Because this is a real stinker.
Reading the news these days, I'm reminded of the old joke about the rabbinical graduate who, upon assuming his first pulpit, is confronted by the sudden death of an elderly congregant. With the funeral scheduled for the next day, he scrambles to unearth a few poignant memories in order to prepare a proper eulogy, but learns that the man had few friends and left no family survivors. After delivering a brief sermon based on a handful of platitudinous Biblical verses, he calls for volunteers to step forward and share some kind words about the deceased. Once, twice, three times, he is met with stony silence. Finally, after a fourth desperate appeal for "someone to say something nice about poor Mr. Cohen," a voice is heard from the rear of the sanctuary: "His brother was worse."
Only in this case I'm not sure either of our subjects rises to a level of lesser opprobrium.
Because whether one's traditional loyalty or current credo leans left or right, the emerging consensus among a helpless Virginia populace -- as reported in the press or inferred by anecdote -- is that they are the victims of vast double-edged conspiracy, which will culminate on November 5, when they will be compelled to cast their gubernatorial ballot for either the slimy Ken Cuccinelli or the slippery Terry McAuliffe.
But don't take my word for it. Every person out of two dozen interviewed by National Journal at Dunkin' Donuts Shops in Northern Virginia on August 6 expressed dissatisfaction with the nominees, castigating one or the other as "a jackass," "a dirty politician," and "sketchy," and both as "just not good candidates." "Honestly, I don't care for either one," said Mike Figgs, a forty-year-old purchasing agent, exhibiting an admirable politesse.
Frustration with a Hobson's Choice of unpalatable electoral alternatives is hardly a novel sentiment, and surely dates back to the dawn of the Republic, along with its corollary, the relentless ferocity with which each campaigner lambastes his opposite number. Character assassination, distortion of voting records and policy positions, quotations taken out of contest -- these are all negative tactics whose effectiveness is evidenced by their persistent and widespread utilization and the quiet complicity of the party faithful. Lost amidst all the clamorous sound bites is the extent to which each side's vitriol merely counteracts the other's and chases the dutiful, yet confused and undecided, citizen to the sidelines.
Sadly, both aspirants to the state's highest office carry the kind of baggage that's like fresh meat to a ravenous dog -- tasty and easy to chew -- and like a Warren Buffett trust fund to its lucky beneficiary -- a gift that keeps on giving. Even the professional mudslingers must be nonplussed at the ease of their charge, which requires only the scraping away of a thin crust of dirt in order to reveal a crater of sludge. Laughing all the way to the bank, they simply toss a few shovelfuls up against the television screen, and see what sticks.
Other than darkening the shadows under each villain's eyes and deepening his wrinkles, little embellishment is necessary; the grim facts speak for themselves.
How did the noble Commonwealth -- mother of such luminaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the Harry Byrds, and Linwood Holton -- land in this predicament?
Actually, considering the deplorable condition of the body politic, should anyone be surprised that this race has devolved to one pitting against each other gross caricatures of its predominant currencies -- intolerant pedantry and influence peddling? For just as Mr. Cuccinelli has staked his claim to power in the anti-federalist fulminations and social reactionary platform of the Tea Party, so has Mr. McAuliffe's rise to prominence been fueled by his rain-making prowess, his crony capitalist Clintonian connections, and his crass opportunism.
Cuccinelli quickly established his conservative credentials upon his initial election to the Virginia Senate in 2002 -- although approbation by his Fairfax County constituents was hardly universal, as he fended off a challenge from Democrat Janet Oleszek in 2007 by a slim 92-vote majority out of 37,000 cast.
He sponsored bills to toughen the licensing standards and regulatory oversight of abortion clinics, to require doctors to anesthetize fetuses undergoing late-term abortions, and to grant the unborn legal status by defining life as beginning at conception. He introduced legislation urging Congress to revoke the citizenship rights of the U.S. born children of illegal immigrants and to make non-fluency in English grounds for denying unemployment benefits. He earned endorsements from the National Rifle Association by advocating the state's recognition of concealed handgun permits from other states, the shielding of handgun application data from Freedom of Information requests, and the repeal of the state's prohibition on possession of a concealed handgun in a restaurant or club.
