Republican insiders say Cuccinelli gave up significant ground over the summer. Why Cuccinelli is losing in Virginia

Republicans can’t believe this is happening: Democrat Terry McAuliffe — whose controversial business dealings and past life as a party moneyman make him a walking negative ad — has taken command of the Virginia governor’s race.

More than a dozen interviews last week with longtime Republican insiders around the Commonwealth yielded near-unanimous consensus that their candidate, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, lost significant ground over the summer and would lose if the election were held today.


The only real point of disagreement is how wide a margin it would be.

“It’s going to be a bath,” one prominent state Republican who wants Cuccinelli to win went so far as to say. Like several others, the person sought anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race.

( PHOTOS: Ken Cuccinelli’s career)

Cuccinelli’s advisers insist it’s too early to write him off. “This is still a race,” Cuccinelli strategist Danny Diaz said Friday.

But a contest that looked winnable for Cuccinelli for much of the year has broken against him. Here’s a look at how it happened.

1. The gifts scandal

Gov. Bob McDonnell was expected to be a big asset for Cuccinelli. Instead, the Star Scientific scandal has turned the incumbent into a major liability.

The constant drip-drip of revelations by The Washington Post — of gifts and loans totaling more than $124,000 from the dietary supplement maker’s CEO, Jonnie Williams, to the governor and his family — was bad enough for Cuccinelli. But the candidate couldn’t easily distance himself from the scandal because he, too, accepted some $18,000 worth of gifts from Williams — and failed to disclose a chunk of them, as required by law.

What’s more, Cuccinelli refused to repay the gifts until last week, when he cut a check for $18,000 to charity. A Democratic prosecutor in Richmond cleared the attorney general of criminal wrongdoing for the disclosure lapse. But attack ads highlighted his refusal to return the gifts, and internal polling showed a spike in voters expressing concern.

( PHOTOS: Terry McAuliffe’s career)

“Had he done that initially, I don’t think this would have been an issue,” said a GOP operative.

His campaign hopes that Cuccinelli can now shift the focus to other issues. But if he loses, Star Scientific will be high on the list of reasons he cites.

2. A divided GOP

A significant number of Republicans remain on the sidelines in the race. A nonpartisan poll released last week by Purple Strategies, which had Cuccinelli trailing by 5 percentage points overall, found that only 77 percent of self-identifying Republicans currently support him.

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who dropped out of the race for governor after the state GOP changed its nominating procedure to ensure Cuccinelli would win, said Friday he still isn’t comfortable endorsing Cuccinelli.

“Clearly, this is not just the most conservative, but the most ideologically-driven ticket that the Republican Party has ever put forth,” Bolling said in an interview. “There are a lot of Republicans, like me, very concerned about the direction of the party. We believe for the Republican Party to be a viable party in Virginia, we’ve got be a more mainstream party and communicate a more mainstream message.”

The McAuliffe campaign has capitalized on the GOP dissension, rolling out more than 30 Republican defectors over the past few months, including former Gov. Linwood Holton and several onetime state delegates. Also endorsing McAuliffe are former Republican National Committee finance chairman Dwight Schar and former GOP strategist Boyd Marcus.

And the Democratic establishment has united around McAuliffe, which was not assumed at the start of the year. No Democratic challenger emerged, and while few leaders on the left are crazy about the former Democratic Party fundraiser and businessman, they do support him.

Democrats have a lead on the generic ballot in the state, which is trending blue and was carried twice by Barack Obama. That puts the onus on Cuccinelli to solidify support from his party.

Cuccinelli advisers dismiss Bolling as a sore loser and many of the others who actually endorsed McAuliffe as Republicans in name only. They insist they have intense conservative support on their side and believe that big parts of the Obama coalition will stay home rather than turn out for McAuliffe.

“Ken’s voters are more likely to show up,” said a Cuccinelli adviser. “We’re pretty confident we’ll get what we need in an off-year with Obama sucking wind.”

3. Northern Virginia has been neglected

Several Republicans complained that Cuccinelli has not spent nearly as much time campaigning in Northern Virginia as McDonnell did four years ago. A review of all his public events during the month of August shows only a handful of publicly announced appearances in the D.C. suburbs. He made far more stops in places that should be reliably red.

Cuccinelli lives in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County and won election to the state Legislature from Fairfax County. His aides said his recent public schedule does not reflect the depth of his roots and other off-the-books appearances. They have told Republicans that Cuccinelli will have a more public profile in the D.C. media market during the homestretch.

