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By Marc, January 4, 2010 6:43 pm

As we learned from the last election cycle in Virginia, the perceived “safe” candidate doesn’t always equate to electoral success. This brings me to the 2010 race for Congress in the 1^st Congressional District. Over the next several months, Democrats will decide on a challenger to Rep. Rob Wittman (R-1^st CD).

I believe the single most important factor in being able to win this race is the ability of our eventual Democratic nominee to energize Obama voters and get them to actually show up for this mid-term election. I’m under no illusion that the first congressional district is a particularly easy one for Democrats; however, I believe that Krystal Ball is the only candidate who can pull off a major upset. As she often states, this election will come down to “money, mobilization and a good message.”

Krystal has already raised more money than any of our immediate past Democratic candidates were able to raise throughout their entire campaigns. As of the last reporting period, she has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars; and it is likely from what I’m hearing that she will be approaching a half million dollars at the end of this reporting period (12/2009). To put this in context, this would be more than Shawn O’Donnell (D-2006), Philip Forgit (D -2007) and William (“Bill”) Day (D-2008) were able to raise combined throughout their entire campaigns. This huge cash advantage will allow Krystal to gather the necessary resources to get her message out.

In a recent interview with Blue Virginia, she listed education, environmental protection and technology based job creation as the issues she was most passionate about.

Being the husband of a public school teacher, I see firsthand what a vital role our teachers play in providing a quality education to our children. They are constantly being asked to do more with fewer resources. Krystal understands education. She understands that in order to maintain and grow an exceptional core of teachers that we must focus on “recruitment, retention and fair pay.”

Specifically addressing recruitment, I think that it is important to understand why professionals choose fields such as engineering over teaching. To me it is not simply all about the almighty dollar as it is about allowing teachers to actually teach. Teach not to a test, but allow teachers a bit more freedom in actually teaching. It seems to me that each year we are spending more and more time on test preparation, which directly impacts actual instructional time in the classroom. Why is this the case? Under the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government requires us to conduct tests to measure students’ academic proficiency. If certain academic thresholds are not met, this impacts the amount of federal funding a school receives. And, by the way, the federal government mandates that this testing be conducted, but provides no funding to support it (a.k.a. the “Unfunded Mandate”). I totally believe that we need academic standards, but the system is fatally flawed and is need of a major overhaul.

Krystal strongly believes that the federal government should not be “putting legislative handcuffs on local communities” and so do I.  Krystal also understands that there are many folks in local communities who may have a particular expertise that could provide tangible benefits to students in the classroom; however, they do not meet licensure requirements. She has proposed alternative licensure programs to help attract these folks and deal with an aging teacher population that will result in significant retirements in the coming years. One thing is for sure; Krystal is the candidate who offers the most concrete solutions to improve our education system.

With regards to environmental protection and technology based job creation, Krystal understands that they are not mutually exclusive. She understands that in order to address the ever-widening income inequality gap in this country that we must look at creating jobs in industries which we have a comparative advantage, such as renewable energy. This requires bold leadership and a true understanding of business. As a successful small business owner herself, Krystal understands that once “the costs of environmental destruction are brought from externalities to business expenses” that industries such as renewable energy will become economically viable. This will help create high wage jobs that just so happen to provide an added bonus of being environmentally positive.

If all of this isn’t enough to convince you that Krystal is one heck of a candidate, look at a recent endorsement by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), Chairman, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. In his endorsement he notes

“Krystal will be a strong champion of our armed service members and a fierce advocate for our veterans and their families, both inside and out of the district. I am impressed by her call to service and with her background as a CPA and small business owner. I believe she has a valuable perspective from which to legislate on economic issues, and will be the best voice for Virginia’s first district.”

As the Chair of the Stafford Democratic Committee, I have witnessed many successful and not so successful candidates and campaigns over the last two years. Krystal is one of the most intelligent, hard working candidates I have come across over this period of time and, put simply, is our best chance of winning a very difficult first congressional district race. She inspires people to want to work for her and produces a similar fervor amongst her supporters that was present in 2008 for President Obama. She is far from the safest candidate, a 28-year old first time candidate, but where did safe get the Democrats in the 2009 Gubernatorial race?

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By Marc, December 15, 2009 8:39 pm

Krystal Ball, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 1^st Congressional District, penned an op-ed late last week that laid out the need for the US to take the lead in confronting the reality of weather climate change. She went on to say that this isn’t only an environmental issue, but rather a national security and economic imperative.

