Dr. Astrid Sarvis, the woman who would be Virginia’s next First Lady, has released a heartfelt video regarding her husband’s arbitrary exclusion from the third and final debate between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli II.

In her emotional appeal, the soft-spoken and refreshingly sincere Sarvis, a pediatrician raised in Mississippi’s deeply impoverished Delta, urged Virginians to demand her husband’s inclusion in next Thursday’s debate.

Libertarian Robert Sarvis — a real wild card in the hotly-contested race to replace disgraced Gov. Bob McDonnell — was excluded from the October 24th gubernatorial debate at Virginia Tech when WDBJ (Channel 7) of Roanoke, which is co-hosting the debate, determined that the scrappy third-party candidate failed to draw an average of 10 percent in major independent polls during a three-week period prior to last Thursday’s deadline.

Though a respected Zogby Poll conducted between Sept. 27-29 pegged his strength at 12.7 percent and a Washington Post survey conducted a few days earlier put his poll numbers at a solid 10 percent, debate organizers claimed the surging Libertarian aspirant was only polling at a nine percent average.

It was the same old song. As always, the little guy gets the shaft.

In excluding the low-key Libertarian candidate, the rigidly close-minded debate organizers, as if on cue, completely ignored the fact that Minnesota’s Jesse Ventura — widely regarded as something of a novelty candidate — was polling at a similar rate at the same stage in his campaign while being included in that state’s gubernatorial debates in 1998, a year the colorful Reform Party nominee dramatically stormed from behind late in the campaign to defeat Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey III and Republican Norm Coleman.

Ventura, in fact, was polling at a much lower level than Sarvis when he was initially invited to participate in the Minnesota debates.

The self-appointed gatekeepers in the Old Dominion — those determined to stifle competition while protecting two of the most uninspiring and deplorably despicable politicians imaginable, both of whom come across as little more than brutal street brawlers while offering little in the way of new ideas for the Commonwealth — should realize that major upsets, though exceedingly rare, are still possible in American politics.

Elections can turn in a matter of days…

In fact, given the recent partisan antics in Washington, it’s just what a doctor might order.

Virginians should listen to Dr. Sarvis. After all, they deserve a dignified alternative.

And a smart one, at that.

According to a poll released Tuesday morning by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, Sarvis is currently polling at 11 percent — slightly higher than the arbitrary criteria used by the debate organizers.

That survey of 944 registered voters, including 753 likely voters, shows McAuliffe leading his right-wing Republican rival by a margin of 46 percent to 39 percent with 4 percent still undecided.