By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger

    WAKEFIELD

    Two big unknowns that could help determine who wins Virginia’s Nov. 3 governor’s race were unseen guests at the April 15 Shad Planking, a 61-year-old traditional Southside Virginia gathering where free beer mixes liberally with traditional good old boys and a new class of political junkies from all across Virginia.

    One is the prevalence of truly big money in more and more of the state’s political contests, starting with the huge money contest being waged for governor this year by four candidates.

    The other is the belief that each party has a lot to gain and a lot to lose by what happens in Washington during the first year of the Obama administration.

    Conservative Republicans, especially, are counting on failures by Obama and his policies to help the GOP regain the governor’s mansion after two straight losses while Democrats are hoping Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia, the first by a Democrat for president in the Old Dominion since 1964, will somehow carry over into 2009 and help lift Democrats to new gains.

    The Shad Planking is a rare annual event at which individuals can size up and talk with political figures from both parties in a civil, almost party atmosphere.

    State Sen. Steve Martin, a Chesterfield County Republican, summed up the conventional wisdom that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, a former attorney general and delegate, is the current favorite to win the governor’s mansion no matter which one of three Democrats wins their party’s primary June 9th.

    “I see this as a great chance,“ Martin said “We’ve got the most experienced top two on our ticket that we’ve had in a long time,“ he said, referring to McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who is seeking a second term.

    “I think Obama is going to continue to fall in popularity, as he has been,“ Martin said.

    McDonnell wasn’t as sure that Obama himself will become more unpopular, but said he thinks Obama’s policies are going to hurt Democrats in Virginia.

    “He is personally popular,“ McDonnell said. “He is charasmatic and I expect him to remain personally popular for a while.“ However, policies shaped and passed by Democratic majorities in Congress “will become more unpopular,“ he predicted.

    That includes energy policies that could drive up the cost of electricity, the GOP candidate said.

    McDonnell said he expects Obama to come across the Potomac at least a few times to campaign for the winner of the June 9 primary, whether the Democrat is Brian Moran, Creigh Deeds or Terry McAuliffe.

    McAuliffe is the Mister Money candidate in the race, and he flaunted that status Wesnesday at the Shad Planking by planting nearly 25,000 signs along routes to the event.

    With nearly 2,500 attendees at this year’s event, that amounts to 10 McAuliffe signs for everyone present, a new record that cost 70 cents per sign, or about $17,500 for signage plus the labor to put all the signs up and to take them all down.

    “There’s one Democratic campaign that really can hang with or go toe to toe with Bob McDonnell,“ McAuliffe campaign manager Mike Henry said of the sign prowess and big-money advantage of his candidate.

    Deeds, who was campaigning elsewhere and did not attend, and Moran, also chose not to engage in the sign wars, but McDonnell campaign manager Phil Cox said his candidate’s name was up on 6,000 signs on routes approaching the event.

    McAuliffe’s big money and sign display was a constant theme of barbs from Moran and McDonnell.

    Moran’s campaign gave away hundreds of plastic beer cups that tweaked McAuliffe with the printed slogan, “Money Isn’t Everything. Fighting for Virginia Is.“

    McDonnell told the crowd, “I really want to thank Terry for the $2.6 million he’s pumped into the Virginia economy over the past few months.“

    “He’s created 100 jobs,“ the Republican nominee said of the rich Democrat’s large staff. He then derided McAuliffe’s union ties and Hillary and Bill Clinton connections by joking that McAuliffe “belongs to Clinton Local 456.“

    McAuliffe served as Bill Clinton’s national Democratic Party chairman and as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager last year. The Clintons have given him $10,000 for his campaign and two top Clinton contributors have contributed half a million to a campaign that brought in $4.2 million during the first three months of this year, about $2 million more than second place McDonnell. Deeds and Moran collected the vast majority of their contributions from Virginians while 82 percent of the huge McAuliffe warchest and most of McDonnell’s first-quarter contributions this year were from out-of-state.

    Moran joked that McAuliffe was really so new to the Shad Planking that down among the traditional beer trucks “he started setting up a martini bar.“

    Jokes aside, the impact of McAuliffe’s new stratosphere of campaign cash is one of the big open questions of this year.

    No one knows what effects a big infusion of cash and a huge staff can have in a June Democratic Party primary in which perhaps 7 to maybe 9 percent of the state’s registered voters can be expected to participate.

    “Anybody who talks with authority doesn’t know what’s going to happen,“ said George Allen, a Republican former governor and U.S. senator who received a warm welcome from the crowd and was the subject of a campaign sign someone planted supporting him for president in 2012. “It’s hard to determine.“

    Recent polls have shown Moran running slightly ahead of McAuliffe, who was running slightly ahead of Deeds. McDonnell fared well in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.

    As for the impact of Obama’s popularity on this year’s statewide elections, Allen said, “It depends on the decisions he makes between now and then.“ He said Obama was clearly very popular last year and if the presidential election were “held today he’ll probably do alright.“

    McDonnell appears to be the early favorite. Perhaps McAuliffe is attempting to create the image of a towering figure with a towering campaign bank account. He appeared to hold his own as a speaker countering the jokes and tweaks from McDonnell and Moran and touting his ability to create new jobs as a successful businessman.

    But McAuliffe’s electabilty in Virginia, or anywhere, is untested. A campaign run as if it had a sense of inevitability about it did not work for Hillary Clinton when he ran her effort last year.

    Perhaps Obama’s impact on the race will be the biggest unknown. It could come down to how well the American and world economies perform during the next six months. That could be a factor bigger than McAuliffe’s pile of cash or even Obama’s ability to shape world events.

    It’s even possible that pirates from Somalia could have an influence thousands of miles away and with absolutely no regard for how world events play out in Virginia’s elections.