Here’s an interesting question: Did Warner suddenly decide, out of the blue and all by himself, to pick up the phone and call Joseph Puckett, without informing anybody else that he was going to do so? Or did he inform the governor’s people about the call — which would make them complicit in it? Or, for that matter, did someone in McAuliffe’s office reach out and ask Warner to intercede?

The first possibility would seem like an odd thing to do for a senator who has long been thoroughly plugged into the Virginia Democratic machine. And it certainly would be something voters ought to know more about before they vote for (or against) Warner three weeks from now. The third possibility, meanwhile, would suggest that Reagan’s phone call was not an isolated act by an “overzealous” staffer, as he has described it, but part of a coordinated campaign by the governor’s office to buy off a state senator with public employment for his daughter.