Although his Party held the majority in the Senate, only one of these measures passed. When asked about Cuccinelli, one Republican colleague called him "uncompromising," while another, Dave Albo, said, "Ken and I have different ideas on what your job as a representative is. I think Dave Albo is not supposed to go to Richmond to do what Dave Albo wants to do, but to do what his constituents want him to do. Ken's view is, 'Here what I think is right, and my job is to convince my constituents I'm leading them the right way.' "
Following the Obama ascension in 2009, which augured the threat, soon fulfilled, of a Washington, D.C. beyond restraint, Virginia's political winds tilted sharply starboard, and swept into office Governor Bob McDonnell, Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, and Attorney General Cuccinelli, who immediately embarked upon an unprecedented campaign of legal activism. He made no secret of his mantra, declaring, "I believe right now the battle of our time is the battle of liberty against the overreach of the federal government. I wouldn't pick any other four-year period to be in this office."
Within months, citing the 2002 Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA), he served a Civil Investigative Demand on the University of Virginia seeking a broad range of documents related to five grants awarded by the Commonwealth to climate researcher Michael Mann, a former assistant professor there from 1999 to 2005. While Mann's methodology had been attacked by global warming skeptics, the National Academy of Sciences and Penn State University, his current employer, had absolved him of any wrongdoing.
Cuccinelli's action prompted a flurry of criticism from a variety of sources, who labeled it by turn an "echo of McCarthyism" (nineteen professors at Old Dominion University), a "blatantly political investigation" (Union of Concerned Scientists), a "fishing expedition aimed at discrediting Dr. Mann's conclusions" (American Civil Liberties Union), an "ideologically motivated inquisition" (the science journal Nature), and a "war on the freedom of academic inquiry" (Washington Post).
In requesting dismissal of the demand, the University of Virginia noted that its vague, non-specific nature exceeded the Attorney General's statutory authority, that more than one-third of his brief was devoted to debunking Dr. Mann's research, and that four of the grants were received from the federal government, and the fifth before the FATA was enacted.
On August 30, 2010, Albermarle Circuit Judge Paul Peatross ruled that while the Attorney General could investigate state grants to scientists, Cuccinelli and his staff did not demonstrate that such action was warranted in this case, a decision that was subsequently upheld on appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court. By this time, the University of Virginia had expended $350,000 defending its position.
Cuccinelli elevated himself onto the national stage when, not five minutes after President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010, he sent staffers to the nearby federal courthouse to file suit against its implementation. While thirteen other states challenged its constitutionality on the grounds that it violated the Tenth Amendment by imposing costs on them without adequate reimbursement, Cuccinelli chose to go it alone; he argued that the federal government lacked the authority under the Interstate Commerce Clause to compel citizens to purchase health insurance or to fine or penalize them for failing to have coverage, invoking a recently-passed Virginia law protecting them from such a mandate.
He hit the talk-show circuit, polishing his notoriety as a conservative folk hero with such pronouncements as, "I don't think we've seen in my lifetime one statute that so erodes liberty as this health care bill . . . We view our lawsuit as being not merely about health care. That's actually secondary to the real important aspect of the case, and that is to protect the Constitution as we define the outer limits of federal power. If we lose, it's very much the end of federalism as we've known it for 220 years."
Although U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson agreed with Cuccinelli and allowed his law suit to continue, the U.S. Supreme Court refused his petition to expedite its hearing of the case, and bounced it back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. On September 8, 2011, that court ruled that Virginia lacked standing to sue and thus avoided having to address the merits of the matter. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote that Supreme Court precedents only allow states to contest federal laws that hinder their ability to regulate their citizens' behavior or administer a state program. By contrast, "the only apparent function" of Virginia's new law was "to declare its opposition to a federal insurance mandate."
