Since the 2008 Presidential election, engaging prospective voters through social media websites has become an important priority for campaigns and candidates. If you visit any campaign website these days, you’re more than certain to find a link to that candidate’s Facebook profile, Twitter page, YouTube page, etc.

That was the case with Cuccinelli and Shannon. For this post only, we will compare the Facebook and Twitter profiles of these two former opposing candidates for Attorney General.

On Facebook, Ken Cuccinelli’s personal profile page has 2,883 friends in total. His Facebook fan page has a total of 3,023 supporters.

Steve Shannon on the other hand has 1,106 friends on his personal profile page. His Facebook fan page has 1,861 fans in total.

Now on Twitter, Cuccinelli has 844 followers, and is himself only following 5 people. He’s updated his Twitter profile 68 times throughout the campaign.

Shannon on the other hand has 936 followers, but he’s following 1,394 people as well. He’s updated his status 75 times throughout the campaign.

What meaning can we form from these numbers? Republicans, Cuccinelli’s supporters known for being less technology connected as evident from the 2008 elections have made a 360 in terms of online engagement. On both mediums, Cuccinelli out Facebooked, and out Twittered Shannon.

Republicans we’re excited in Virginia this time around, and they showed it through social media online.

Just over a year ago many pundits believed that Virginia had completed its transformation.  Gone were the days of Republican control.  George Allen, John Warner, and Jim Gilmore were but distant memories of an old way of doing things that held on for too long, some thought.  And what better symbol for the transformation of the commonwealth than the election of the first African American President.

The NOVA (D.C. suburb) explosion was supposed to have been the culprit.  The electoral map of Virginia was thrown upside down as Fairfax and Arlington counties (among others) voted for Democrats in big numbers in 2008.  Could the Republicans be losing their hold on Virginia?

As we saw on last Tuesday, 2008 was nothing but an aberration – the exception and not the rule.  Is Virginia more “in play” than it was twenty years ago?  Yes.  But that could be said about many places.

Days after the election, Charles Krauthammer may have put it best in his artcile “The Myth of ’08, Demolished”

“This was all ridiculous from the beginning. 2008 was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war-weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only 7 points…November ’08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ’09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.”

The media won’t tell you that though.  They still view Virginia to be a state slowly slipping away from the GOP.  Lee Hockstader of the Democratic, err, Washington Post wrote on November 5 that the Republican Party is not “ascendant” in Northern Virginia.

Here’s the rough back-of-the-envelope calculations for how NOVA went last week:

Governor
McDonnell: 259,000
Deeds: 255,000

Lt. Governor
Bolling: 245,000
Wagner: 269,000

Attorney General
Cuccinelli: 243,000
Shannon: 267,000

“Moral of the story: The GOP swept the state thanks to a mix of factors. But they didn’t close the deal in the one region that sustains all the others…”

Lee looks at those numbers and sees trouble; I look at them and see promise.

Perhaps Bob Dylan was right when he wrote:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

If conservative Republicans—by focusing on “bread and budget” issues like taxes and the economy—can keep it as close in NOVA as Cuccinelli (and Bolling) did, while maintaining strong showings throughout what some call “Real Virginia,” well then the Republican Party of Virginia doesn’t have much to worry about.

So you know what that means? His original State Senate seat is now up for grabs!

With the 37th District Senate seat (located in Northern Virginia) now open, many Republican candidates have declared their candidacy in this new upcoming special election.

According to Ken in his words, “I know and respect all of the Republican candidates who have declared their candidacy. This is a big part of the reason that I am staying out of this race. Neither I nor anyone on my staff will be working for or endorsing any of the candidates in the nomination contest.”

With that said, lets make sure this Senate seat stays Republican. Like the title of our blog says, don’t tread on Virginia. Cuccinelli of course agrees with this and pledges to help the nominee with his full endorsement and support.

In related news, rumor is that Delegate Dave Marsden, a liberal Democrat is planning to move into the district in order to run for the seat. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?

Let’s work together to make sure that Democrat Carpetbagger, or any liberal Democrat opponent loses in this special election. Let’s keep the 37th red!

As Ken quotes, “Daniel Webster once said, “God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”

Ken says that we all belong in this category. “Your dedication was inspiring. Your support of our cause was humbling. The momentum you created was overwhelming.”

