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(Today's) contest for Virginia’s next governor is drawing attention as a national harbinger, and it’s giving Republicans plenty to worry about.

Polls show Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the former national party chairman and fundraiser, ahead of Republican rival, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. If that’s the outcome of the race, McAuliffe would become the first candidate of a sitting president’s party in almost four decades to win election in the Old Dominion, a state that voted twice for both former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

“As Republicans, we have to ask, is there a business model issue here?” said former Virginia Republican Representative Thomas M. Davis III, director of federal affairs for Deloitte Consulting LP. “We have a Republican who’s opted to go the Tea Party route, and it’s absolutely clear it’s a losing strategy -- that’s going to be the message of this” election.

“Ken Cuccinelli has spent his career creating gridlock from the political fringe,” McAuliffe said during his appearance in Arlington. “The question in this election is simple: Will the mainstream, bipartisan majority in Virginia be drowned out by the Tea Party?”

Cuccinelli, 45, who filed suit against the 2010 Affordable Care Act the day Obama signed it, is casting the race as a proxy fight over the health-care law. He’s banking on the president’s appearance with McAuliffe amid headlines about the botched Obamacare rollout to give him a late boost.

His bid to gain momentum by making an issue of the health-care law may come too late. A Quinnipiac University poll released today shows Cuccinelli trailing McAuliffe with support from 40 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent backing the Democrat. Cuccinelli’s campaign has suffered a financial disadvantage relative to McAuliffe’s. He raised just under $20 million for the race, compared with the Democrat’s $34 million, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

And Cuccinelli’s ties to the Tea Party movement, once considered an asset, carry risks after the shutdown drove the Republican favorability rating to a historic low of 28 percent, according to an Oct. 3-6 Gallup poll. He has appeared alongside a who’s-who of Tea Party-aligned Republicans, attending a fundraiser with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the architect of the federal shutdown strategy, as well as stumping with Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio Florida, both elected with the small-government activists’ backing.

Polling experts and political strategists caution against over-interpreting the narrative of the race, particularly given that the other gubernatorial contest tomorrow in New Jersey -- in which a blowout re-election of Republican Governor Chris Christie in a Democratic-dominated state is expected -- may tell a different story.

Yet Davis, a former chairman of Republicans’ House campaign committee, said the expected New Jersey win drives home the same lesson being learned in the likely Virginia defeat, that his party must run candidates with appeal beyond the Tea Party to attract independent voters.

“It’s not the Republican brand versus the Democratic brand,” he said. “It’s what kind of Republican are you.”

Geoff Garin, McAuliffe’s polling adviser, said the race highlights a challenge facing Republicans in next year’s campaigns: to energize their core activists while simultaneously appealing to voters in the middle who typically determine the outcome of competitive races.

“Cuccinelli is emblematic of the Republican dilemma. It is impossible for them to do both of those things at the same time,” Garin said. “You cannot be the candidate of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, and get those people excited, and still be the candidate of the center.” More at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-04/tea-party-test-in-virginia-ha
rbinger-for-2014-senate-race.html]

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The problems have been long brewing in Virginia. Once a Republican bastion, the Old Dominion began to turn from red to purple in 2008 when Barack Obama became the first Democrat to win the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But in true swing state fashion, Virginia turned around and elected conservative Bob McDonnell governor in 2009; he managed to win by 17 points, cloaking his conservatism in a family-friendly demeanor.

Obama won the state again in 2012, buoyed by demographic changes and the increasing wealth in the region around Washington. Nonetheless, a centrist Republican might still have been well-positioned to win Virginia's governorship in this off-year election. But that does not remotely describe Cuccinelli.

A tea party favorite and self-described "Second Amendment-supporting Christian right-to-life home-school dad," Cuccinelli has built a political career on a foundation of strident social conservatism. Proclaiming "homosexuality is wrong," supporting abstinence-only sex education and devoting himself to abortion restrictions as a matter of faith and law, Cuccinelli has been eager to use political office to advance an ideological agenda.

As attorney general he sued to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel-efficiency standards, backed the controversial Arizona illegal immigration law and issued a legal opinion that sexual orientation should not be included in nondiscrimination statutes for the University of Virginia.

