McAuliffe touts job creation efforts as he eyes ’13 run

He is probably going to run for governor in 2013, but in the meantime former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe appears to be improving upon the weaknesses his opponents attacked him for in 2009.

The biggest attack from the ’09? That while the prominent democrat was a successful businessman, very little of his financial success led to jobs being created in Virginia.   A scathing Washington Post story during the primary campaign was used as fodder by McAuliffe’s rivals, Sen. Creigh Deeds and Brian Moran. (Deeds went on to win the primary by a wide margin)

At the time, McAuliffe told me that he never claimed to create jobs in Virginia.   He is hoping that by 2013 it will be a claim he can easily make.

McAuliffe has used his considerable personal wealth to purchase  a Virginia paper company and a Chinese electric car company. The car company, GreenTech Automotive,  is about to open a plant in Mississippi. The first completely American made electric car will roll off the assembly line in July.  McAuliffe then has plans for a “major” facility announcement later in the year, which could be a plant in Virginia.

“Three cargo ships are full of equipment which will be our first plant in Mississippi, and we’ll roll out our first car, all American made, on July 4th this year,” said McAuliffe.  “(We) will sell the cars back to China and to Europe, and here.”

And even though the cars will run on electricity drawn predominately from non-clean burning sources like coal, McAuliffe believes they will be a remarkable improvement over the internal combustion engines on the road right now.

“The electric vehicles are 90% more efficient than the internal combustion car engine,” he said.  “So, yes, you’re using electricity, but you’re only using 10%, if you use a gallon of gas, you use basically 10% of that for electricity.”

Most of  the current electric cars on the market cost somewhere in the $40,000 range, but McAuliffe said GreenTech’s first 100,000 vehicles will be sold for only $10,000.

If this company is successful, McAuliffe could be well on his way to convincing people that he is the job creator that he claims. An effort that would fit pretty well into a narrative for a second run for the Governor’s mansion.

My entire interview with McAuliffe can be seen below. You can see the complete transcript on NBC12.com.  In the interview, I also ask McAuliffe if he thinks Sen. Jim Webb will run for re-election.