The popular former governor wants another crack at it.
The most recent former governor, precluded from running for a second consecutive term by an archaic law, is the odds-on favorite to get his old job back. WaPo (“Terry McAuliffe to seek a second term as Virginia governor“): Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who mixed business-friendly politics with liberal social policies over four hard-charging years as Virginia governor, will announce Wednesday that he wants his old job back. McAuliffe,63, is scheduled to formally kick off his bid for a second term Wednesday morning in Richmond, according to four people with knowledge of his plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them. A win would make McAuliffe only the second governor since the Civil War to make a comeback in Virginia, the lone state to bar its chief executive from serving back-to-back terms. McAuliffe left office in January 2018 with positive ratings, low unemployment and a record $20 billion in promised business investment. With a high profile and a professional background as a record-smashing fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton, he enters a crowded Democratic primary widely seen as the odds-on favorite. That’s an understatement. He would be running against a field of nobodies: McAuliffe, who is White, also faces some tricky racial and gender politics, given that the three Democrats already seeking the nomination are Black and two are women. They are Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, Del. Jennifer D. Carroll Foy (Prince William) and state Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (Richmond). While I don’t pay nearly as close to local politics as I do national and international, I’ve lived in Virginia 18 years now and have heard of only one of them, Fairfax, and that only because he was mired in scandal a while back. The Commonwealth was decidedly Republican when I moved here but is increasingly blue. And the GOP isn’t putting up any world-beaters: On the Republican side, there are two declared candidates: Del. Kirk Cox (Colonial Heights), the former speaker of the House of Delegates, and state Sen.