Nine months later the Roberts Court upheld Congress's power to enact most provisions of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Cuccinelli's thirst for controversy was hardly quenched. One month after taking office, he requested that the Environmental Protection Agency reconsider its 2009 finding that unregulated greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and safety, stating, "We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground" -- a challenge unanimously rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
He attempted to purify the two-hundred-year-old Seal of Virginia by distributing lapel pins to staffers on which the formerly exposed left breast of the Roman goddess Virtus was covered by an armored breastplate.
He sent a letter to state universities advising them that they could not adopt policies that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, "absent specific authorization from the General Assembly," which one Democratic state senator likened to "turning back the clock on civil rights in Virginia." Governor Bob McDonnell supported Cuccinelli's legal reasoning, but issued an executive order to state agencies emphasizing that discrimination against any protected category, including sexual orientation, would not be tolerated.
In June, after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Virginia anti-sodomy law -- upon which a 47-year-old man was convicted for soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old girl -- he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that its 2003 decision invalidating a similar Texas law applied only to acts between consenting adults and not to those between adults and minors. Naturally, and perhaps justifiably, positioning himself as sexual watchdog exposed him to ridicule and to charges of prudishness and homophobia.
Which he would probably consider a compliment rather than a slander. In 2009, during his campaign for Attorney General, he vehemently reiterated the spurious distinction so often voiced by those who would portray themselves as semi-compassionate: "My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They're intrinsically wrong. And I think that in a natural law based country it's appropriate to have policies that reflect that . . . They don't comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to a society."
More recently, while addressing a conference of the pro-life Family Foundation in June 2012, Cuccinelli trumpeted one of the movement's stock rallying cries, comparing anti-abortionists to abolitionists. "Over time the truth demonstrates its own rightness, and its own righteousness," he said. "Our experience as a country has demonstrated that on one issue after another. Start right at the beginning: slavery. Today, abortion." Putting aside the patent absurdity of the analogy -- which posits an equivalence between a woman's control of her own body and the subjugation of one human by another -- I would suggest that states' rights firebrands like Cuccinelli and his ilk would most likely have been the peculiar institution's most ardent apologists.
Last year, after the State Legislature imposed stringent new regulations on abortion clinics -- subjecting them, at an exorbitant expense, to the exacting design standards of hospitals -- Cuccinelli flexed his Attorney General muscles to expedite compliance. When the Board of Health, whose purview it was to implement the regulations, voted to exempt existing facilities, he threatened to deny its members the legal services of his office, which represents state agencies and boards should they be sued for failing to submit to his recommendations. Duly intimidated, the Board reversed its position.
Cuccinelli has also thrown the weight of his office into the complicated wrangling between coalbed landowners and two coal companies -- EQT Production and Consol Energy -- over methane gas royalties. In 2010, he issued an opinion that the state's regulatory board had no new authority under a recently-passed law to resolve these disputes, a big win for the deep-pocketed companies, who could continue to strong arm the landowners into favorable settlements. Consol rewarded him with $140,000 in contributions. In June, U.S. Magistrate Pamela Meade Sargent criticized Cuccinelli's assistant, Sharon Pigeon, for offering the energy companies' attorneys advice on how to combat the class action lawsuit filed by the landowners, and referred the matter to the state's inspector general for investigation.
While his besieged cohort, Bob McDonnell, struggles mightily to salvage his reputation and the waning months of his governorship from the repercussions of $150,000 in unreported gifts, loans, and investments, courtesy of the flamboyant Terry McAuliffe wannabe, Jonnie R. Williams, and his lightweight nutritional supplements purveyor, Star Scientific, Cuccinelli maneuvers to avoid the fallout. He initially failed to disclose his own $10,000 stock holdings in Williams's company -- which occurred during a period when it was suing the state over an $860,000 tax assessment -- and $5000 (out of total of $18,000) in non-monetary trips, dinners, and lodgings provided him by Williams.
Thus, shadowed by the McDonnell scandal, and tainted by his own technical lapses, he emerges more sanctimonious than virtuous, skewered by his opponent as a chief law enforcement officer above the law. And unlike six of his predecessors, each of whom resigned his Attorney General position to run for governor, he stubbornly clings to power, demeaning it as a part-time job and flirting with conflict-of-interest entanglements.