We helped deliver a victory that was truly incredible. The statewide ticket of Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling, and Ken Cuccinelli was victorious.

My favorite note in this e-mail is a look back at what went right in this campaign. For starters, Ken’s victory was achieved without giving an inch on our conservative principles. Don’t you wish more leaders could say this? This victory proves that you don’t have to sacrifice core principles to win; you must only be able to articulate how those core principles apply to governance in the real world.

On behalf of the bloggers at Don’t Tread on VA, we would like to wish a well deserved congratulation to Attorney General-Elect Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia!

Attorney General-Elect Cuccinelli has enjoyed his whopper of a victory for a week and now he is ready to begin to transform an office previously run by Governor-elect Bob McDonnell into one of his own.

To do that (and despite how he has been vilified as a fierce 19^th century conservative Republican), Cuccinelli is enlisting support from both parties.  As the News and Advance recently reported,

“Cuccinelli, a Republican, announced yesterday that he selected as transition leaders former Attorneys General Andrew P. Miller, a Democrat, and Republican Richard Cullen, and ex-state GOP Chairman Patrick M. McSweeney.”

Though he promises to set goals and initiatives for his office in the coming weeks, one line (seemingly innocuous to some) he has in his “Thank You” letter to supports online may foretell a rather ambitious—and risky—move: a constitutional pushback on the federal government.

The line in question: that he will “stand guard against constitutional overreaching by the federal government” during his tenure.  Josh Eboch, of the Examiner, wonders—after calling Cuccinelli potentially a “one man wrecking crew for the Tenth Amendment”—if this is the first step by Cuccinelli toward a “Constitutional Renaissance.”

With the federal government continuing to encroach on the authority of the states, and voters being fed-up with knee-jerk government intervention, one can only hope that Attorney General Cuccinelli will be that Renaissance Man.

Washington Post Election Map

Ken Cuccinelli was able to get 1,123,859 votes to Steve Shannon’s 828,237. Cuccinelli’s 16 point victory was considered a large surprise on election day, as the Attorney General race was considered to be the most vulnerable, by both Republican and Democratic strategists. Being a staunch conservative, many thought that Cuccinelli might isolate some voters, who tend to be wary of extreme viewpoints of both sides. However, Ken ran a campaign that outlined a new vision for the office of Attorney General, one that will benefit the people of Virginia. And the people of Virginia agreed with this plan, as Cuccinelli’s 16 point victory was only beaten by Bob McDonnell’s 18 point victory over Creigh Deeds. For a great breakdown of those results, check out Mike Stubel’s post at Painting Richmond Red.

While the GOP sweep in Virginia and the Governor pickup in New Jersey were expected to slow down Democrats plans for Health Care, they have not, with the House passing Pelosi’s plan 220-215. It will be interesting to see how it fares in the Senate, but also how the 220 Democrats who voted in favor of the bill fare in the 2010 midterm elections. With less than a year to go, only time will tell.

[Even if you are a perennial voter, watch this, it is good.]

We are close to being just 5 hours away from a GOP sweep in VA.  Can you feel the excitement? 

COOCH! COOCH! COOCH!

Today, after months of debating the issues and defining the candidates, voters go to the polls to decide the future of our government.

While Ken Cuccinelli, like fellow Virginia Republicans Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling, enjoy a comfortable lead in many polls, Virginia voters should not assume that that means imminent victory.  Many close to the campaign remind volunteers and supporters how in the last match-up between McDonnell and Deeds, McDonnell had a sizeable lead up to election day and wound up winning by a few hundred votes.  Ken Cuccinelli understands–as fictitious President Josiah Bartlet said on NBC’s The West Wing–that “Decisions are made by those who show up,” and his get out the vote (GOTV) effort has been in full swing not just in recent hours, but long before that, to ensure that what he gets tonight is a mandate…not a sqweeker.

Barack Obama won Virginia by 6 points last year, and if the Republicans can sweep the “big 3″ state-wide offices and knock off some Democrat delegates (I’m looking at you Chuck Caputo), it will be hard for the national media to portray such a speedy resurgence of Republican support in VA as anything but an utter rejection of the politics emanating from the White House…

But I’m sure they’ll try.

NOW GET OUT THERE AND VOTE!!!