His extreme play-to-the-base conservative reputation was only accelerated by the selection at the state convention of E.W. Jackson as his running mate for lieutenant governor. He's an African-American evangelical pastor with a knack for saying things such as the following: Democrats are "anti-Christian, anti-Bible, anti-family, anti-life and anti-God"; "Liberalism and their ideas have done more to kill black folks whom they claim so much to love than the Ku Klux Klan, lynching and slavery and Jim Crow ever did," and "Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective."

Add this all together and you have the most far-right statewide ticket in recent memory.

Not surprisingly, centrists and other swing voters are looking elsewhere.

Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis is polling a respectable 10% -- an indication of the political costs that come from such strident social conservatism, even among fellow travelers on the center-right. Women voters are supporting McAuliffe by 20% -- a cavernous gap that reflects Cuccinelli's social conservative obsession. Against almost any other Republican, McAuliffe would be vulnerable, but not Cuccinelli.

October's GOP-driven government shutdown caused Cuccinelli to play defense, reversing longtime rhetoric by suddenly denouncing the effort to force a delay in Obamacare's implementation and even refusing to be photographed with Sen. Ted Cruz for fear of further alienating swing voters.

At the gubernatorial debates, the defiant culture warrior was reduced to bleating about the importance of bipartisanship and compromise -- laugh lines if you knew the first thing about Cuccinelli's record.

Cuccinelli's problems must be seen side by side with the success of another Republican running for governor -- Chris Christie. The New Jersey incumbent is cruising to re-election by a broad margin in a state where only 20% of voters are registered Republicans. He is narrowly winning nonwhite voters, and winning women by a 20-point margin.

The difference between the two candidates is self-evident -- Christie has governed as an unapologetic centrist Republican with a no-nonsense focus on fighting for fiscal discipline rather than an obsession with social conservatism. He has built cross-aisle coalitions, even on controversial policy proposals, and reached out beyond the base. He puts problem-solving ahead of partisanship or ideology. In other words, Christie is pretty much the opposite of Cuccinelli, and that's why he is winning in an otherwise ugly year for Republicans.

Conservatives will come up with lots of reasons why a swing state such as Virginia seems to be slipping away. But let's cut to the chase -- candidates who specialize only in playing to the base and pushing ideological absolutism lose. Extremes are always ultimately their own side's worst enemy. And Cuccinelli's last desperate attempts to present himself as a bipartisan problem-solver or a libertarian are really just evidence of the political bankruptcy of his position.

For those conservatives who always argue that moving more rigidly to the right is the answer to all the Republican Party's political problems, the toxic Cuccinelli-Jackson ticket is providing an enduring Exhibit A in making the opposite case. It is an example of what not to do -- nationally and especially in must-win swing states such as Virginia. http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/04/opinion/avlon-virginia-cuccinelli/index.
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In Alabama, it's a fight for the future of the GOP, as a tea party conservative and a more establishment Republican battle in a primary runoff for an open U.S. House seat.

The GOP congressional primary runoff in Alabama marks the first time since the partial federal government shutdown that Republican voters will weigh in on which direction they want to take their party. ... it's also seen as the next chapter in the post-2012 election establishment vs. tea party movement fight for the soul of the GOP.

Bradley Byrne, a former state senator, is facing off against businessman Dean Young. Byrne has far outraised Young thanks to major help from the business wing of the party, including the Chamber of Commerce, and has garnered the endorsements from establishment figures, including several Republican House leaders.

Young, meanwhile, has gotten donations from a political action committee run by former Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle, a darling of the tea party movement, as well as endorsements from conservative talk show hosts Mark Levin and Erick Erickson, and a lot of support from Christian conservatives.

While both men are conservative, the race may hinge on who is viewed as the most conservative. Byrne has said he would only vote to raise the debt ceiling if it is part of a larger deal, while Young has vowed not to support an increase at all and said over the weekend he would not vote for Republican John Boehner as House Speaker.

Because of the negative political impact of the 16-day government shutdown, which Americans mostly put at the feet of tea party-backed members of Congress, groups such as the Chamber of Commerce have said they will be more involved in primary fights next year. Their aim would be to elect candidates who don't have such strident views and to help prevent tea party candidates from stopping their agenda of keeping the government open, pushing for comprehensive immigration reform and overhauling the tax code.

The GOP primary battle in Alabama may be an appetizer before more intra-party fights ahead in 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/politics/election-2013/index.html?hpt=hp
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