A friend of mine claims that if the McDonnell indiscretions had erupted a few months sooner, the backlash would have doomed Cuccinelli, but I disagree. Regardless of where the majority of its constituents might stand on abortion, gay rights, gun control, or immigration -- and most polls suggest a 50-50 split -- the state Republican Party is firmly under the thumb of those elements who either subscribe to extreme right-wing positions on social issues as a matter of principle, or adopt them expeditiously as the surest route to electoral victory. And while Democrats may triumph in statewide gubernatorial and national senatorial and presidential races -- where voter turnout, especially that of minorities, is larger -- gerrymandering and conservative energy have thrust the Republicans into the cockpit of the State Legislature, where their pious preachments have become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Thus, once the nominating process was placed in the hands of the convention stalwarts, any hope for the investiture of a long-suffering loyal moderate, like two-term Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, was a fleeting fantasy. Lest anyone doubt the Party's desire to resurrect the fifty-year-old Goldwater-ism, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," witness the embarrassing tirades of Bolling's aspiring successor, E. W. Jackson, vilifying welfare ("It's harmed more African Americans than slavery."), Planned Parenthood ("It's killed unborn black babies by the tens of millions."), President Obama ("He has a Muslim perspective."), yoga ("It makes unsuspecting people susceptible to satanic possession."), and gays and lesbians ("They're very sick people psychologically, mentally, and emotionally.")
Heeding the wisdom of political guru Larry Sabato, who admonished, "If he is identified in the fall as the social issues candidate for governor . . . he's going to lose," Cuccinelli has undertaken a furious extreme makeover -- expunging all references to abortion, homosexuality, immigration, and gun control from his web site, replacing them with rather innocuous commentary on the usual suspects, like jobs, education, taxes, energy, and health care, and trying to divert attention from his controversial track record by focusing his campaign rhetoric on economic issues. But when he hoisted a tattered Republican banner advertising yet another tax cut, it was met with resounding indifference. Even Sabato acknowledges it's difficult for a leopard to change his spots --"I think it's more a matter of omission than moderating," he said -- and I suspect only those Virginians recently awakened from a ten-year coma will be fooled.
At least Cuccinelli has principles -- as odious as they might be -- and at least he has held elected office -- if only to promote a self-indulgent, moralistic agenda -- which is more than I can say for Terry McAuliffe.
The Democratic Party actually harbored a couple of reasonable, respectable, and electable gentlemen, former incumbents Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, now eligible for return to the statehouse after the prescribed four-year hiatus. Both, however, chose the putative higher honor, the black hole of the U.S. Senate, into which they leaped with great fanfare, boasting of their ability to make a difference; banished to the rear of their ninety-eight colleagues' queue, they have rarely been seen or heard from since.
Having previously confined his flesh-eating propensities to inside the Beltway, like a razor-toothed shark lurking beneath the Potomac, Terry McAuliffe surfaced in the wake of Kaine's sunset in 2009, entering the gubernatorial primary alongside Bath County State Senator Creigh Deeds and Arlington Delegate Brian Moran. Blinded by his Washington tentacles and insider reputation, the pundits tabbed him an early favorite. Voters, on the other hand, proved to be surprisingly astute; suspicious of his flagrant carpetbagging, his crafty capitalism, and his rookie status, they rejected him (and Moran) in favor of the down home Deeds, who hung his hat on a heartbreaking 300-vote loss to McDonnell in the 2005 Attorney General's race. This time around, however, he got swamped 59% to 41%.
The flames of ambition kindled, McAuliffe set about burnishing his image, which would be no simple task, considering his resume.
While frequently lampooned as the unscrupulous procurer who traded sleepovers in the Lincoln bedroom for six-figure checks, the circus performer who wrestled an alligator for a $15,000 campaign contribution, and the cad who left his wife in the delivery room to attend a celebrity party, McAuliffe's golden touch, for himself and his political clients, is no laughing matter. "The greatest fundraiser in the history of the universe," said Al Gore of him in 2000, after guests at a Democratic National Committee barbecue at the MCI Center coughed up $26.5 million, eclipsing by 25% the record take at a Republican gala one month earlier.
