Decision Virginia

In a move that will have enormous political implications, the private development company Highwoods Properties, has suspend its involvement in plans to build a new mixed-use development in Downtown Richmond that will include the construction of a ballpark in Shockoe Bottom.

Highwoods has been the driving force and muscle behind the plan to build the downtown ballpark that promised to bring activity and excitement to the historic section of Richmond.  However, the project has been stalled over debate over the placement of the city’s ballpark and what team should play there if and when the stadium gets built. A growing chorus of community leaders believed the downtown ballpark combined with shopping and luxury urban living could not be supported by Richmond’s economic engine.

The roadblocks raised by powerful parties, seemed to be too much for Highwoods, and despite their belief that the concept would still work, they are dropping out.

Tara Morgan will have more on this story tonight on NBC12 at 5 and 6, and I will continue our coverage tonight at 11.

You can see the entire statement from Highwoods Properties after the jump: **UPDATED WITH ENTIRE STATEMENT FROM MAYOR JONES**

Read the rest of this entry »

Democratic candidate for Governor Brian Moran today locked in the endorsement of Richmond’s new Mayor Dwight Jones. The move continues Moran’s work to lock in the support of the state Democratic Party establishment. It is not a big surprise that Jones would get behind Moran, given their work together in the House of Delegates. Moran, of course, was the leader of the House Democratic Minority and Mayor Jones was the Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. 

The Moran campaign released this statement from Jones:
“Brian has a long, proven record of fighting hard for working families in Virginia. I’ve known Brian for more than a decade and worked side-by-side with him in the legislature. We’ve fought for equal rights, quality education and equal opportunity for everyone.”

The full release is after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Dwight Jones is now officially the Mayor of Richmond. The former member of the House of Delegates outlasted four other candidates to win the competitive race for Mayor. He now has the responsibility of guiding the city through a difficult fiscal environment and taking over in the wake of the Doug Wilder legacy.

Andy Jenks filed a report on Jones taking the oath of office. You can watch his report by clicking here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Nobles - bio | email

Despite all of the noise Doug Wilder has made during his time as Richmond’s Mayor, the charismatic, groundbreaking politician appears to be going out quietly.

Wilder will serve one more day on the job as Richmond’s Mayor. Dwight Jones is scheduled to be sworn in to the position tomorrow in a low key ceremony.

Tonight on NBC12, we will take a look back at the 4 year roller coaster that was the Wilder Term.

Among the highlights we will feature:

*Wilder’s dramatic electoral victory

*His shake-up of city administration

*The appointment of Rodney Monroe and the subsequent controversy surrounding his degree from VCU.

*His role in the Obama campaign.

*The controversy surrounding his high level administrative aides.

*The attempt to evict the school administration from city hall.

*His constant battle for power with City Council.

We also speculate as to where Mr. Wilder could land in his post-mayoral life. (I welcome your comments as to where you think he will go next. )

After this evening’s broadcast, I’ll post the video of our story.

To see video from our 11pm story click here. Read the rest of this entry »

Current Richmond City Councilwoman Delores McQuinn has captured the democratic nomination for the special election to replace Mayor-Elect Dwight Jones in the House of Delegates.

McQuinn had the support of the Mayor-Elect and should cruise to victory in the special election, in the democrat- leaning 70th district.

The Councilwoman captured 398 votes to Henrico Attorney Carlos Brown’s 82 votes.

The special election is scheduled for January 6th.

At this point, no Republican has expressed interest in running.

Here is a look at a new (and rather lengthy) list of people appointed to the Dwight Jones transition team. Decide for yourself if it offers any clues as to who could end up working in his administration.

Click on the story link for the full release.  Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Nobles - bio | email

As expected the Virginia State Board of Elections today certified the November vote and declared Tom Periello as the winner in the congressional race in the 5th district. The margin of victory is less than 800 votes and certainly within the margin where Virgil Goode may ask for a recount that the Board of Elections will pay for. The question is, will Goode concede and make plans to run again in 2010, or will he force the hand of the BOE and make them count them all again? A liberal blog from Southeast Virginia has an interesting take.

