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Someone Please Find Some New Politicians for Virginia

Virginia is a big booming state where everyone has lots of money, except for the people who don’t. Most of that money is concentrated in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where the federal contracting and lobbying boom has rained gold. It’s good to be rich, right, “New Virginia”? Everyone loves money. One big caveat, though: Virginia may now be cursed to have the slimiest possible politicians.

Since there’s so much money in Northern Virginia, statewide parties need candidates who are adept at soaking up that money to stay competitive. So who better to run than the top professional fundraisers, a.k.a. operatives, a.k.a. lobbyists, who all live in Northern Virginia?

Last year the world watched in horror as Virginia elected Democrat Terry McAuliffe, one of the sleaziest (read: best) fundraisers and operatives in the Democratic Party, to be its governor. McAuliffe, whom no one actually likes, only won because he was facing a cartoon nutball conservative by the name of Ken Cuccinelli. But he still won, which is creepy.

Now a variety of news outlets are reporting that Ed Gillespie, who is more or less McAuliffe’s equivalent in the Republican Party, is going to challenge the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, in 2016. Gillespie and McAuliffe were both chairs of their respective national parties at the same time, during the Bush years. (Virginia’s other senator, Democrat Tim Kaine, was also national party chairman at one point.) Gillespie also co-founded one of Washington, D.C.’s, top lobbying firms, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, and has represented such respected titans of industry as Enron. Gillespie now wants to run for office himself because, hey, ol’ Terry got to do it! His turn now!

Gillespie is running specifically because he can raise money. He will have challenges, though: he will have to “introduce himself” to the 99.9 percent of Virginians who have no idea who he is. Like Terry McAuliffe, he may even have to embark on a “listening tour” to meet the yokels and hear them out.

What we’re most looking forward to is when, because of silly old partisanship, he and Terry McAuliffe will have to pretend to have problems with each other and/or not like each other. What a strain that will be. Gillespie will have to tie Warner to McAuliffe’s corrupt background and McAuliffe will have to call Gillespie a corrupt lobbyist who would be Very Bad for Virginians. The truth, of course, is that they’re great chums. They both “get the joke.” As Mark Leibovich writes in This Town:

Terry and Eddie have become outstanding friends too. Everyone is outstanding friends, yes, but especially these two. They forged a “green room marriage” after years of doing televised talking-point tangling when they were party chairmen. They eventually became partners on the paid speaker’s circuit— top dog Democrat and Republican, going at it for entertainment’s sake and fifty grand a pop. Washington coming together, disagreeing without being disagreeable! “I love Terry,” says Gillespie, explaining his love-hate relationship with McAuliffe at the beginning of their dog-and-pony show, “and I hate myself for it.”

This election season in Virginia should make for some fine playacting.