Virginia Sen. Mark Herring calls on Cuccinelli to take up McAuliffe’s proposal to ban political gifts

Virginia Senator and current Democratic Party candidate for Virginia Attorney General, Mark Herring, forcefully requested that Virginia’s current attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, take up Terry McAuliffe’s modest proposal: a ban on political gifts.

In light of the continuing allegations about Governor Bob McDonnell’s political ‘gifts’ from well-funded donors and the basic sense it makes to funnel the potential for corruption out of Virginia’s political system, Terry McAuliffe’s plan to ban political gifts is so logical that it pains me to even have to promote it as a worthwhile idea.

When McAuliffe announced his plan to ban political gifts in April, he also stated that he would apply the ban to himself and his family immediately as governor in order to regain the integrity that Virginia’s top executive position has recently lost.

McAuliffe’s Republican Party challenger for governor, Ken Cuccinelli, has not however commented on his intentions (or lack thereof) to ban political gifts were he to be elected Virginia’s next governor. Unless the political heat turns up on Cuccinelli and his embattled political friend, Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s attorney general is unlikely to give his position on a political gift ban.

Were Cuccinelli to favor a ban on political gifts by the governor and his/her family, he would implicitly be throwing the current governor under the bus, so to speak, for being less than ethical in his political gift taking behaviors. Lest we forget, Cuccinelli has also “forgotten” to report political gifts made by Star Scientific. 

Who knows what else Cuccinelli and McDonnell have forgotten to disclose to the people of Virginia?

If Cuccinelli does not favor a ban on political gifts by the governor and his/her family, then the people of Virginia would see more clearly how corrupt Cuccinelli and the Republican Party political machine in Virginia truly are.

For Sen. Mark Herring, pledging to apply the ban on political gifts to himself would help "restore pragmatism and responsibility" to the Attorney General's office. Such a move would also, hopefully, help return the power of government to the middle and working class people of Virginia, not the CEO’s of Virginia and their socioeconomic equivalents.