Krystal’s Op-Ed:

I was born and raised in an area of Virginia surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay.  The bay is a priceless treasure and the largest estuary in the United States.  It is second only to New Orleans in its vulnerability to climate-change induced flooding.  I believe that man-made climate change is a scientific fact and confronting the reality of greenhouse gas emissions a critical moral and environmental imperative. Our failure to rise to this challenge would be a betrayal of our children and future generations.   Right now, the world’s attention is focused on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.   My attention is also focused on Copenhagen.  But not because I am an environmentalist, rather it is my patriotism, my experience as a small business owner and my study of economics that focus me on Copenhagen.

Eliminating our dependence on imported oil is a national security imperative.  Our consumption of foreign oil bought from petro-dictators is the financial engine of worldwide terrorism.  When I think about our men and women in uniform killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by improvised explosive devices and road-side bombs, as I marvel at their heroism, I can’t help but think about where the money came from to buy the explosives and the nails and ball bearings launched at them by jihadi cowards.  Our purchase of foreign oil funds the regimes who fund the terrorists.  It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter whether you want to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels because of global warming or because you want to cut off funds to the terrorists…the patriotic thing to do and the environmental thing to do are the same.  The US has 3% of the world’s proven oil reserves.  Osama Bin Laden’s birthplace of Saudi Arabia has 25%.  “Drill baby drill” may be the Saudi energy strategy, but it is no strategy for the US.

Cutting out our reliance on fossil fuels isn’t just about national security, it’s also about jobs.  That’s why I think about the Copenhagen Summit as the jobs summit.  Our car companies went bankrupt because we ignored world-wide demand for more fuel efficient cars and focused on higher short-term profits from SUVs and trucks.  China leads the world in manufacturing, not just in the manufacture of the household goods that used to be made in America, but in solar power production and electric vehicle production.  Our universities, our scientists, our venture capitalists are the best in the world by far.  We have the largest consumer market in the world and are the world’s largest consumers of energy.  The US is the natural choice to lead the world in energy-efficient, green technology and alternative and renewable energy.  India, China, Japan and Europe are all aggressively promoting green technology as part of their economic growth strategy.

We work longer hours and have more productive workers than India or China.  We are the best positioned in the world to lead in green technology  and if we invest in that leadership, the entire world will buy green technology produced in America by American workers.

In the US, a fierce political debate rages about whether climate change is real.  In the rest of the world, there is no such debate.  The rest of the world accepts the reality of climate change and they are gearing up industry, research investment and regulation to make their economies more energy efficient, less reliant on fossil fuels, to turn their buildings green, to develop electric cars and affordable solar power in order to confront the reality of climate change.   Those focused on events in Copenhagen are derided by “global warming skeptics” as tree-hugging internationalists who care more about world opinion than the economic reality of job creation in the United States.  They deride climate change legislation as “Cap and Tax” and sound alarm bells about the economic consequences of higher energy costs that come with controlling greenhouse gas emissions.   I say, for the cleanliness of our air, the purity of our water, the diversity of our wildlife, the national security of our homeland and the job creation of the 21st century, we need to heed the warning of Copenhagen and take the lead in the world-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.  And in the process, if we just happen to avoid a civilization ending climatic catastrophe, we can call that a bonus.

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By Marc, December 2, 2009 5:57 am

Conventional wisdom says that primaries produce battle-tested candidates who have wider appeal with the electorate. In Virginia anyone can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries, since voters do not register by party. This also allows Independents to vote in either primary too. Voters can only vote in one primary and not both. One can make the argument that a candidate nominated by primary would certainly have wider appeal; however, others insist that political opponents can manipulate the process and vote for the weaker candidate. Exit polling detailing the voter makeup of various primaries rarely give credibility to political opponents showing up in large enough numbers to sway a primary.

In the 2008 democratic presidential primary, the amount of excitement generated between the Obama and Clinton campaign’s can certainly be viewed as a positive influencer, which resulted in a fired up electorate that provided a springboard to an eventual victory in the general election.

This definitely wasn’t the case for the 2009 democratic primary in Virginia. The major difference was that in 2008 both campaigns had built solid field operations and both were poised to hit the ground running in the eventuality that they won. Money was a non-issue in that the candidate that won was pretty much assured of being able to raise a significant amount of money. Fast forward to 2009. The democratic gubernatorial candidates in trying to secure the party’s nomination burned limited financial resources (unless we are talking about Terry McAuliffe), while the lone republican candidate ran unopposed and got his field operation in place sooner. This is also unlike 2008 when republicans had a contested primary.

Conventions and caucuses are usually tightly controlled by the party establishment, which conventional wisdom would say would not necessarily lead to the candidate with the widest ideological appeal. Of course, this doesn’t always hold. What conventions and caucuses do buy you is a shorter, quicker process for nomination. Against an entrenched, well-financed incumbent, this allows a nominee to begin the general election cycle earlier and not burn a significant amount of financial resources.

There are tradeoffs in any decision on the best nomination method to choose. Since this blog hails from the 1^st Congressional District, here is a question:

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