusiatic while others face eminant bankruptsy.
Enjoy your meals, many of us are getting quite close to not having any food to eat.
Just 8 percent of active voters in the 5th district bothered going to the polls, and in Charlottesville just 2.3 percent gave a hoot. Fun fact: In the County 5,219 people voted compared to just 649 in the City.
3% is considered average turnout for a June primary for any party in this area, especially as this is for a Congressional mid-term election. I'd say 8% is not bad, particularly for a June primary when schools are still in session.
I wish the media would check its numbers. Presidential elections are when voter turnout is always the highest in any race. When the Democrats had their Presidential primary in 2004 to run against the George W. Bush, for whom the media and the Democrats held nothing but contempt, they only managed a little over 7,000 voters turn out in Albemarle County.
Right on, Surly.
Here on the farm in Esmont, we love Tom P. IMO, He didn't cruise on Obama's coattails he fought hard and won because voters were finally fed up, disgusted and embarrassed enough by Virgil Goode to bother to come out and vote!
It is wonderful to actually feel like I have a moral, decent, hardworking, honorable, earnest guy working on my behalf rather than another good ole boy torpedoing the people of this state for the sake of his pals, big business & the wealthy.
To Surly's latter point, it is always shocking to see how few people bother to vote - here and nationwide. Meg Whitman won with only 400,000 votes where the population is 40 million (CA), and in Nevada where the fever was supposedly on to unseat Harry Reid, a grand total of 110,000 people bothered to vote (the winner getting a whopping 49,000). People whine and complain about their leaders but do not care enough to vote.
To Jeff D.
It is not the Dems who are saddling you with trillions in debt & bankruptcies. It is the result of 12 years of Rep rule in the House & Senate and 8 years of the disaster that was GWB, during which time the Reps had TOTAL control!
The party that deregulated everything - banks, utilities, oil & gas, etc., the party of big business over the consumer, the party of tax loopholes for the wealthy and giant breaks for billionaires, the party who squandered a trillion dollars to blow up Iraq, the party who supports the medical insurance industry over the rights of citizens to have affordable choices to maintain health, the party that vacated hundreds of EPA regulations, the party that championed the corporate bottom line, while US jobs went overseas and plants closed around the nation.
THIS is who brought us to where we are now fiscally. The economy collapsed before Obama was even elected, as did the housing market. BP was drilling in the gulf and violating hundreds of safety regulations long before Obama was in office.
We will be experiencing the fiscal, health & environmental fallout from the last 2 decades for quite some time. Expecting Obama to walk in the door and magically fix everything in a year (let alone blaming him for all of it) is ludicrous.
The party of "personal responsibility" and the "moral majority" needs to cowboy up, grow a pair, do something moral for once and take responsibility for their decisions.
Does anyone else get a chuckle when they pass a placard that says "HURT U.S. CONGRESS?" That kinda says it all, doesn't it?
If you vote Republican you'll get HURT
Let's HURT the country! Send a big old HURT to Congress!
Oh I am going to love the ads.
@Mark: "Oh, Hook, the low turnout in the City could be the result of the fact that you had to be a registered Republican to vote."
No such thing as "registered" Republicans or "registered" Democrats in this state. But keep pretending that you know what you are talking about, and we'll keep pretending to tolerate your idiocy.
Goodbye Teatards.
Perriello voted the way John Podesta told him as the guy is clueless beyond the Opie smile and oh gee act that St Annes graduates are trained to use when all too often in over their head.
BRIAN- they are all clueless and none of them vote the way those who elected them want them to vote.
They also forget that when they do get elected and take the oath of office, that they are representing ALL of us, not just those who elected them.
@Dee Kaye:
Way to go Dee Kaye! You libs just keep blaming Bush for all the miserable failures of Obama and his cronies. Maybe one day he'll man up and admit to his failures instead of pointing fingers at Bush, but I seriously doubt it. Why take responsibility when your Kool Aid drinking acolytes will accept "It's George Bush's fault" as a reason for your incompetence?
This result is very encouraging, and shows that while the teabggers use up most of the airspace and blurt out most of the noise (including on this blog string), the republicans haven't totally lost their minds as a voting bloc. I'm a fiscal conservative, but I think Tom P is doing a fine job, actually, and has vastly outshown and outworked lazy ol' Virgil, who brought home only mostly-tainted pork. Hurt has promise as a smart leader, and will give Tom P. a good fight in November, and it may even be an honest one (at least more honest than any of the wannabes woulda been), and that will be the true test of what local thinking people want their representative in Congress to be working for, instead of emotional loud-mouthing about the constitution (which most teabaggers don't understand, having nver graduated from law school -- that may sound elitist, and so be it, but one can't grasp the meaning of the original document by reading it alone and without some education in its 200+ years of judicial interpretation). Now maybe the Verga's of the political theater can go back to their prior a-political, non-voting ways. If the grownups don't re-sieze control of the GOP, the party is in big trouble, and will lose voters to the party that still resembles the sane middle (for now, that's the Dems, I'm afraid).
