From the Archives: Charlottesville write-in voters honor former candidates, South Park characters

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on November 4, 2015, following Virginia's general election.  The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site is scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Charlottesville write-in voters honor former candidates, South Park characters

Local radio hosts Rob Schilling and Joe Thomas proved they have followers by winning dozens of write-in votes on Election Day in Charlottesville. The two talkers got write-ins in all five contests that were on the ballot.

The November 3 election featured uncontested races for state Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates, five candidates competing for three seats the Charlottesville City Council, four candidates for four seats on the city's School Board, and three candidates for two open positions on the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District.

According to unofficial write-in totals released by the Charlottesville Electoral Board, WINA-AM's Schilling, a former City Council member who was elected as a Republican in 2002, got seven votes in that contest while WCHV-AM & FM's Thomas got nine. Schilling also got four votes for state Senate in the 25th District (which was won by incumbent R. Creigh Deeds with 90.5 percent of the vote) while Thomas got six. In the House of Delegates race won by House Minority Leader David Toscano (with 89.95 percent), Schilling had six votes and Thomas had three.

Thomas outpaced Schilling in the write-in votes for School Board by six votes to one. Schilling had two votes for Soil and Water District Director to Thomas' one vote.

Thomas Jefferson remembered
It is often said that in the Charlottesville area, founding father Thomas Jefferson is often spoken of “as if he just left the room,” and the Sage of Monticello was written in by voters in every contest on Tuesday: four votes for state Senate, four votes for his former seat in the House of Delegates, and one vote each for City Council, School Board, and -- in the district named for him -- Soil and Water District Director.

City Council member Dede Smith, who failed to win renomination by the local Democratic party in the June primary, received 121 votes from supporters who wanted to see her retain her seat. She also received three votes each for School Board and Soil and Water District Director.

Previous City Council candidates Brandon Collins, Mike Farruggio, and Charles “Buddy” Weber received four, three, and four votes, respectively, in that contest.

Weber and Farruggio both received one vote in the race for state Senate, as did T. J. Aldous, who was the Republican nominee for that office in 2011. Former Charlottesville City Council candidate Jon Bright got nine votes in that contest as well as two in the 57th District House of Delegates race. Tom McCrystal, who was the Republican nominee for that delegate seat in 2005, received two votes.

Sabato, Lark, and Parker
Local celebrities who received votes for state Senate included political scientist Larry J. Sabato , former national chairman of the Libertarian Party James W. Lark, former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate James Webb, 2016 Fifth District congressional candidate Jane Dittmar, and 2015 Republican City Council candidate Anson Parker. So did Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner Rick Sincere.

Former independent candidate for the House of Delegates Robert Brandon Smith III and local GOP activist James Neale both received votes in the 57th District delegate race.

Lena Seville, who ran for the Democratic City Council nomination in the June primary, received two votes in that contest, while Peter Kleeman, who ran for that office as an independent in 2007.

Willa Neale, who chose not to run for another term on the School Board, received two write-in votes.

South Park fans may be pleased to learn that Kyle Brofloski, Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, and Kenny McCormick all received votes for School Board, as did PC Principal and “Mr. Garrison.”

Suggested Links

Charlottesville write-ins reflect voters' loyalty to Perriello, Hurt
Few though colorful write-in votes cast in Charlottesville in Election 2012
Charlottesville write-ins reveal voters’ allegiance, impishness
UVA political scientist analyzes 2012 election, looks toward 2016 GOP nominee
Georgetown philosophy professor Jason Brennan explores ethics of voting

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/charlottesville-write-voters-honor-former-candidates-south-park-characters

Carnival Catsup

My absence from the blogging keyboard has resulted in a lacuna with regard to recent blog carnivals that have featured my posts. So now it's time to play catch-up.

At the moment, I am reading a fascinating book by Toni Johnson-Woods, who teaches media and communications at the University of Queensland, called Blame Canada! South Park and Contemporary Culture.

