National Journal ^ | 5/8/2013 | Jill Lawrence
It’s hard to believe, but the Democrat running against Republican Ken
Cuccinelli for governor of Virginia might have a woman problem.
Cucinelli -- the attorney general and a former state senator -- is the
candidate who opposes all abortions except to save a woman’s life. He has twice
tried to defund Planned Parenthood and once proposed criminal penalties for
doctors who didn’t anesthetize
fetuses. He pushed for new
hospital-level building codes for clinics that perform abortions, which some
say will force them out of business. He is also a leading foe of the Affordable
Care Act requirement that insurance
policies cover contraception.
Not exactly a feminist dream candidate, or one with obvious appeal to the
moderates who helped President Obama win Virginia and reelection last year.
And yet Democrat Terry McAuliffe has drawn a portrait of his marriage that is
going to be hard to dispel. He is in the spotlight right now for ditching his
wife Dorothy while she was in labor, to dash to a party for a Washington
Post reporter. In his telling, in his
2007 book What A Party, she ordered him to leave the hospital
because he was driving her crazy. That I can definitely believe. I mean, this is
a guy who says he watches action movies to wind down at bedtime. Probably not a
calming presence in the delivery room, but still. He left -- and then, dear
reader, he wrote about it.
The more problematic anecdote to me is one that involves the birth of another
baby, in this case a newborn son whom McAuliffe left in the car with Dorothy on
the way home from the hospital while he spent 15 minutes at a fundraiser. She
was in tears, he writes. How the heck did he think women would react to that?
Then there’s what
McAuliffe told the late writer Marjorie Williams for a profile in Vanity
Fair. He said his wife “has no idea” how much money he has, and implied she
doesn’t need to know: “She’s got a great life. Listen, her credit cards are paid
and all that. She knows I do very well.”
Obama won women voters in Virginia by 9 percentage points last year. But at
the moment, a Washington
Post poll shows Virginia women are splitting evenly between McAuliffe
and Cuccinelli.
Furthermore, Cuccinelli is already trying to soften up his image. His first (quite effective)
ad features his wife, Teiro, talking about his work on behalf of homeless
people, sexual assault victims and the mentally ill.
Dorothy McAuliffe has not been in hiding. In 2009, during McAuliffe’s first
run for governor, she starred in an ad about his business experience and their
family of five children – including, believe it or not, a delivery room scene. His
first ad this time around is about his upbringing and his family -- complete
with another delivery room
scene. This is a very resonant image at this point, and not in a good way.
McAuliffe isn’t the first candidate to write a book that did more harm than
good during the author’s next political race. Rick Perry
did it. In fact, so
did Ken Cuccinelli. In this instance, Virginia voters are already having
trouble figuring out what to think of McAuliffe as a businessman,
and now his own words are raising questions about him as a spouse. It’s time for
Dorothy to step into the time-honored political-wife role of character witness,
speaking for herself in an ad that goes heavy on Terry’s qualities as a life
partner.
It can’t hurt. In the end, however, what may save McAuliffe is the same thing
that saved Mark Sanford this week in the South Carolina special House election.
Women – and men for that matter -- didn’t
like what Sanford did to his wife, his kids or his state. But their
conservative political principles prevailed, just as Virginia’s increasingly
moderate-to-liberal tilt could help McAuliffe. Even if he can’t overcome his
image as a manic husband out of the Mad Men era.
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