If Perriello holds on to the certified victory, he will be a part of a series of landmark democratic wins in Virginia. In addition to Barack Obama and Mark Warner’s victories, The Dems picked up 3 congressional seats. However, the Roanoke Times published an interesting editorial this weekend about why their victories weren’t exactly perfect.

Elsewhere-

Mayor-Elect Dwight Jones holds a meeting today with his transition team. Jones plans to outline what areas the transition group will be focusing on and announce the appointment of some new members. There has been plenty of speculation as to who Jones will be appointing to some key City Hall staff positions. Similar appointments in the Wilder administration were cause for quite a bit of controversy. We will see if today’s announcement gives us any indication who might be in positions of power in a Jones City Hall.

And Attorney General/Candidate for Governor Bob McDonnell goes to the dogs. His office gets a “surprise” visit from some canine supporters.  

Ryan Nobles - bio | email

I hope you didn’t think I was kidding when I said that Decision 2009 is already underway. We have a governor’s race on tap in the state of Virginia and already the battle lines are being drawn. But while candidates are lining up for 2009 and beyond, there are still quite a few lingering questions still out there from 2008 yet to be decided.

The biggest lingering issue in Virginia politics is the congressional race in the 5th District. Democratic challenger Tom Perriello declared victory in his race against Republican incumbent Virgil Goode. The race had it’s share of mud-slinging but has yet to identify a winner. The final tally had Perriello ahead by just about 750 votes. Goode, however has said that he is not ready to concede and this race appears to be headed to a recount. Goode can’t even ask for a recount until the vote is certified on Nov. 24th. If Perriello hangs on, it will cap an historic turnaround for Democrats in Virginia that not only saw them win the Presidential race for the first time in over 40 years, but also a U.S. Senate race and pick up three seats in Congress. (Rep. Thelma Drake lost her seat and the seat vacated by Rep. Tom Davis also went to a Democrat).

The current democratic domination of Virginia politics looms large over the 2009 gubernatorial race, but could the democratic brand be too popular? Three heavyweight candidates, Del. Brian Moran, Sen. Creigh Deeds and former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, are already committed to running for Governor as democrats. It is still very early, but if their problems are not resolved, the primary could turn into a slugfest which leaves the victor wobbly and wounded waiting for the anointed Republican Bob McDonnell to knock them out. (yes I was going for a record of boxing metaphors there)

McAuliffe has become a ubiquitous figure at Virginia Democratic events. He was all over the Democratic Victory party in McLean and even was the guest of honor for a Barack Obama debate watching party here in Richmond. (Where we asked him about running for Governor) McAuliffe’s early testing of the water has been met with some harsh reaction from editorial page writers and his potential opponents. Brian Moran’s communications director Jesse Ferguson said that “Given Mr. McAuliffe’s previous ambitions to run for Governor of Florida, he needs to explain to the people of Virginia if he’s doing this for the right reasons.”

However, he remains a formidable figure with a vast amount of resources. Moran and Deeds certainly have local connections with their distinct bases, but could McAuliffe just outspend and out-chat the other two to death? It is clear that this could be a tense winter for Democrats, hungry to be the first to hold on to the Governor’s mansion, for three consecutive terms.

McAuliffe will appear along side a cadre of politicos at an election postmortem organized by UVA sage Larry Sabato.

Elsewhere..

Bob McDonnell makes the rounds at a heavily watched Republican Governor’s Association meeting, hoping to become one of them.

Dwight Jones is officially Richmond’s Mayor-elect and the scramble for his seat in the House Delegates is already underway.

Also..

Tonight at 11, I will have a special Reality Check about how the demands of the struggling economy is forcing many people make difficult choices about how they spend their money. We put a local woman to the test. She agreed to live on only $20 for an entire week. We will show you just how difficult it was and give you the chance to read all about her experience tonight on NBC12 news.

We had a little bit of news today in the race for Richmond Mayor. This is our Richmond reporter Rachael DePompa’s day off, she normally covers this on her beat at Decision Richmond. (She has dubbed the event “Endorsement-Gate”)

You may have heard that Delegate Dwight Jones recently earned the endorsement of the Richmond Democratic Committee. This endorsement is more symbolic than it is substantive because candidates for office in the city of Richmond, technically run non-partisan campaigns. In other words, they are not running under the banner of any specific political party.

