As we wander toward this November’s General Assembly elections, one thing is perfectly clear: There is no way in hell that Virginia’s Democrats are going to retake the House of Delegates. In fact, it’s a near-certainty that the House will stay in Republicans’ hands until at least 2020, when the nation’s decennial census will trigger […]
There is little doubt that the subject of race relations is currently at the forefront of the American conversation. From “hands up, don’t shoot” to “black lives matter” to Starbucks’ condescending, widely derided Race Together campaign (in which a rich white business owner encouraged his majority-minority workforce to converse with coffee-craving customers about skin color), […]
You would think, following their spectacular showing in the 2014 midterm elections, that Virginia’s Republicans would be in a joyful, backslapping mood, and ready to present a unified front going into the November elections, when all 100 House of Delegates and 40 Virginia Senate seats will be up for grabs. And indeed, the recent conclusion […]
Believe it or not, there is some actual good news concerning the Affordable Care Act (aka Obama-care) in Virginia. With the most recent enrollment period now ended, it turns out that the number of residents signing up for health insurance on the federal exchange has far exceeded expectations, with around 385,000 Virginians taking advantage of […]
Let us set the scene for you. As the Virginia General Assembly heads into the home stretch of its winter session, it has one currently incarcerated delegate legislating while on work release, another recent delegate serving a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence for bribery and extortion and a former governor headed to the federal pen on multiple […]
Seriously, of all the General Assembly legislative sessions we’ve covered, this has got to be the weirdest one yet. And if there was one moment that perfectly encapsulated the off-kilter nature of the proceedings, it happened during the annual Commonwealth Prayer Breakfast, which is traditionally held on the first day of the session. When the […]
Think you were paying attention to Virginia politics in 2014? Take our carefully curated multiple-choice quiz and find out just how much of an electoral obsessive you really are. 1. Although they won a pair of State Senate seats in January special elections, Virginia donkeys were dealt a huge blow when Democratic Senator Phil Puckett […]
Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. We are not normally overflowing with good cheer this time of year, for one simple reason: Nothing ever freakin’ happens! We’re usually stuck covering something indescribably dull, like Governor Terry McAuliffe’s latest budget proposal. (Did you know that he’s still in favor of […]
Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. If you had asked us a month ago to name which politician would be the first to officially challenge Hillary Clinton’s (as yet unannounced) bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, we probably would have picked former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, or perhaps Vermont’s […]
On election night 2014, we here at Odd Dominion headquarters sensed early on that Democrats were in for a very bad night. On the national stage, the major TV networks called the supposedly contested Kentucky senate race (which pitted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell against Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes) the second that polls […]