By that year, McAuliffe had raked in $300 million for the Clintons alone, including $75 million for their library, $8 million for legal bills, $5 million for Hillary's Senate campaign, and $17 million for the President's millennium celebration. Displaying the kind of generosity that would make the McDonnell family salivate, he interrupted a golf game to sign off on a $1.35 million mortgage guarantee for the Clintons' purchase of a home in New York's Westchester County, an offer they subsequently turned down after it sparked a firestorm of criticism.
He's a hyperactive, non-stop energizer bunny, a self-described hustler, matchmaker, dealmaker, pitchman, and showman, owner of a rolodex with 18,000 names, "more wired than your local power plant," according to Hillary, who "could talk an owl out of a tree," according to Bill. "He seems to me like a guy [with attention deficit disorder] who's overdosed on caffeine," said Katherine Clark, co-founder of a Reston technology company. "He's a bit fiery. He's a lot of things. I think that people . . . might think he's a slick-talking sales guy," once they recognize his penchant for drama and exaggeration.
Like the 1300 homes built by one of his companies which shrunk to 800 upon impartial scrutiny. Or the five business he claimed to have launched in Virginia which turned out to be investment partnerships, with no employees, registered to his residence in McLean. Even his buddy Bill said that while he would jump on a new car in Terry's lot, he'd have to think twice if it was a used one.
No exaggeration, however, is the tremendous wealth amassed by McAuliffe during his thirty-year career as a banker, real estate developer, home builder, telecommunications speculator, hotel owner, credit card marketer, venture capitalist, and political operative. While I begrudge no man the fruits of his labor and intellect, McAuliffe's path to prosperity seems to have detoured through an impenetrable jungle of financial intrigue, legal chicanery, perverse ethics, and corrupt favoritism.
McAuliffe started making money at age fourteen by sealing his Syracuse neighbors' driveways with tar. Sixteen years later he was elected the youngest chairman of a federally chartered bank in U.S. history, the Washington-based Federal City National Bank. By then he was already raising millions for the Democratic National Committee and presidential candidate Richard Gephardt, to whom, incidentally, his bank made a $125,000 unsecured loan, a potential violation of federal election laws. When the bank was later cited by regulators for unsound business practices, McAuliffe negotiated a merger with Credit International Bank, securing for himself the vice-chairmanship, a quid pro quo rather disconcerting to a bevy of fleeced shareholders.
In 1991, McAuliffe structured a deal for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) pension fund, in which it would acquire five apartment complexes and a rundown shopping center near St. Petersburg, Florida, for $38.7 million, $10 million less that the appraised value -- with McAuliffe retaining a 50% equity stake for a mere $100 down payment. His contact with the union was its former secretary and current co-chairman of the fund, Jack Moore, whom he had met while working for Gephardt.
Why the deep discount? Because the owner of the properties was the Resolution Trust Corporation, by way of the Orlando-based American Pioneer Savings Bank, which it had rescued from insolvency at a taxpayer expense of $500 million. And American Pioneer's principal stockholder? None other than Richard Swann, Terry McAuliffe's father-in-law, whose $2 billion real estate empire had collapsed along with his bank, driving him into bankruptcy.
In 1992, the IBEW pension fund loaned McAuliffe $5.8 million to purchase Country Run, an Orlando subdivision of mostly unimproved lots which had also belonged to Swann's bank, holding as additional collateral McAuliffe's half-ownership of the St. Petersburg properties -- collateral that evaporated when McAuliffe sold his share of those properties back to the pension fund (for $2 million). When sales of the Country Run lots stalled, McAuliffe defaulted; the fund, however, never foreclosed. Instead, after three years of non-payment, it unloaded the Country Run loan and the St. Petersburg properties in a package to a new company, American Heritage Homes, which eventually became one of the largest home builders in Florida. Its owners? Terry McAuliffe and Carl Lindner (now deceased), wealthy entrepreneur and dependable angel to both political parties.
