Ouch. Laurance Verga takes a gamble and it doesn’t pay off.
Hurt dismisses Verga’s challenge
Conventional wisdom says that if you’re in the lead in a political campaign, you generally shouldn’t participate in a debate because you have nothing to gain. Hurt’s campaign controllers are very smart in political strategy and knew that when they immediately rejected this gambit. Not only that, Chris LaCavita (strategist) & Sean Harrison (campaign manager) were able to pull the reversal by saying Verga’s idea skipped over all of the other candidates. Well played. What’s Verga’s take on this? The same old very very tiring “But Robert Hurt voted for a tax increase six years ago!” crap we’ve heard over and over again. Charles Hawkins & Danny Marshall voted for the same tax increase bill and Verga or his “Communications and Policy Director” haven’t got the guts to call those people non-conservative.
Verga has a small chance of winning now and it’s getting smaller every day that his campaign pulls stunts like this that fail. This was the first attempt by anybody in the race to knock the King of the Hill down and Hurt swatted Verga down like he was a mosquito. Let’s see who tries the next similar move in this race.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Southside Central. Southside Central said: "I'm Robert Hurt, who the hell are you?" – New SC article at http://bit.ly/9YPTZw […]
You are right. Verga, as usual, looks like a fool in this. He needs to just back out, in my opinion. This attempt was also dis on other candidates who, quite frankly have a much better change at knocking off Hurt than he ever will. I imagine he has lost some capital there as well, not that he likely had much anyway.
However, he did score a point or two against Hurt with this truth;
“If LaCivita [Hurt campaign strategist] wants to run for Congress,” Verga said in the March 31 release, “he certainly has the right to do so, but if Hurt wants to represent the Fifth Congressional District, he needs to start speaking for himself.”
But Hurt (once again through LaCivita, though) beat him back down to size with this truth.
“Rather than falsely attack my conservative record, Mr. Verga should explain to the citizens of the Fifth District what his positions on the issues are and why he has only voted a handful of times in his entire life.”
Verga hasn’t done anything in the 5th- hasn’t lived here long, hasn’t voted, hasn’t run much of a campaign. I’m not even sure why he thinks he could debate Boyd, McPadden, or McKelvey- they are all better speakers then Verga and have a better chance of beating Hurt than Verga EVER will.
I guess will see what happens after this week when all the candidates have to be qualified to run. I’m guessing only Ferrin won’t be on the ballot but that’s just a guess.
Great post. Verga seems well intentioned but he has no chance. He has performed poorly in the straw polls and the PPP poll.
rumor check: do we have any idea who raised what amount during 1st qtr?
also, a Boyer (& I don’t know which one & don’t want to call the wrong name), called a woman in Lunenburg yesterday afternoon & said he was chairman of RPV & she needed to vote for a “real” conservative for Lunenburg chairman. This Boyer said that McDonnell had betrayed the real conservatives of Virginia because he appointed a gay to a position.
This woman did not know that Mr. Boyer was NOT the chairman of RPV–she believed him.
Is this sort of thing going on in other counties?
Someone told me the other day they hadn’t ever heard of ANY of the candidates.
Haven’t heard anything like that up here in Charlottesville, kelley.
FEC reports should be out soon (I don’t think anyone’s released unofficial totals yet).
Robert Hurt’s father is the Hurt who is an investor in the local uranium company.