Albemarle Democrats held their nomination caucus last night, Liesel Nowak reports in the Progress, and nominated Larry Claytor for sheriff, Lindsay Dorrier for reelection to the BoS, and Debbie Shipp for Clerk of Court. Claytor and Dorrier both enjoyed landslide victories among the 400 caucus members. Now the three — and the other uncontested nominees — will go on to attempt to win the general election. This promises to be the most colorful Albemarle election in years, with an impressive and impassioned lineup of candidates and enough of a smattering of independent candidates to make things unpredictable.
Charlottesville Tomorrow provides video and audio highlights from the caucus.
The above post says “Claytor and Dorrier both enjoyed landslide victories among the 400 caucus members.” The Charlottesville Tomorrow Weblog says, “Incumbent Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier won the nomination for the Scottsville District seat, edging out organic farmer Kevin Fletcher.” I’m just curious, was Dorrier over Fletcher a landslide or did he merely edge him out?
“Albemarle County Democrats handily nominated Supervisor Lindsay G. Dorrier Jr. ” was the Progress’s qoute and I heard it was 2 to 1.
I found Kevin Fletcher to be an appealing candidate (not that I live in the Scottsville District), but, it seems to me, he made an unforgiveable blunder by giving the impression that he’d consider running as an independent if he didn’t secure the Democratic Party’s nomination. Not exactly the way to elicit support among the party stalwarts who come out to vote at a caucus.
The last guy that I heard of try that trick was Joe Lieberman and, even though Lieberman got re-elected as an independent, he’s certainly a become pariah among Democratic partisans.
If a candidate’s going to ask for a party’s nomination, there’s an obligation to accept the result, win or lose. There’s nothing wrong with an independent candidacy, as long as that’s not the fallback position of a sour-grapes loser.
If Fletcher runs that would only help Dorrier with King also running. I really can’t understand what Denny King thinks is going to happen except getting badly beaten again.
What I don’t understand is this “edging out” comment from Charlottesville Tomorrow if indeed Dorrier won by 35 points. Might it be that this “non-partisan-we’re-not-anti-growth” group had a dog in this fight?
The tallies are never made a big deal of at Democratic nominating caucuses. It may well be that Brian (who wrote the blog entry in question) either wasn’t aware of the final tally or given an incorrect account of the margin. Or, to be fair, it’s also possible that the Progress is wrong, and it was closer than they said. Again, the tallies just aren’t touted.
I might add that Shipp also won by quite a large margin: I heard 3 to 1.
The contrast between the two candidates was was quite stark . . . if you were confused about how to evaluate a Clerk of the Court candidate, Shipp did a pretty good job erasing that confusion. Also interesting considering she did pretty much no campaigning up until that night.
“Edged out” may have been a poor choice of words to characterize the results of the Scottsville Democratic caucus, because unlike Bob Gibson of the Daily Progress, I didn’t ask for a final count on the secret ballot vote. Actually, I didn’t think anyone would actually tell me the results if I had asked, and I didn’t want to be any nosier than I already was with a video camera filming the ballots being counted. I had the opportunity to edit this out of our draft story, but chose to keep it in. I also chose to feature Lindsay Dorrier’s photo at the top of the story on our blog. It was a challenging event to cover with simultaneous nominations happening on separate levels of the auditorium. All in all, I think the coverage turned out well with a blog post, audio, and video available for the public within 6 hours of the event. Next up… County Republicans this Thursday.
Brian Wheeler
Charlottesville Tomorrow
Um … yeah. CvilleTomorrow’s coverage of the local elections trumps everyone else’s – hands down.
I did not know this was such a partisan site. Where can I get a blog with another view?
Huh? It’s certainly no secret that I’m a Democrat, but there’s nothing particularly partisan about this blog entry — I even made a point of saying that many of the candidates are impressive. The comments thus far don’t represent any rank partisanship. And you know full well that you can find lots and lots of blogs with other views.
That’s easy, 2 cent. Start one.
I don’t believe this is a partisan site. It would be nice if Waldo would post the Republican nominations from yesterday but I think he deserves some slack since he is on vacation. There is always an attempt to be fair unlike Cville Weekly which never seems to writw anything nice about republicans. I think Jayson Whitehead from Cville has an ax to grind, this week’s article is a prime example.
This site has more liberals than conservatives to be sure but I think there is an attempt to be more transparent that most other sites. I come here to see how both sides think because no one has all the answers.
I often disagree with Waldo and others here but I have never felt this was a place for Dems only.
Actually, I have to say that this was a deliberate choice, though not because they’re Republicans. I just don’t write about uncontested nominations if I’ve already written about the campaign announcements or if they’re running for reelection. So this blog entry, for instance, made no mention of the nominations of David Toscano, Denise Lunsford, Marcia Joseph or Ann Mallek, since there was no danger that they wouldn’t be nominated. If they hadn’t been nominated, though, that would be news. :)
I wrote here when Chip Harding and John Dawson announced their candidacies. And I wrote when the incumbent Republican clerk of court decided not to run for reelection, because that’s news. Ken Boyd, David Wyant and Jim Camblos running for reelection isn’t news because that’s what incumbents just about always do. :)
I can tell you why Charlottesville Tomorrow doesn’t have the video and audio of the County Republican announcements… We did not get notified of the last minute change from a caucus (scheduled for this evening) to a press conference which occurred yesterday. Perils of being ‘New Media’ I guess. As of Friday, May 11th, we had our coverage scheduled with the party leaders for tonight. Sorry we can’t help! You can get to all our election content using these links: Blog posts for City elections and County elections; Election Watch homepage (candidate lists, calendar of forums, campaign contributions, etc.).
Brian Wheeler
Charlottesville Tomorrow
I wonder if they changed from a caucus to a press conference, because they knew no one would show up?