Screwing the Cooch: Cuccianelli is spiraling the drain

[cali]

Playing out just across the Potomac River from shutdown Washington, D.C., the Virginia governor's race has turned into a real-time test of Republican and Democratic positions in the congressional budget battle raging in the U.S. capital.

With polls indicating more public resentment toward Republicans than Democrats, the federal work stoppage directly affecting thousands of Virginia residents has forced Republican Ken Cuccinelli on the defensive while giving Democrat Terry McAuliffe an opening in a race that had been neck-and-neck for months.

Now, public and internal surveys show voter support has started breaking McAuliffe's way, with the Democrat leading by 8 percentage points in a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. The same poll showed that by a nearly 3-1 majority, Virginians opposed Congress shutting down the government in a fight over President Barack Obama's health care law.

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Earlier this month, Cuccinelli called on congressional Republicans to drop their insistence that Congress dismantle the health care law as a condition for reopening the government. Two days later, he appeared at a conservative Christian group's fundraiser that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also attended. But Cuccinelli didn't make any public mention of Cruz, the tea party conservative hero who led the Senate Republicans' effort to defund the health care law.

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http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Virginia-Race-Previews-Shutdown-Politics-for-2014-227788311.html

[Orrex]

1. I can't be the only one who misread that subject line.