Why is Pete Snyder (still) running for Lt. Governor?
Pete Snyder has a rather short history in Virginia politics. He seemed to have come out of nowhere in 2012, and that’s pretty close to reality.
In 2008 Pete and his wife paid $1.675,000 for a house in Alexandria, prior to that he lived in Arlington and DC after growing up in Pennsylvania and graduating from William and Mary. He didn’t appear at Fairfax county Republican Committee until 2012 although he gave the committee $500 in 2004, a year prior to giving the same amount to Tom Davis for his run for Congress. (The FEC search function is here, search with Pete’s name and filter by using Virginia so that you don’t get other men sharing Pete’s name in various states). In 2010 and 2011 he was not a republican delegate at any conventions. He wasn’t even on the Virginia Republican’s radar screen.
Snyder contributed to some republican candidates prior to 2012, most notably, $25,000 to Bill Bolling’s campaign in 2008-2009. The only money Snyder has ever given to the current candidate for Governor, Ken Cuccinelli, was a measly $130 for his inauguration in 2010. Snyder gave more than that to his opponent, Jeannemarie Davis, for her run for Senate in 2003. That’s one of Pete’s earliest contributions to any republican, anywhere. Pete has never given ANY money to ANY republican Presidential candidate, with the exception of Rudy Giuliani. Pete’s FEC donations are here. If Snyder could afford a house worth well over a million, and we keep hearing how wealthy he is due to his successful business endeavors, one might think he could have given some of our Presidential candidates a dime or two.
So when did Pete enter the political scene in Virginia? In 2011, McDonnell announced that Snyder would chair the Victory 2012 campaign. Shortly after that, in December of 2012, Snyder let it be known that he intended to run for Lt. Governor in 2013. Could it be a coincidence that Snyder gave $25,000 to Bolling’s campaign, was then appointed to be Victory Chair and at the same time decided to run for Lt. Governor with Bolling on the top of the ticket? No, it couldn’t be. When Pete was appointed to be Victory Chair 2012 McDonnell and Bolling thought that Snyder could then be all over the state, introducing himself to voters, in preparation for his run with Bolling in 2013. That explains why in the summer of 2012 Snyder gave ridiculously long speeches at Loudoun Republican committee and Fairfax Republican committee talking about himself. He was supposed to speak about Victory 2012 for 2 minutes. Instead of that, he was mercifully stopped after a 25 minute speech about himself. In 2012 Pete failed miserably at his job at Victory and inexplicably continued his run for Governor. He and Bolling were going to prevail, doggone-it! But things didn’t quite work out the way that McDonnell and Bolling had hoped. Bolling saw the handwriting on the wall and knew that he couldn’t beat Ken Cuccinelli at a convention. Bolling dropped out of the race for Governor although he may soon return as a third party candidate, or a democrat challenging Terry McAuliffe. ( Senator Steve Martin isn’t the ‘wild and crazy guy’ in Virginia politics, Bill Bolling is.)
After Bolling dropped out, Pete continued on his own. He was chosen to run for Lt. Governor by Bill Bolling and McDonnell and now Pete is all that is left of their ‘dream team’, all that remains to carry on the old Bolling message. Poor Pete, left with only his BBQ grill and a cadre of young people from the Bolling campaign. The good news is that Pete has plenty of out of state money coming in, thanks to his wife having spent many years on Capital hill, working for Senator Roy Blunt. (Yeah, that Roy Blunt.) That out of state money is hiring young followers across the state to help spread the Bolling message and grill BBQ. All of those connections were supposed to help elect the Bolling/Snyder team. Now Snyder alone will benefit from all of those hefty out-of-state donations.
20 Responses to “Why is Pete Snyder (still) running for Lt. Governor?”
It’s my understanding that Bolling may run as an Independent candidate. I also don’t know of any “third party” with which Bolling is affiliated. Why, then, does this author (as so many others) confuse and independent run with that of a third party candidate? Is it that difficult to understand the difference, or are these deliberate attempts to “smear” third parties?, perhaps by associating them with disgruntled Republicans or Democrats? Most third party participants are neither.
Because the Greens are trying to get Bolling for their candidate.
Unfortunately, the link for Pete Snyder’s FEC donations doesn’t seem to work. Is it just me and, if not, could the link be corrected?
Thanks!
Sorry about that. I changed it to the FEC search function. Thanks for letting me know!
You’re attacking Snyder and nobody else who also has dirt. Who’s paying you?
Hahaha, don’t I wish I was getting paid! Unfortunately, none of the other candidates have Pete’s money! Nor were they dragged out of obscurity to run with Bill Bolling.
No major problem with the Snyder attacks, although it begs the question, does he really warrant the attention.
The FEC link does not work.
The home sale link does not work, and should not be fixed. It is bad form to publicize the homes of candidates.
We will know Snyder much more in mid April when he must file more campaign finance reports. We will then have a month before the convention to confirm or refute the Bolling connections.
And yes, his donation record given his suggested wealth is stingy.
Thank you for letting me know that the links don’t work. I have removed the link to Pete’s house but it is public knowledge, easily found on the internet. I posted the link as proof of purchase. But I’m fine with removing it. I’m quite sure all readers have access to whitepages.com. Again, it doesn’t take Sam Spade to find this stuff.
