The GOP’s Conservative Cuccinelli Problem

ASH­BURN, Va. — Down in the polls and out-raised by his op­pon­ent, Vir­gin­ia Re­pub­lic­an gubernat­ori­al can­did­ate Ken Cuc­cinelli is in­creas­ingly re­ly­ing on the na­tion­al party to come to his res­cue.

In the past two months, the Re­pub­lic­an Gov­ernors As­so­ci­ation has spent $3.6 mil­lion on tele­vi­sion ads in the state, on top of the $2 mil­lion doled out to the cam­paign earli­er this year. Three of the GOP’s biggest stars, Sen. Marco Ru­bio of Flor­ida, Sen. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, are all ex­pec­ted to cam­paign for Cuc­cinelli this fall, with Ru­bio sched­uled to come to Vir­gin­ia next month.

It’s a mu­tu­ally be­ne­fi­cial but awk­ward re­la­tion­ship between the nom­in­ee and the na­tion­al polit­ic­al es­tab­lish­ment. Re­pub­lic­ans—in­clud­ing the three po­ten­tial 2016 con­tenders—want to keep their grip on the highest of­fice in a ma­jor battle­ground state. Not to men­tion that the GOP is gun­ning to re­pu­di­ate Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee Terry McAul­iffe, a former na­tion­al party chair­man closely tied to Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton, the front-run­ner for the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial nom­in­a­tion.

“If you care about con­ser­vat­ive val­ues and get­ting our coun­try back on track, this race should mat­ter to YOU, even if you don’t live in Vir­gin­ia,” said Louisi­ana Gov. Bobby Jin­dal, chair­man of the RGA and an­oth­er pos­sible 2016 can­did­ate, in a re­cent fun­drais­ing ap­peal.

But the na­tion­al party’s much-bal­ly­hooed goal of win­ning over more minor­it­ies and wo­men on the road to the White House doesn’t al­ways line up with Cuc­cinelli’s fiercely con­ser­vat­ive track re­cord. The mis­match was evid­ent Tues­day, when the at­tor­ney gen­er­al was asked about Ru­bio’s bill to al­low mil­lions of il­leg­al im­mig­rants to earn cit­izen­ship. Some Re­pub­lic­an lead­ers say the bill will pave cru­cial in­roads in­to the fast-grow­ing His­pan­ic com­munity.

“I don’t sup­port am­nesty, if that’s what you mean, but I cer­tainly sup­port a fo­cus on the rule of law,” Cuc­cinelli said in a vis­it to the Ashby Ponds re­tire­ment com­munity. He ad­ded he hadn’t read the bill: “I’m run­ning for gov­ernor. That is a state of­fice.”

Cuc­cinelli’s ex­plan­a­tion doesn’t mesh with his long­time prac­tice of wad­ing in­to na­tion­al de­bates over im­mig­ra­tion, health care, and cli­mate change. For ex­ample, as a state sen­at­or run­ning for reelec­tion in 2007, Cuc­cinelli sent out a fun­drais­ing ap­peal de­scrib­ing his fer­vent op­pos­i­tion to a sim­il­ar im­mig­ra­tion re­form bill touted by then-Pres­id­ent Bush. “My Pres­id­ent is wrong,” reads the e-mail. “I no longer con­sider him the head of my Re­pub­lic­an Party.” Cuc­cinelli also warned: “If Wash­ing­ton com­pounds its his­tor­ic ir­re­spons­ib­il­ity on the is­sue of il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion by passing the pro­posed bill, there will be a bi-par­tis­an/non-par­tis­an polit­ic­al ex­plo­sion the likes of which we have not seen in some time.”

Ru­bio’s of­fice did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment about Cuc­cinelli’s po­s­i­tion on the cur­rent bill. Pro­ponents say it will cre­ate jobs, as many as 14,000 in each con­gres­sion­al dis­trict, ac­cord­ing to the Re­pub­lic­an-lean­ing Amer­ic­an Ac­tion Net­work.

“Ken Cuc­cinelli con­tin­ues to demon­strate that his ex­treme ideo­logy comes be­fore bi­par­tis­an com­prom­ise,” said McAul­iffe spokes­man Bren­nan Bil­berry. “Cuc­cinelli is again fo­cused on de­rail­ing a prag­mat­ic bi­par­tis­an com­prom­ise that is crit­ic­al for Vir­gin­ia’s eco­nomy be­cause of his ideo­lo­gic­al op­pos­i­tion.” 

Cuc­cinelli has also op­posed a new state law award­ing $600 mil­lion for roads and oth­er trans­port­a­tion im­prove­ments be­cause it will raise taxes.

The at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s con­ser­vativ­ism also came up Tues­day in a ques­tion from one of the res­id­ents of the re­tire­ment com­munity about his po­s­i­tion on birth con­trol.

“I don’t think gov­ern­ment should be do­ing any­thing about birth con­trol or birth-con­trol devices,” Cuc­cinelli said.

“So the ru­mors that you would sup­port birth-con­trol re­stric­tion are false?” asked res­id­ent Johnanna Bon­nely­cke.

“I wouldn’t call them ru­mors. I’d call them lies,” Cuc­cinelli re­spon­ded.

His re­marks drew a swift re­sponse from McAul­iffe’s al­lies in the Demo­crat­ic Party and the abor­tion-rights move­ment, who poin­ted to his 2007 “per­son­hood” bill that de­clared that life be­gins at fer­til­iz­a­tion and could have out­lawed some birth con­trol.

The gov­ernor’s race has been char­ac­ter­ized by bru­tal at­tacks by both sides and left Cuc­cinelli lag­ging 6 points be­hind McAul­iffe in the latest Quin­nipi­ac poll. McAul­iffe has weathered a string of neg­at­ive pub­li­city about his busi­ness re­cord, in­clud­ing a fed­er­al probe in­to a bid for for­eign in­vestors by his former elec­tric-car com­pany, GreenTech. Cuc­cinelli has also en­dured bad press, par­tic­u­larly about his ties to a busi­ness­man whose re­la­tion­ship with fel­low Re­pub­lic­an Gov. Bob Mc­Don­nell is un­der fed­er­al in­vest­ig­a­tion. Cuc­cinelli has tried to sep­ar­ate him­self from the mat­ter and was cleared of eth­ics vi­ol­a­tions, but he’s been hit hard by at­tack ads link­ing him to the scan­dal.

“One of the prob­lems with be­ing out­spent is that it’s aw­fully hard to push back,” said Cuc­cinelli, who was trail­ing McAul­iffe by $5 mil­lion in dona­tions at the end of June.

An­oth­er res­id­ent of the seni­or cen­ter, Bill Vi­tale, told Cuc­cinelli not to worry about the tele­vi­sion spots. “Shortly after they’re on, people can’t re­mem­ber what they’re about any­way,” he said, adding that “I think you’ll be a fine gov­ernor.”

Cuc­cinelli didn’t hes­it­ate to take sev­er­al shots at McAul­iffe dur­ing his ap­pear­ance Tues­day in a key swing county in North­ern Vir­gin­ia. He de­scribed the race as between “frugal Ken versus uni­on Terry,” re­fer­ring to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars the Demo­crat has ac­cep­ted from labor. Cuc­cinelli also noted that he’s held elec­ted of­fice in Vir­gin­ia for a dec­ade while McAul­iffe has nev­er served in pub­lic of­fice.

“There’s an as­sump­tion that they’ve already been con­trib­ut­ing to their com­munity that they’re ask­ing to lead, and in my race, that as­sump­tion is not true,” he said. “I’m the only can­did­ate that’s been do­ing that in Vir­gin­ia.”