From the Hotline:

Given the choice of Huckabee, McCain, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, 26% of VA GOP voters and 27% of MD GOP voters chose Romney as the most qualified candidate to manage the economy, despite the fact that he suspended his campaign nearly a week ago.

Labels: economy, Maryland, Virginia

The first "primary" race in Virginia just took place today! And Romney won.

At 1:30 today, Mitt Romney filed 15,000 signatures to meet the requirements for Virginia presidential primary.

Every campaign in the race will tell you that Virginia has the most difficult process to get on the ballot. You have to submit 10,000 signatures with at least 400 signatures from each 11 congressional districts. Each county or city entity has to have its own petition page for signatures and you need the voter address and in some cases the last four digits of the social security number for it to be valid. People who collect signatures have to be registered voters in Virginia (in other words you can't farm this out to high schoolers).

The VA ballot submissions opened up yesterday and as far as we know Romney is the first candidate to file.

Other candidates like Huckabee are paying 50 cents per signature. Thompson and Edwards are just getting started.

It will be interesting to see on December 14th who the actual candidates will be on the ballot.

As background, there are only a handful of paid staffers for Romney in Virginia but dozens (if not hundreds) of volunteers chipped in during the elections in November to help get the signatures required. Whole Saturdays were dedicated to rounding up the needed votes. Unlike other campaign Romney did this with a grassroots flare and did not outsource it.

Kudos to Team Romney, Lt. Gov. Bolling, and the VA team for making this happen.

This is one more example of why Romney is the best candidate to face the formidable forces of the DEMS in the general election.

Labels: grassroots, primaries, primary, Virginia

This is absurd. Washington Post's "The Slueth" (aka Mary Ann Akers) tries to politicize the VT incident against Romney because he refused to politicize it.

In my mind... the Romney campaign took the high road -- even going so far as to cancel all events on Tuesday and postpone a D.C. fundraiser that was months in the making. There is no reason for noted pols to get attention over this issue.

The Sleuth would do well to take Gov. Kaine's advice:

VA GOV. TIM KAINE: I think that people who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I have nothing but loathing for them. This is not a political hobby horse or a crusade or something for a campaign or for a fundraising mailing. At this point, what it's about is comforting family members, doing what can be done to make sure that they have the ability to see their family members, that bodies can be released to families, and helping this community heal. And so to those who want to try to make this into some
little crusade, you know I say take that elsewhere. Let this community deal with grieving individuals and be sensitive to those needs. (Press Conference, 4/17/07)

Labels: the sleuth, Virginia, virginia tech, washingont post

Hotline is reporting that Mitt has canceled a fundraiser in Virginia scheduled for tomorrow out of respect for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings.


Hotline also has a take on Romney's straw poll wins in Horry, York, and Orangeburg Co.'s in South Carolina (a follow-up to the report here).

Labels: fundraiser, south carolina, straw polls, Virginia