How will Sndyer’s filings in April show us the Bolling connection? Bolling chose Snyder because he could bring in out-of-state money to the Bolling/Snyder ticket. Snyder appears to be doing very well bringing in that money, just as planned. it just won’t benefit the Bolling/Snyder ticket as was intended. It’s benefiting all the young camp counselor kids who he’s hiring across the state. They love his ‘greater things’ (or is it ‘greater ideas’?) message and his barbecue! Heck, who doesn’t love pulled pork?! His pig grill is fun! They also like having a paying job. Bless their hearts.
No one runs for LG without the hope of becoming Governor. Why would anyone bother if there wasn’t the hope of becoming Governor? It’s a job similar to Vice President, not worth a warm buck of spit. Pete’s an unknown. Do the delegates and voters want an unknown chosen by Bolling, because he can bring in out-of-state money, to be our next Lt. Governor and later Governor?
That’s why he warrants attention. He’s an unknown who may well be a future Governor if he wins his current run. Is he the right man for the job? Delegates and voters will make that determination. They deserve to know the person they are choosing.
The donation record shows that Snyder has not been interested in politics until Bill Bolling. Having given almost nothing to politicians prior, and then giving Bolling $25,000, makes quite a statement. I’ll leave it to you what it might mean but it proves the point of my post.
The April filings will show a few of the Bolling connections. It will actually show the campaign staff transfer, to the extent it has occurred, from the Bolling team to Snyder in the expenditures. Former Bolling staff have a right to be employed, but a wholesale transfer of staff suggests they were working together prior to Bolling’s departure from the race.
The in-state fundraising can also be cross referenced with Bolling’s donors from December 2011-December 2012. The more overlap, the more it is apparent Snyder has been chosen by Bolling sympathizers.
I wish that the financial reports would show the staffers but it appears they are being hired through a 3rd party consulting firm. A clever way to do it so that we will never know just how many staffers he his hired. Of course Bill helped his staff to find jobs with Pete. The question now is will they return to the Bolling campaign when announces his independent or 3rd party run?
Is there another theory as to why Pete Snyder decided to run at the same time he was made Victory Chair? Why was he chosen for that job, as opposed to someone with a bit more experience as a campaigner? Pete had none, no experience at all. He was chosen to publicize his name and face prior to his run on the Bolling ticket.
Lovettsville Lady – please list all the Bolling staffers who work for Pete. I know of ONE. 1. ONE. Singular. Can you point me to any others? Your attack is disingenuous if you can’t show me more than one staffer who came from Bolling.
Do you really think that Pete or his staff would want me to do that? Would you feel better if I said Pete has hired Bolling staffers, supporters, and volunteers? Does it negate anything that I’ve said here about why Snyder’s running for Lt. Governor? Do you have some other theory as to why Pete, a complete political novice, was chosen to chair Victory 2012?
I don’t think they would be ashamed of the honest truth. I know lots of people who work with Pete’s campaign from across the board. Some folks who supported Ron Paul, others were die hard Romney, some Santorum and so on. He has folks who supported the AG, LG, Gov and the works. He has folks who were on both sides of the Fiminan/Herrity race. It does negate what you said, because its simply not true that you state his campaign is run by Bolling staffers.
What you have said here about Pete has been usually false or twisted. If you want to know why he was chosen as victory chair why don’t you ask him or ask governor mcdonnell rather than make childish attacks on his character because he doesn’t live in a shack. It hilarious though that you bash Pete for working tirelessly for Republican candidates up and down the ticket as the other candidates in the race were campaign for themselves. Its a bit ironic.
VirginaVirtucon must be scared. It was only a few months ago that VV was touting how many LG candidates there where and that it was anyone’s game. Now that Pete has become the top fundraiser and has become the top contender, they’ve written a number of recent attack pieces to try to diminish his career as a successful businessman. It stinks of the same tactics Obama used against Romney.
In addition they note that he has not been active in VA politics. If he had, I would not be surprised to see them calling for a candidate from the outside to shake things up? One person’s enemy is another person hero.
Also when did it become bad to have a following of young conservatives, who are passionate about a candidate? It’s their future.
Good luck Pete! I know you’re going to do great things at LG.
And we can’t wait to hear what those great things might be!
Duke, just what might we be scared of? I’ve got no dog in this hunt. I work for none of the candidates. Just what might I be afraid of.
Young people can be very passionate about someone, until they aren’t. Being paid also supports their enthusiasm.
Given the damage that Bill Bolling is doing, our first prerequisite in a new Lt. Governor should be “no realistic chance of a Bolling redux”. Which strikes Snyder and JMDD from the list immediately.
[...] Record: He has none. He did run the Virginia Victory Campaign for Virginia in 2012. He did it for free. I guess you get what you pay for based on the badly run Romney campaign in Virginia. Of course he did donate $25,000 to Bill Bolling’s campaign and was widely rumored to be Bolling’s choice for Lt. Governor before Cuccinelli stepped up and squashed that plan. While Snyder talks a pretty good game, his ties to Bolling, and his failed efforts to get Romney elected make me very leery of Snyder’s anti-establishment “street cred.” Read more here. [...]
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