@TtruthInAdvertising.
Massive fail. You obviously did not take into account that President Bush proposed and signed the budget for FY2009, which extended to February this year. You also did not take into account that President Bush inherited a relatively strong economy, whereas President Obama took over an economy in a recession that was falling into a depression. But of course you would claim the bailout was not necessary at all. Please check what President Hoover did during the Great Depression before leaving more inane comments.
George W Bush increased the national debt by about $5 Trillion in his eight years in office to $10.626 Trillion - a rate of about $52 Billion a month.
According to the Treasury stats, Obama has managed to raise the national debt from $10.626 Trillion on 1/20/09 to the current figure of $13.081 Trillion, a monthly rate of increase of over $153 Billion for each of the 16+ months he's been in office. Almost tripling Bush's rate!
But all you Obama Kool Aid drinkers won't let this bother you. You'd rather believe the Teleprompter In Chief than your own lying eyes.
My bad, FY lasts from October to September, not to February.
On the topic of primaries and voter turnout, it is worthwhile to note that the Democrats had a statewide primary for Governor a year ago giving the nomination to Deeds. One was not needed for McDonnell.
What was the voter turnout? Only 6.3%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_gubernatorial_election,_2009
Obama has to go, but Perriello will suck wind first.
It's the Democracts fault! Not, it's the Republicans fualt!
I hate the 2 party system and all the mindless drivel it produces.
@ Dee Kaye: you present a cogent, accurate argument as to why the American economy is in the tank....but Repubs are indeed the biggest of hypocrites. They cannot (won't) admit that their supply-side, anti-regulatory policies led to the near melt-down of the financial markets, displaced millions and millions of jobs, and piled up extraordinary debt....oh yeah, and they've come close to breaking the military with two horribly managed (and unnecessary) wars.
On Nov. 12, 2008, just after the presidential election, the national debt clock hit $10.64 trillion. Where do Repubs like TommyBoy think that debt came from? That did not include the Bush TARP bill (the "bank bail out"). Moreover, since the federal fiscal year runs from October 1 to Sept. 30, when Obama came into office he inherited a huge deficit from Bush, plus he got an economy on the brink and two wars that were never funded (except through borrowed money). It still amazes me that Repubs pretend that none of this happened.
Bill Clinton is the ONLY modern president to balance the budget (three times) and provide budget surpluses, which were intended to start paying down the debt. Of course, when Bush came into office in 2001 he promptly set about squandering those surpluses.
Exhale is accurate in saying that Dems now represent the "sane middle." The Repubs ââ?¬â?? led by minds like Glenn Beck (W. Cleon Skousen? c'mon.), Rush Limbaugh (love that oxycontin), Sarah Palin (who bailed on the public trust at her first opportunity) ââ?¬â?? really are fast becoming a fringe party.
The Repub answer to the predicament(s) they caused is simply more of the same.
Anyone remember the "surprise votes" that Charlottesville magically came up with a few days after the election to flip the final results and get Periello elected?
The Dems are VERY good at manufacturing votes (Minnesota senatorial election 2008, which assclown Franken stole) and even at trying to throw out military absentee votes (Al Gore 2000 in FL). Vote early and vote often as the Chicago Dems say. Even dead voters vote Democratic. Don't dare try to ask for ID at the polls though. The Dems HATE that...they'd lose many of their so-called voters.
@WOW "If you steal a car, you go to jail, if you steal someones life savings, they make you CEO. I hope Perriello continues to hold the district." If you steal our children's and granchildren's future you're........a democrat.
@Unbelievable: You wrote "Please check what President Hoover did during the Great Depression before leaving more inane comments."
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Better yet, YOU check on the effectiveness of FDR's cure for the Great Depression. IT DIDN'T WORK!! The only thing that ended the Great Depression was WWII. At least FDR had some quals for the job whereas Obama has none. So let your White Guilt overcome your common sense, and keep drinking that Obama Kool Aid by ignoring the ongoing disaster that is his Presidency and blaming it all on George Bush. I sometimes wonder what it will take before libtards see the light. 12% nemployment? 15% unemployment? A successful terrorist attack? Nah. I don't think you guys will EVER see the light. White Guilt trumps common sense.
Heh, another cute teabagger here, it seems.
The problem with Roosevelt's New Deal was it was not aggressive enough to recover the economy completely. What it did, though, was arrest the Depression and start the economic recovery. The recovery was halted a bit in 1937... by the Conservative Coalition. This Coalition did your favorite thing: it rolled back some of the new deal and caused a recession. How quaint. There is your little economic history for today. Mind you, please do some research before spouting out more nonsense.
So what are you proposing here exactly, Teabagger? The recession began under President Bush's office. He started the bailout, and Obama extended and enlarged it under the premise of FDR's response to the Great Depression. Would you rather copy Hoover's stance? Under Hoover, economy kept spiraling down, you know.
But of course, you are listening to the BS Beck and Limbaugh are putting out. Keep on reading the facebook c*** that Palin is writing too. Thank you, once again, for making Americans the laughing stock of the world.