McDonnell leads Democrat Creigh Deeds, 58-41% (Survey USA) and 55-40% (PPP).

Bolling leads Democrat Jody Wagner, 56-42% (Survey USA) and 50-38% (PPP).

Cuccinelli leads Democrat Steve Shannon, 57-41% (Survey USA) and 52-36% (PPP).

According to today’s debate in Richmond, he says that he wants to be pro-business centrist. Wow, this is quite a change for someone who is clearly meant to dress up as an AFL-CIO cheerleader.

Perhaps, we should examine Shannon’s record with the AFL-CIO. According to VPAP records, Shannon has received more than $136,000 from various unions in his quest to be Attorney General. Since 2003, he has received $162,000.

Additionally, he has voted against Virginia’s Right to Work Law during the previous General Assembly session and this alone was enough to garner a 100% approval rating from the AFL-CIO every year, while he was serving in the General Assembly.

Here’s the breakdown:

Bob McDonnell. 59
Creigh Deeds. 40

Bill Bolling. 56
Jody Wagner. 42

Ken Cuccinelli. 56
Steve Shannon. 41

This is where the real fun began. As Greg was taping this particular question, a campaign staffer, who works for Shannon, came up and started hitting the camera, demanding who Greg was, then started taking flash photography thinking that this would damage the tape.

Here’s the video:

What does Steve Shannon and his campaign have to be afraid of? Are they protecting him because he doesn’t have a clue about being Attorney General?

Lieutenant Governor candidate, Jody Wagner, also jumped on board by saying that she would work with Deeds to improve transportation, even if it included taxes. (Source: The Washington Post). Considering that Wagner miscalculated the budget, while serving as Secretary of Finance, there is no way that she would oppose tax hikes.

You can also glean from Steve Shannon’s record from the General Assembly to find how he views tax increases. In one of his first votes as a Delegate, he voted against $400 million in tax relief, then he was voted for the largest tax increase in Virginia history.

In these hard economic times, it is obvious that the Democrats will take more money out of the pockets of working families. Is this the kind of hope and change we need in Virginia? I seriously doubt it.

ACORN has been in some trouble lately with promoting criminal behaviors, like tax evasion, abetting prostitution, and sex trafficking for minors.  Both the House and Senate have voted to cut off funding for ACORN.   Additionally, SEIU gave ACORN more than $4 million since 2006-2007, and SEIU locals 100 and 880 are allied organizations to ACORN.  Better yet, ACORN Founder S. Wade Rathke referred to SEIU 880 as “one of the pillars of the ACORN Family.” Rathke was also handpicked by Stern to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.
With all of this corruption from both SEIU and ACORN, Creigh Deeds, Jody Wagner, and Steve Shannon should do what’s right and return the contributions.  Pat Mullins, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, called on the democratic candidates to give back the money.  Mullins said:

“It’s pretty clear how intermingled ACORN is with SEIU,” said Chairman Mullins. “They have become a focus of attention in Congress for these recent disgusting scandals involving everything from under-aged prostitution to tax fraud. Throw in what we already know about their bogus voter registration efforts and the information is pretty condemning. That Democrats would gleefully take money from a closely tied organization tells you what you want to know – they’ll check principles at the door, so long as the check clears. Deeds, Wagner, Shannon and the rest of the Democrats should give it all back.”

Attorney General candidate Ken Cuccinelli made a statement asking Shannon to return the funds:

“Steve Shannon has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the SEIU – whose link and close working relationship with the renegade organization ACORN is well documented” said Senator Ken Cuccinelli. “SEIU’s long standing financial support and its affiliation as an allied organization of ACORN across the country requires a repudiation of the relationship” added Cuccinelli.

“I applaud the United States Congress for moving to de-fund ACORN of any tax payer dollars, a move that should have occurred years ago. ACORN’s well documented illegal activities, including voter fraud, should give all Americans pause. Voters have a right to know that ACORN affiliated and allied organizations are funding Democrat campaigns this year in Virginia, and what do they expect in return?” concluded Cuccinelli.”

VASocialConservative has a great post featuring a web video released by Cuccinelli.

The final debate is before the Richmond Bar Association, which presented reasonable rules and a great debate format to work with, but this clearly was not good enough for Shannon’s campaign. The rule of two candidates asking each other questions was not deemed appropriate enough for Shannon.