However, the endorsement of the city committee carries weight because the city is largely democratic and all of the candidates running for mayor consider themselves democrats. There is no doubt that any of these individuals would love to run under the democratic banner, the same banner that will carry Barack Obama’s name come November.

When Jones was given the endorsement, it caused a major uproar, because the committee did not endorse by an up or down vote. This caused the other candidates to cry foul and claim that Jones obtained the endorsement through backroom deals and they leveled many other harsh political terms like “egregious” “inappropriate” and a “conflict of interest”. Candidate Paul Goldman even suggested that Jones not refer to himself as the endorsed candidate until the whole thing gets hashed out.

Goldman, supported by Robert Grey and Bill Pantele has filed a formal appeal to revisit the endorsement, which will be heard tomorrow night. Today he called a press conference along with Grey and Pantele to reiterate his strong opposition to the way the endorsement was handled.

During the press conference, (which was held outside the offices of the Times-Dispatch, apparently in an effort to maximize coverage and leave the paper without an excuse not to cover it). Goldman went as far as to say that if Jones were elected Mayor along with the taint of this unfair endorsement deal, he may not be able to compentently serve the people. Here is his quote:

“We cannot afford to do it wrong because when the next mayor speaks and asks for sacrifice and the people think that he was elected by a tainted process, the people will not follow that Mayor.”

Another interesting side note to this impromptu press conference, was a side story that is indicative of the fight for coverage amongst the 5 candidates for Mayor. Paul Goldman regularly calls press conferences and sends out press releases, many of which never get covered. About a month ago, the opponents in the race started a new tactic where they banded together to hold events, hoping to entice the media to show. (Which worked to a point).

However, given the limits of their time, the candidates don’t often hedge their bets and show up to these events because they don’t want to be left standing around waiting for the media that may never show. Today two of the candidates scheduled to appear were there and one was not. That was until our cameras rolled up (we were the only tv station to cover the event). At that point this particular candidate’s staffer frantically called him and told him it might not be a bad idea if he showed up. He was there within 20 minutes.

I let you decide which candidate of the three in attendance fits which role.

We’ll have pictures from the event during tonight’s 6pm newscast.

While this blog has been dominated by the Presidential Race we have not lost sight of the fact that there is a race for Mayor. Tonight the candidates met in a debate that was moderated by my colleague Aaron Gilchrist.

In the very near future our Richmond reporter Rachel DePompa will start a blog specifically dedicated to the race for mayor. Another colleague, Andy Jenks covered the tonight’s event. His report is in our 11pm news and he provided this dispatch for our Decision Virginia blog:

Richmond Mayoral Debate

How do you adequately report the details of a 2 hour Mayoral debate in a 90 second television story? Very carefully, I suppose. I’m certain that if you put 100 reporters in the room at Thomas Jefferson High School, you’d get 100 very different results. There’s simply too much material and too little time. We can, however, begin to see some commonalities.

The candidates focused on several topics, including experience, baseball, the city jail, homelessness, government cooperation, and transportation. Questions were submitted by audience members and the candidates followed the traditional response/rebuttal guidelines. Sometimes, of course, these “debates” seem more like “joint press conferences” in which each candidate simply tries to deliver the best sound bite within the given time frame. However, I found most of the exchanges quite engaging.

As for a personal favorite, I’ll paraphrase the following exchange involving three of the candidates and our own Aaron Gilchrist, who moderated.

PAUL GOLDMAN: “Maybe it’s about time we had somebody in the Mayor’s office, or on City Council who knew how to balance the budget, maybe even pass a budget!”

BILL PANTELE: “Well, Mr. Goldman, maybe if you hadn’t deleted the enforcement language in the charter that used to be there, none of this would’ve happened.”

AARON GILCHRIST (MODERATOR): “Each of you had two go’s at that, so I’m gonna move on.”

DWIGHT JONES: “Can I get a rebuttal?”

AARON GILCHRIST: “Yes, sir.”

DWIGHT JONES: “I give it to Paul.”

And so it went. Mostly, the candidates stuck to the issues, and it’s certainly healthy to have a thorough discussion of the ways to move Richmond forward. Let’s hope for more of that throughout the next two months.