Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. If we here at the Odd Dominion could wave a magic wand and implement a single federal law, it would be this: All current non-statewide voting districts in Virginia are hereby dissolved, and all future districts, on both the state and national level, […]
Watching Republican Congressional candidate (and current Fairfax/Loudoun county delegate) Barbara Comstock debate her Democratic opponent John Foust last week, we couldn’t help but think of her as a walking metaphor for today’s GOP. She was poised, mostly well-spoken, and projected the sort of comforting, inclusive image the party is desperate to showcase following a number […]
Dan Catalano’s Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. As we survey the Commonwealth’s current political landscape, we see so much worthy of our attention: Governor Terry McAuliffe’s recent (mostly ineffectual) efforts to expand health care coverage to Virginia’s uninsured, the burgeoning scandal surrounding Scott County Delegate Terry Kilgore’s propensity […]
Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. Reading political tea leaves is always a difficult proposition, especially in a rapidly mutating purple state like Virginia. As a recent spate of special elections has proved, our beautiful Commonwealth is basically two states now: a left-leaning northeastern bloc anchored by Washington D.C.’s […]
For a political columnist, the federal corruption trial of Bob and Maureen McDonnell is like a giant bowl of M&M’s dusted with cocaine sitting by your keyboard at all times: it’s such a constant temptation that it’s hard to resist gorging yourself every time you sit down to write. But with prosecutors finally resting their […]
If there’s one issue absolutely guaranteed to drive social conservatives crazy, it’s the rapidly shifting status of same-sex marriage in America. Once thought so powerful a political weapon that Republicans used it (to great effect) to help increase GOP turnout in the 2004 presidential election, marriage equality has now reached a level of acceptance—in both […]
Just how much are we looking forward to the July 28 kick-off of the federal corruption trial of former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen? Well, let’s just say that any visitor to Odd Dominion headquarters over the next six weeks will encounter a giant “Do Not Disturb” sign and the wafting smell of […]
It’s no secret that we here at the Odd Dominion lean a bit to the left. Luckily for us, Virginia Republicans make our job pretty easy, as barely a week goes by without some excitable elephant saying or doing something completely boneheaded somewhere in the Commonwealth. But that certainly doesn’t preclude us from making fun […]
The completely unexpected primary loss of congressional ambition machine Eric Cantor has created a deliciously unexpected situation: an actual competitive race in the ex-House Majority Leader’s Richmond-based 7th district. Now don’t get us wrong; the chances of a Democrat winning Cantor’s old district are slight indeed. The 7th, like all Virginia districts, has been so […]
Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. In case you slept through it, the Republican Party of Virginia held a nominating convention last weekend, which ended—as widely expected—with the coronation of New Jersey native Ed Gillespie, a former lobbyist and longtime Republican political strategist, as the GOP standard bearer to […]