And the campaign is getting a boost on Monday when the influential Northern Virginia Technology Council’s political action committee will formally endorse Cuccinelli. The announcement was slated for Friday, but The Post reports that McAuliffe supporters, including U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), tried unsuccessfully to get the group to reconsider with an 11th-hour lobbying blitz. Group members found Cuccinelli engaged and detail-oriented, and McAuliffe cocky and off-the-cuff, the report said.

But Cuccinelli‘s controversial views on abortion, gay marriage, skepticism of global warming and advocacy for the rights of fathers don’t play well in Northern Virginia, especially with women. He has tried not to emphasize those issues but also not backed away from his stances.

Operatives say that Cuccinelli has never created an identity beyond being a rock-ribbed social conservative. McDonnell was a strong social conservative in 2009, but he ran on the mantra of “Bob’s for jobs.”

4. Teflon Terry

GOP operatives think McAuliffe embodies unsavory political fundraising and crony capitalism, and they sincerely don’t understand why more voters don’t share their disdain. They’ve got thick opposition research binders from his time as chairman of the Democratic National Committee — during which, he once admitted, he left his crying wife and newborn in the car to attend a fundraiser — to his tenure at Global Crossing and GreenTech Automotive. That electric car startup has produced a fraction of the jobs that McAuliffe promised.

McAuliffe stepped down as GreenTech’s chairman late last year, and the feds announced this summer that that they are investigating the struggling carmaker and a related firm for misuse of a federal program to get visas to foreign investors. McAuliffe has denied wrongdoing and knowledge of the investigation.

It’s true that even internal Democratic polls have shown more Virginians view McAuliffe unfavorably than favorably, just as with Cuccinelli, but several Republicans have expressed surprise that all the dirt has not muddied the Democrat more.

“The hits on Terry with GreenTech feel kind of forced and it’s not really penetrating,” said a major GOP donor.

McAuliffe, famous for letting loose, has run a surprisingly disciplined campaign and kept an intentionally low profile.

“They’ve sold him as a businessman rather than a political fundraiser or a Clinton stooge,” said Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, who switched the race to “Lean Democratic” before Labor Day.

The Cuccinelli campaign also feels that the media have

been much harder on the Republican over Star Scientific than it has been on McAuliffe over everything else.

Campaign operatives note that McAuliffe’s negatives have risen since Memorial Day, and they argue that his support collapsed near the end of his 2009 Democratic campaign. They say many voters will not be willing to vote for him once they tune in this fall.

5. The left is outspending the right

Democrats have significantly outspent Republicans on television so far, which has helped drive up Cuccinelli’s negatives, and that disparity is expected to continue for the duration of the race.

The Republican Governors Association has spent $3.45 million on TV through roughly the end of last week, according to a media tracking source. They provided another $3 million directly to the Cuccinelli campaign, which has in turn spent $3.5 million on TV ads. The conservative Citizens United dropped $284,000 attacking McAuliffe.

On the other side, McAuliffe has spent $6.3 million on TV and the state Democratic Party has spent another $2.9 million. NextGen Climate Action, the political activism arm of billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, has spent $714,000 and the National Education Association has spent more than a quarter-million dollars. The Democratic Governors Association has directly transferred $3.2 million to the McAuliffe campaign, and has spent additional money on polling and research.

Through the end of June, Cuccinelli raised $7.7 million for the race and McAuliffe raised $12.7 million. The next fundraising report is due Monday.

Cuccinelli is beloved by the tea party, but he does not have an extensive donor network and has never built the deep relationships that McDonnell cultivated with many in the Richmond business community.

“The fundraising operation is sound, but they don’t have the brand and it’s too late to build it at this point,” said a Virginia Republican.

Cuccinelli aides note that the Republican has been outspent in past races but still won, and they’re confident he can do it again. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce new rules for coal-fired power plants in the next week, which they think will give them fodder for a “war on coal” attack. The candidate is looking forward to a Sept. 25 debate that will be broadcast statewide. And they believe the launch of Obamacare health care exchanges on Oct. 1 will draw attention to an unpopular law that Cuccinelli has fought in court.

“I say it’s fluid, and I get yelled at when I say that,” said an experienced Republican following the race closely. “My boss told me I was full of [it], but I don’t think things will settle and set until after the debate in two weeks. But the trajectory is not good.”

Said Diaz, the Cuccinelli adviser: “Ken has taken their best punches over the course of the summer. … Give Ken 30 days and then take another look.”