Johnson-Woods' approach is mostly from a lit-crit perspective, rather than looking at South Park as a political or sociological phenomenon (although she does touch on those aspects, as well). In this she differs from, say, the University of Virginia's Paul Cantor in his essay, "The Invisible Gnomes and the Invisible Hand: South Park and Libertarian Philosophy," or Brian C. Anderson in his book, South Park Conservatives. But that doesn't make Blame Canada! any less interesting.

Johnson-Woods relies heavily on 19th-century Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. She asserts that South Park is an example of what Bakhtin calls "carnivalesque." She quotes his definition:

Carnival brings together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.... These carnivalistic categories are not abstract thoughts about equality and freedom, the interrelatedness of all things or the unity of opposites. No, these are concretely sensuous ritual-pageant "thoughts" experienced and played out in the form of life itself, "thoughts" that have coalesced and survived for thousands of years among the broadest masses of European mankind. This is why they were able to exercise such an immense formal, genre-shaping influence on literature.

With that in mind -- and keeping open the option of writing a longer review of Blame Canada! in the near future -- I return to the subject of blog carnivals. (How's that for a peg?)

To start, Divided We Stand United We Fall has a nice round-up of last week's various carnivals in a post entitled "Friday Flotsam," announcing that on April 23 there will be a new, anniversary edition of the Carnival of Divided Government.

Three carnivals included my submission of my post on Pope Benedict XVI's economic thoughts:

Profound Gratitude hosts Catholic Carnival 114 (that's longevity for a blog carnival!).

Framing the third Carnival of Principled Government with the festival of Passover as a celebration of liberty, Principled Discovery says this about my pope post:

Rick Sincere offers an analysis of the Pope's new book criticizing the West for exploiting the Third World. Take time to read the older article he includes about the Hidden Causes of Third World Poverty. He raises some interesting issues which we can see even within our own borders with the forced redistribution of wealth.

The Ward View (motto: "We hold no cows sacred") adds a subtitle to the latest Virginia Blog Carnival: "The Taxman Cometh."

As it happens, The Washington Times ran a front-page article on Pope Benedict's new book on Saturday, headlined "Pope's book sees capitalism as 'cruel.'" In it, AP reporter Nicole Winfield writes:

"Confronted with the abuse of economic power, with the cruelty of capitalism that degrades man into merchandise, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth and we understand in a new way what Jesus intended in warning us about wealth."

Benedict continues that message in another chapter on the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, and the need to love one's neighbor. In it, the pope decries how the wealthy have "plundered" Africa and the Third World, both materially and spiritually, through colonialism.

He criticizes the lifestyles of the wealthy, citing "victims of drugs, of human trafficking, of sexual tourism, people destroyed on the inside, who are empty despite the abundance of their material goods."

Rich countries continue to do harm to the Third World by giving aid that is purely technical in nature, he says in the book. "This aid has set apart religious, moral and social structures that existed and introduced their technical mentality in the void."

The book, already published in German, Italian, and Polish, will become available in the United States on May 15. That is when we will be better able to judge it for ourselves.

Virginia Family Values PAC?

Earlier today, I received a call from a reporter for The Hook (a Charlottesville weekly) to comment on a new organization called the Virginia Family Values PAC. She asked me to look at the group's web site and tell her what I thought. (She was seeking out a "libertarian" opinion, but I explained that I'm a Republican activist as well as a libertarian.)

The organization is not what you think. It's been set up to target for defeat those that the PAC considers to be the farthest right-wing members of the General Assembly.

Here are their targets:

Targeted Races

The below are ranked by asininity, from greatest to least. (With the understanding that these guys are all grade-A nutcases.)

Del. Bob Marshall (R-Loudoun/Prince William)
Bob Marshall is the looniest of the looney tunes in the House of Delegates. "Crazy bastard" is probably the best phrase. He still calls female university students "co-eds." He refers to sex between college-aged adults "frat boy antics." He calls birth control pills "sex pills," and has tried repeatedly to get them banned from colleges. As the Virginian-Pilot wrote in an editorial (05/04/2003), Marshall was a harmless lunatic when he was elected a decade ago. Now he's mainstream, not because he's changed, but, terrifyingly, because he's surrounded himself with more and more fellow loonies.

