Virginia Super Tuesday vote between Romney and Paul
The Virginia Super Tuesday primary on March 6 won’t be so super after all. Due to a Virginia election rule that each primary candidate must collect 10,000 registered voters’ signatures to participate, all other candidates besides Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are excluded.
In addition to garnering the 10,000 signatures, candidates also were mandated to get at least 400 from every congressional district. This posed a difficulty for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who did not qualify. In January, they challenged the law in federal court, only to be reprimanded by Judge John Gibney, who ruled “In essence, they played the game, lost, then complained that the rules were unfair.”
[See also: Election 2012: Healthcare front and center]
Observers say this comes as a hard blow to Gingrich, who after a slow start, is starting to rise in the polls.
What does this mean for healthcare and Virginia? For one thing, it brings some irony to the Commonwealth. Virginia has been a very vocal state in working toward repealing the healthcare reform law. Virginia State Attorney Ken Cuccinelli has called the state’s lawsuit against the federal government “a matter of liberty.” And yet, Virginia has effectively helped President Barack Obama gain a foothold in a swing state by offering fewer candidates for Republicans to choose from in its primary.
There were some reports that at first Cuccinelli said he would try to change the law, but then later withdrew that offer, issuing this statement:
"I obviously feel very strongly that Virginia needs to change its ballot access requirements for our statewide elections. However, after working through different scenarios with Republican and Democratic leaders to attempt to make changes in time for the 2012 Presidential election, my concern grows that we cannot find a way to make such changes fair to the Romney and Paul campaigns that qualified even with Virginia's burdensome system.”
Cuccinelli recently expressed embarrassment over Virginia’s election rules on WTOP radio in Washington, DC. He said that the diminished primary would lower Virginia's profile in the general election.
Election experts are calling Virginia a key state for the 2012 presidential election. Not only does it hold a hearty share of delegates, at 49, it is also a somewhat new and pivotal political battleground. Obama won Virginia in 2008, making it the first time Virginia went blue since 1964.
The most recent Gallup Poll (March 5) of the Republican primary election nationwide showed Romney up at 38 percent and Paul coming in with 12 percent of the voters.
Paul, a former air force surgeon is not discouraged. “With only two candidates on the ballot in Virginia, I’m hopeful for a very strong finish on Super Tuesday.” Paul told his supporters in an email. Some election experts say Paul, who held a Super Tuesday rally in Springfield, Virginia on Feb. 28, could scoop up Gringrich’s votes in the state.
Tea Party spokesman House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is betting on Romney for a Virginia win. On Fox Television March 5, Cantor predicted Romney would sweep Virginia, capturing all of the state's Super Tuesday delegates.
Both candidates in the Virginia election are hoping to repeal the healthcare reform law.
According to Paul’s election website, at the top of his campaign platform on healthcare is to repeal “ObamaCare” and “end its unconstitutional mandate. The answer to our nation’s health care crisis lies in freedom – not force,” Paul says.
Romney says if he were elected president, he would issue an executive order that paves the way for the federal government to issue “Obamacare” waivers to all fifty states. He would then work with Congress to repeal the full legislation as quickly as possible, according to his election website. In place of Obamacare, Romney says he would “pursue policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens.”