Is there something Steve Shannon is afraid of answering in a debate? On July 27^th, Cuccinelli sent an email to Shannon indicating that the first question was asking when was the first time he [Shannon] read Melendez-Diaz. Seems like a reasonable question, right? Especially considering that there was a special General Assembly session called to address this case and its ramifications in Virginia. One of the major roles of an Attorney General is to debate cases before a court of law, yet Shannon refuses to debate Cuccinelli.

Meanwhile, Bill Bolling holds a 46-40% lead over Jody Wagner with 14% undecided. Ken Cuccinelli still holds a commanding lead over Steve Shannon in the Attorney General’s race. With 17% undecided on who they will vote for, Cuccinelli holds a 48-35% lead over Shannon.

Things are still looking up for our statewide candidates, but there is still a lot of work to do before the November elections.

Steve:

I appreciate your “prompt” reply to my initial debate challenge that I sent on July 13th.

I was a bit surprised however to read your list of “agreed” upon dates in your letter. For starters, the date for the Prince William Committee of 100 (PWC 100) debate was entirely false. We were still working with the PWC 100 as recently as this morning to settle on a date.

PWC 100 debate organizers told my staff this afternoon that your campaign said you released an inaccurate date because you just wanted to say you had agreed to certain debates instead of listing “TBA” for the date.

And WTOP was pretty surprised to hear of your assertion that they had scheduled a debate. Mark Plotkin, the presumed moderator, confirmed this over the phone with my staff this afternoon and apologized (though HE had nothing to apologize for).

Steve, what’s going on here? I’ve never known you to just abandon common courtesy like this – and I don’t mean courtesy to me or my campaign, I’m talking about all of these third parties that you’re yanking around. This is still Virginia and I think Virginians reasonably expect more professionalism than what we’re seeing in your latest stunt (this is an actual “political stunt,” unlike my request to call a special session to deal with a real problem in our criminal justice system which you called a “political stunt”). Could this be because you’re feeling the heat from voters for not debating me? And suddenly you’re trying to give the impression of activity?

If you were so desperate to release a debate schedule with nonexistent dates, you should have just invited me to debate you in person while you were filming your debate with your dog.

I’m curious, how many takes did you have to go through until you got your dog to bark at just the right moment? Don’t you think the time you spent debating your dog would have been better spent speaking to voters about substantive issues they care about?

I ask you Steve, if you have enough time to be filming web ads with dogs, why don’t you have enough time to debate me before October?

You’ve provided a list of 3 debates. These three take place in either Northern VA or Richmond. We’ve only debated once so far, and that was in Virginia Beach in an unpublicized appearance that you only FINALLY agreed to two days before it happened (you remember, if I didn’t agree to your restrictions, you weren’t going to debate). What about debating in Southside, Roanoke, the Shenandoah Valley, Eastern Virginia and Southwest? I’ve been taking my campaign to every corner of the Commonwealth for over a year now, why won’t you join me there?

The point of my original 12-debate challenge was to take us around the Commonwealth so that we would have the opportunity to address voters in every corner of Virginia and talk about the issues they care about. Those issues differ from one part of Virginia to another.

So I am going to ask you again. Why won’t you accept our 12-debate challenge? What are you so afraid of?

Sincerely,

Ken Cuccinelli

Time to man up, Steve, and DEBATE!

After hearing of Steve Shannon’s silly, time wasting tele-conference, Senator Ken Cuccinelli pledges NOT to do the same. However, Ken Cuccinelli did issue the following challenge:

“Steve, last week I sent you a letter asking if you would follow up on your pledge to debate me across the Commonwealth. As of today, I have yet to receive a response. I will not debate you via fax, nor by “tele-phone conference”. Pick a day, any day this weekend, or this week, and you can ask me your four questions, and I will ask mine. The people of Virginia deserve real substantive debates on issues they are concerned about. You’ve ducked two debate invitations already….will you duck this one?

Below is a link to the letter Senator Cuccinelli sent last week challenging Steve Shannon to debates around the Commonwealth. Instead of debating in person, it appears that Shannon’s “new” campaign team wants him to debate via fax.

Here is the letter that Cuccinelli sent to Shannon.