Del. Dave Albo (R-Springfield)
Albo -- we swear we're not making this up -- introduced a bill in the 2004 session that would reduce raping one's own child from a felony to a mere misdemeanor (HB 1054). What the hell? He's generally opposed to sex, like these other guys, but apparently doesn't mind it quite so much when it's a father sodomizing his toddler.

Del. Dick Black (R-Loudoun)
In a "craziest bastard" race, it'd be a close tie between Marshall and Dick Black. Black thinks that sperm is a child, and should be protected accordingly. He thinks that birth control of all types -- the pill, IUDs, condoms, whatever -- should be illegal. He calls them "baby pesticides." He opposes government spending to promote the use of any birth control.

Del. Bob McDonnell (R-Virginia Beach)
Sen. McDonnell isn't satisfied living a sexless life down in Virginia Beach, or even enforcing his opposition to a healthy sex life in his capacity as the chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee. No, McDonnell would like to be the Virginia Attorney General, and is looking for the Republican nomination to be their candidate. His memory may be a problem though -- after all, he "can't recall" if he's ever engaged in oral or anal sex. Say, Bob? You're not being straight with us, are you?

The reporter had spoken to Dave Albo, who was "baffled" by his inclusion on the list (as was I). Albo was awkward and ineffective in last year's General Assembly session when the legislature considered bills to repeal the Virginia Crimes Against Nature statute in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, but what he did was not malicious, nor was it indicative of an unseemly obsession with other people's sex lives. In the past, Albo has spoken at meetings of Log Cabin Republicans (I know, because I was there, and I asked him a question about Virginia's weak-kneed, toothless charter-schools law). His fumbling of sodomy-law reform is not a reason to put him in the same category as Marshall or Black.

The new Virginia Family Values PAC seems to have taken its cue from South Park in terms of its clever effort at subversion on behalf of authentic family values. (To be fair, South Park uses vulgar language and situations to build an argument for essentially conservative values. This new PAC does not use that strategy but, still, there is no question but that the Virginia Family Foundation will have a cow over this.)

Here's what I mean. Dated January 9, the group's initial press release uses buzzwords that are sure to catch the attention of Goldwater Republicans like myself:

Virginians from across the commonwealth today announced the formation of a non-partisan political action committee to strengthen family values and families' political influence in Richmond and in the November elections. . . .

Virginia Family Values has named four of the candidates that they'll be targeting for removal from office for their anti-family votes: Delegate Bob Marshall (13), Delegate Dave Albo (42), Delegate Dick Black (32), and Delegate Bob McDonnell (84). All four candidates have consistently voted against family and parental rights, and have introduced bills that would increase the size of government while decreasing family freedoms and privacy.

"The family is the foundation of our society," explained PAC founder Waldo Jaquith. "Every time that these legislators have been given the choice between family values and bigger government, they've chosen wrong. They're way out of touch with Virginia values, and we intend to show them the door."

There is little on the PAC's web site that indicates precisely how they are going to target these four Delegates. Will they be supporting Republican primary challengers? (By my estimation, this would be their best strategy, since all four are in safe Republican districts.) If they wait until the general election and support Democratic challengers, will they be able to find other organizations of a common mind to catalyze contributions in sufficient numbers to mount a successful campaign?

I was frank with The Hook's reporter: I said that Bob Marshall is an embarrassment to the Republican Party. As puzzled as I was by David Albo's inclusion in the list, I thought it was unfair, as well, to include Bob McDonnell. McDonnell, despite his famous "Not that I can recall" gaffe, does not seem to be as pathologically sex-obsessed as Black and Marshall.

It's rare to see a group made up of Democratic and liberal activists -- Waldo Jaquith narrowly failed in a bid to get the Charlottesville Democrats' nomination to a City Council seat in 2002, and everyone expects him to return someday and become politically active in city politics once again -- using terms like "RINO" to describe Republicans like Marshall, Black, et al., for whom "RINO" is more accurate than they would be willing to admit. What a pleasure it would be if more Democrats wanted to rid our legislatures of RINOs and replace them with authentic, small-government, Goldwater conservatives.

Will that ever happen? An army of snowmen will reign in Hell before it does.



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