Jack Moore was later sued by the Labor Department for mismanagement of the IBEW pension funds.
In a letter dated March 18, 1993, Prudential Insurance agreed to pay McAuliffe $375,000 if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation would sign a 15-year $187-million-dollar lease to occupy an office building it owned in downtown Washington. Since such fees are illegal under the Competition in Contracting Act, the Justice Department sued Prudential after it falsely certified that it had not hired anyone to influence the bidding process. McAuliffe said he was paid only to deflect Congressional objections. Prudential denied all wrongdoing, and settled the case for $317,500.
While unfairly maligned as "an unindicted co-conspirator in a union election money laundering case" by Mr. Cuccinelli, McAuliffe was called to testify in the 1999 federal trial of Teamsters' consultant, Martin Davis, who admitted devising an illegal scheme, never consummated, to move large donations to the Democratic National Committee through the union in return for contributions to the reelection campaign of union president Ron Carey. McAuliffe was also questioned about the lucrative commission he earned lobbying AFL-CIO leaders to switch their members' affinity credit card to the Household Financial Group.
In 1997, McAuliffe met Gary Winnick, who hired him to make political contacts and find deals for his billion-dollar venture capital fund, Pacific Capital Group. McAuliffe failed to turn over any rocks, but before severing the relationship Winnick offered him an investment opportunity in a telecommunications start-up, Global Crossing Holdings, whose grand design was to link North America and Europe with fiber optic cable. McAuliffe was prescient enough in 1999 to cash out most of his stock (for which he had paid $100,000) for $8 million, three years before the company filed for bankruptcy, costing its shareholders $54 billion. There's no crime in timely profit-taking, of course, only a modicum of hypocrisy, when McAuliffe's windfall is compared to his scathing denunciation of the Bush administration for its cozy connections to the scoundrels who masterminded the demise of Enron.
Another technology enterprise that didn't survive the internet boom, Telergy, put McAuliffe on its board of directors in 1999, and paid him a $1.2 million bonus when he successfully solicited Winnick for $40 million. Winnick also gleefully pledged a million dollars for the Clinton library when McAuliffe arranged a golf game with the president.
One would think that Mr. McAuliffe, in primping for his prime time premiere, would clean up his act -- or at least try to suppress any and all evidence of his past sordid shenanigans. Instead, he grievously miscalculated, and, in a frantic attempt to bolster his backstory as a job creator extraordinaire, became embroiled in a shady venture which merely epitomized and highlighted the greed, graft, and cronyism that have always greased his printing presses. Appropriately, he named it GreenTech.
In 2009, after his loss in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, McAuliffe founded GreenTech as an instrument to purchase a Hong Kong electric car manufacturer, Hybrid Kinetic Automotive Corporation, which he did in May 2010 in partnership with Capital Wealth Holdings, a British Virgin Islands-based investment firm. McAuliffe retained twenty-five percent of GreenTech, was named its CEO, and promised to create thousands of jobs. "I'm going to put it right in the heart of Virginia," he told a local Boilermakers Union. "And we're going to have 2000 folks down there -- all of them union members -- and show that when you do it right, everybody benefits, including the state of Virginia."
McAuliffe's business plan called for the establishment of an EB-5 regional center, which would recruit, approve, and collect, for a ten percent fee, foreign investments of at least $500,000 per individual in exchange for visas allowing foreign nationals to immigrate to the U.S. But when Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, reviewed GreenTech's application for then-Governor Tim Kaine, he expressed doubts as to whether the company could "put enough folks to work quickly enough to satisfy the requirements of the the EB-5 program [that is, ten for every $500,000 within two-and-a-half years]," whether the program funding could meet the capital needs of the company, and whether the company could be competitive, given its unproven technology and cost structure. Anderson also stated that the closely-aligned ownership structure of GreenTech and the regional center created a conflict of interest.
