Terry McAuliffe ‘statement of economic interest’ shows heavy investments in Virginia

In a clear blow to the Ken Cuccinelli campaign’s attempt to re-image Democratic Party favorite for Virginia governor, Terry McAuliffe, as an ‘outsider’, The Washington Examiner recently reported that McAuliffe has “40 major investments” in local governments around Virginia. Opps, there goes that attack line for the Cuccinelli campaign.

Candidates for Virginia’s governorship are required to file statements of economic interest by April 4^th. But candidates don’t have to disclose any investment worth less than $10,000 and can give value to their biggest assets at “$250,000 or more.”

To give one major example of the money that Terry McAuliffe has pumped into Virginia, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee has over $3 million issued in bonds by Virginia’s local governments. 

Some of the biggest bond issues include $250,000 each in Loudoun County, Prince William County, and the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. Sounds like quite the outsider, doesn’t he?!

Contrast McAuliffe’s sizable investments in Virginia to that of his Republican Party challenger for governor, Ken Cuccinelli. Cuccinelli’s only noted investment is Star Scientific, a Virginia-based company, at below $50,000. Star Scientific is also the same company that is under federal investigation AND is being sued by an investor who claims that Star Scientific “misstated” the promise of Anatabloc, a dietary supplement of Star Scientific.  

Virginia House Minority Leader David Toscano (Charlottesville) cautioned that Virginians see “handling of a case against a company with which you have this type of relationship as an inexcusable conflict of interest.”

Not surprisingly, Cuccinelli’s campaign spokesperson, Anna Nix, responded that Democrats were “peddling falsehoods and distractions.” It takes one to know one, Ms. Nix; that is the pot calling the kettle black.

Here again is another case of the right-wing demagogue unable or unwilling to practice what they preach or live up to the standards they seemingly hold everyone else to. If, for example, McAuliffe is an ‘outsider’, even though he has made significant investments in Virginia, what does that make Cuccinelli, a man who has used his office to aggrandize his own bank account, pursue his own ideological aims, and to run for Virginia’s governorship?

Whether or not Cuccinelli is an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’ is really beside the point, though. Cuccinelli is as toxic to the state of Virginia as the greenhouse gases which he denies are a factor in the planet’s warming. 

This is not someone Virginia wants or needs as their next governor.