Having lived in Virginia’s 11th district for over 25 years, I care what happens there. Also, I want Gerry Connelly OUT of Congress. On Tuesday I looked forward to attending Pat Herrity’s victory party, but that’s not how things turned out. It was not a victory party. I did not know that I would also be attending Keith Fimian’s victory party. However, my good friend Spike Williams was kind enough to play chauffeur for the evening for his wife, myself, and our friend Terrence Boulden. Since Spike is chairman of Hunter Mill District, he wanted to attend both parties. Of course! We can always count on Spike and Julie to support all of our republican candidates.
Keith’s party was rockin’, a totally packed house, people spilling out of the restaurant with a hoard of people surrounding the candidate. The energy there was quite impressive. There was lots of press in attendance, interviewing different supporters. I began to think that perhaps Keith can beat Gerry Connelly. Then I came home and looked at the race, precinct by precinct. Those results are here. Pat Herrity won Fairfax County but I was struck by where in the county Fimian won. He won in the most liberal parts of the county! The four precincts in Vienna, which are reliable for democrats, ALL FOUR were won by Fimian. Fimian won Gerry Connelly’s district (Mantua) by nearly two to one! Fimian won in Chap Peterson’s backyard, Fairfax City. Can anyone believe that republicans voted for Fimian in the most liberal parts of Fairfax? No! It was democrats who voted for Fimian in the most liberal parts of the county. duh. Seems rather obvious that once again democrats have hijacked a republican primary. They did just what they were told to do by democrat bloggers and other party leaders.
It’s high time that the law was changed in Virginia so that we register by party. Without that, democrats will continue to decide who our republican candidates will be.
Filed under: 2010 Elections, Fairfax Politics, Keith Fimian, Pat Herrity, Virginia Politics
Ben over at NLS claims to have some data to indicate that’s not what happened. He said hed be posting it today. He’s obviously a partisan Democrat but I imagine he hates Gerry as much as you and I do so I am eager to see it.
As tempted as I am to blame the Dems I think there was alot of party purity enthusiasts who helped do Pat in. Fimian was great at motivating them.
I am truly astounded and baffled at Herrity’s performance in Fairfax City.
There is another side effect that hasn’t been discussed much and that is I no longer think Pat is a viable candidate for Fairfax Board Chairman in 2011 as he had been beforehand. Losing in a narrow special is one thing, but this one is going to be harder to forget, alas.
I did see some Dem “Operation Chaos” going on, but the margin would preclude this from being a decisive factor.
Does anybody know how we could close primaries in Virginia? One problem with the Open Primary is that it does make it difficult to target your true loyalists.
I congratulate Team Fimian. I do hope their fundraising will show a broader base of appeal in the 11th District going forward. The total turn oout was impressive, but both candidates need to work toward healing the divide.
[...] that we have open primaries in Virginia and no party registration, we’ve already begun to see the claims of an “Operation Chaos” style wave of Democratic crossover voting, especially in the [...]
This was half Cuccenelli’s “battlebots” and half democrat infiltration. A joint operation by dems and republican extremists. Comforting, huh?
[...] to the what-happened-last-night discussion, and the first entry I saw came from fellow VV blogger Lovettsville Lady, who looked at the Fairfax County numbers and promptly declared that Democrats had hijacked the [...]
[...] to the what-happened-last-night discussion, and the first entry I saw came from fellow VV blogger Lovettsville Lady, who looked at the Fairfax County numbers and promptly declared that Democrats had hijacked the [...]
[...] Virtucon yells hijack and holds up as proof of the crossover the fact that the Vienna precincts are tres liberal, yet Fimian won each of [...]
Um, Fimian also won Sully and Braddock, the only Districts in Fairfax with Republican supporters not named Herrity.
He also carried the Mount Vernon piece of the 11th, which Herrity carried in his race against Bulova last year.
No matter who we supported in the primary we have to get behind our nominee, the primary is over.
“Having lived in Virginia’s 11th district for over 25 years”
Given that Virginia’s 11th Congressional District has existed only since the 1990 census, that’s a neat trick, “Lovettsville Lady.”
It discredits your other comments, which are simply self-serving conjecture. However, I agree that we should have party registration in Virginia. That way, people who wish to discredit Conservative candidates would be precluded from speciously arguing that our nominating processes had been “hijacked.”
And let me make sure I understand this: your contention is that Fimian’s margin of victory was given to him by Democrats?!?!? That would be news to us in Prince William, where Keith carried 75% if the vote.
Jimbo (the horse’s ass) Young….where did she say that dems gave Herrity the boot in PWC? I’m sorry, but that was all of the whirlwind of far-right jagovs deciding for that county because decent folks never bothered showing up. (which means they deserve exactly what they get) Don’t try to blame dems for the win that hands the keys back to Connolly in November. We had a real shot here, and now it’s gone.
Ringo….like trying to dig a deep hole with a flat shovel….it’s just too much work now that these folks have tossed the roundpoint shovel over the hill….
I’m sitting this one out. Way to go guys.
Don’t count Fimian out yet. Get a load of these numbers.
http://virginiavirtucon.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/compare-and-contrast/
And while I am sure there was crossover voting, I don’t think in the end that it provided Fimian’s margin of victory.
JY, perhaps I should have been more clear. I lived in Vienna for over 25 years, you know, the same place Tom Davis and Jeannemarie lived, with a Gerry Connelly a few miles to the southwest.
I do hope that’s exact enough for you.
Riley,
So it was not the democrats alone who helped Fimian over the finish line, it was also the far right wing of the republican party. One of those groups will surely help Fimian in the fall, and one will not. The question is, will those on the right persuade moderates in both parties to support Keith? Will anti incumbency be enough to elect a self described right wing republican in the 11th district? Does Keith have enough time to paddle back toward the middle and abandon his to-the-right stance?
Riley. LL makes some great points there. We are talking about Fairfax, here. If the whole district were in PWC, we’d have no worries….now would we?
But the fact that after the whole “shooting fish in a barrel” thing (that lining these precincts with the faithful is) never translates to the general election where the other side gets to participate (in large numbers, I might add).