Spurned by his adopted state, McAuliffe reached across the aisle and buttonholed fellow hack, former Republican National Committee chairman, and then governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, to ask for a bailout. Answering to Barbour, the Mississippi Development Authority proffered a decade of "growth and prosperity" tax exemptions, and $8 million in grants, loans, free land, and employee state income tax rebates provided GreenTech secured an additional $50 million in capital and hired 350 workers in economically distressed Tunica County by the end of 2014.
Most of that capital was supposed to flow through the EB-5 regional foreign investment center, which was organized as Gulf Coast Funds Management, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, and managed by a Bill Clinton clique that included his brother-in-law Anthony Rodham, his IRS commissioner Peggy Richardson, and the former Democratic governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco -- a line-up heavy enough to muscle its way into the corridors of power. In an effort to accelerate the visa approval process, and generate cash, on December 15, 2010, McAuliffe himself wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, charging that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was "standing in the way of creating thousands of jobs for U.S. workers." In September 2011, a vigorous lobbying effort including direct emails from Rodham persuaded incoming Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to reinstate the issuance of visa petitions to EB-5 GreenTech investors, overruling career officials who had suspended it for security reasons in July 2010.
The amount of money that GreenTech has accumulated at this point is unclear; some estimates run as high as $40 million, including the Mississippi taxpayers' portion. But a few other facts are undisputed. Only about $10 million has been spent -- on a 100-acre tract of land in Tunica County, on site work which has consisted mostly of mowing the grass, and on equipment stored in a rented Lake Horn, Mississippi plant. No cars are being produced, and the facility employs about one hundred people. Mayorkas is under investigation by the inspector general of the USCIS for allegedly giving special treatment to GreenTech, as is Gulf Coast Funds Management by the Securities and Exchange Commission for guaranteeing to repurchase each investor's stock should the company fail to go public within five years, a violation of EB-5 rules. And last December McAuliffe quietly resigned as chairman of GreenTech Automotive.
Like his opponent, McAuliffe has scrubbed his web site of troublesome biographical data, including his tenure as chief treasure hunter for the Democratic Party and Clinton consiglieri; now it touts him as a "businessman, entrepreneur, and dad" who has "worked with and led numerous businesses in diverse sectors of the economy." Also sacrificed to pragmatism were his formerly principled positions on several key issues.
In 2007, he emphatically insisted "you've gotta shut the borders down" and deport illegal immigrants "to the countries they came from." Now he supports "a reasonable path to earned citizenship." During a 2009 primary debate he asserted, "As governor I never want another coal plant built. I want us to build wind farms, biomass, biodiesel, and solar." But in May of this year, after visiting the Bristol, Virginia, headquarters of Alpha Natural Resources, which contributed $10,000 to his campaign, he told reporters, "I was over at Alpha Natural Resources talking about what they need done to make sure we have a healthy work force of coal, that coal can continue . . . We need to make sure . . . this vital industry here in Virginia continues to grow." Also since 2009 he's "learned more about offshore drilling from experts in Virginia," enough to convince him to reverse his previous opposition to it.
In a campaign dominated and ultimately determined by negativity on the airwaves, McAuliffe's recent surge in the polls -- Quinnipiac puts him ahead 48% to 42% -- should be attributed to his proven ability to rattle more trees and outspend his rival, by a wide margin. As of the last reporting period, he had raised $12.7 million compared to Cuccinelli's $7.7 million, had purchased $1.9 million of television time compared to Cuccinelli's $1.1 million, and had on hand $6.0 million, more than twice Cuccinelli's $2.7 million. The future of the Commonwealth is now at the mercy of the almighty dollar.
So, which door does one choose? The uncompromising ideologue who abused the powers of his office or the heartless bagman who always managed to stay one step ahead of the sheriff? As for me, when the day of reckoning comes, rather than giving either one the satisfaction of having bought another constituent or casting a meaningless vote of protest for Libertarian Robert Sarvis, I intend to stand by my cynicism and arrange conveniently to be out of town. Because in reviewing this diatribe, I find that the title was too optimistic; it should have been, "Hold Your Nose and Hide."
