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There is no doubt the Ana Gamanol story was the dominant political news story in Virginia. It was the most sought after search term that brought people to our web site yesterday. It was perhaps the first time, that a US Senate Race story trumped other political news.

The Times-Dispatch has a nice background piece on the Gamanol Gaffe including some past indiscretions from other campaigns, including Mark Warner’s.  

The story also got national attention.

Two new polls are out on the presidential race in Virginia. Both go to Sen. John McCain, but one within the margin of error. It does boost his lead in the RCP average to a slight lead of 2.3%

McCain maintains the lead despite the relentless push of Barack Obama in Virginia. His running mate Joe Biden brought his wife to the Commonwealth yesterday and will be here again today.

The McCain camp responded to the Biden event in Sterling, with an event of their own featuring two famous wives: Susan Allen and Geri Thompson.

Obama has also dispatched a high profile figure to Richmond on his behalf. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will speak at the University of Richmond at 3:30pm. The Collegian plans to liveblog the event.

In Richmond news, Mayor Wilder offers up a budget compromise, which allows for plenty of fodder for candidates on the City Council. 

And our Rachael DePompa has a web exclusive. 5 profiles of all 5 candidates for Richmond Mayor. Its something you can only see on decisionvirginia.com.

Sorry, for the slow posting today. I have family in town for the NASCAR race and have been busy entertaining at my house, thanks to Hanna!

Anyway, I want to welcome Rachel DePompa, who sits right next to me in the NBC12 newsroom, to the blogosphere. Today she launched the Decision Richmond blog, which will focus on the Richmond Mayor’s race. Rachel blogged extensively at her last station in Roanoke, so I am confident that she will be amazing.

Check it out  www.nbc12richmond.wordpress.com.

I will also post from time to time on the Mayor’s race, but Rachel will lead the newsroom in our coverage.

Stay tuned, because I have a major interview coming in the week ahead.

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.