Stories tagged with “Ken Cuccinelli”

Cuccinelli Endorses Running Mate, But Won’t Defend Anything He’s Ever Said

By Josh Israel on May 21, 2013 at 2:09 pm

Virgnia GOP statewide nominees Ken Cuccinelli II, EW Jackson Sr., and Mark Obenshain

Virgnia GOP statewide nominees Mark Obenshain, Ken Cuccinelli II, and EW Jackson Sr. (Credit: Kyle Green/Roanoke Times)

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), the Republican nominee for governor, endorsed his newly-nominated running mate, Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr., but refused to say whether he agreed with Jackson’s myriad controversial comments.

Cuccinelli told a crowd in Abingdon, VA on Monday that he wants Jackson, as Lt. Governor, breaking ties in the currently split Virginia Senate: “I don’t need to know what the subject matter that’s going to tie up 20-20 that the LG can vote on will be. I’m confident that we’re going to get the right vote every single time out of E.W. Jackson. So I’m glad he’s on this ticket, too.”

But in a statement to the Virginia Pilot, Cuccinelli also said he would not answer questions about his new running mate’s views. “We are not defending any of our running mates’ statements now or in the future,” he noted, adding “The people of Virginia need to get comfortable with each candidate individually.”

Given the panic and criticism from some Republicans over Jackson’s surprise victory at Saturday’s Republican Party of Virginia nominating convention, it is unsurprising that Cuccinelli wants to keep his running mate at arm’s length. But their arch-conservative views on key issues seem largely identical:

	Jackson	Cuccinelli
LGBT Rights	Jackson opposes LGBT equality, claiming, “Homosexuality is a horrible sin, it poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few things that we can think of.”	Cuccinelli opposes LGBT equality, claiming, “When you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.”
Planned Parenthood	Jackson has attacked Planned Parenthood, calling it “more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.”	Cuccinelli has frequently attacked Planned Parenthood, accusing them of having an “open willingness to participate in human trafficking,” and has suggested the fact that abortion clinics in Virginia are in urban areas with large African American populations is an example of white racism.
Health care	Jackson does not believe Virginia should comply with the Obamacare law, claiming, “Virginia is duty bound to DEFY NOT COMPLY with any federal encroachment on the rights and freedom of our people. Working families across the Commonwealth are disappointed that a Republican led General Assembly decided to COMPLY and NOT DEFY a law that will greatly hurt the economy and health care options affecting all Virginians.”	After Cuccinelli’s failed challenge to Obamacare in federal court, he suggested Virginia might not need to comply with the law: “It’s not like there’s criminal penalties out there — it becomes a power struggle,” he noted, adding, “There have been periods of time when states have just thrown their hands up and said, ‘We’re not going to do this’… It’s still possible, but it’s outside the expected legal structure.
President Obama	Jackson has attacked President Obama for having “Muslim sensibilities,” claiming Obama “sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective.” He called Obama an anti-Semite, blaming “his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright.”	Cuccinelli dabbled in birtherism in 2010, saying, “Someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.” He quickly backed down.

For his part, Jackson sees Cuccinelli as an ideological soul mate. In a March posting on his campaign website, entitled “Ken Cuccinelli Is Right,” he wrote: “As an American and a Virginian whose ancestors were deemed by some to be less than human, I am proud to stand with a man who has the courage to speak to our consciences. As the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, I will be proud to help Ken Cuccinelli bring common sense values and governance to Richmond. If we are elected in November, KEN AND I WILL FIGHT FOR EVERY VIRGINIAN’S RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.”

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LGBT

Virginia Republicans Nominate Rabidly Anti-LGBT Ticket

By Josh Israel on May 20, 2013 at 12:40 pm

At its nominating convention Saturday, the Republican Party of Virginia selected three candidates for the November 2013 statewide elections. Their selections — Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II for governor, Bishop E.W. Jackson for lieutenant governor, and State Senator Mark Obenshain for attorney general — represent three of the most vocally anti-LGBT figures in the history Virginia politics.

Ken Cuccinelli

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) Over his seven-and-a-half years as a state senator and his four year as attorney general, Cuccinelli earned a reputation as Virginia’s Todd Akin. He opposes even the most basic legal protections for LGBT people because he believes same-sex relationships are immoral — previously explaining, “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that.” Even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case that such bans were unconstitutional, he helped defeat an effort to repeal the state law making consensual sodomy a felony. This maneuver came back to haunt him earlier this year, when prosecutors tried to make use of the law to prosecute a statutory rape case and courts rejected the case on constitutional grounds.

He has actively pushed for state and federal constitutional amendments to prevent any legal recognition of what he terms, “what they’d like to refer to as ‘homosexual families,’” authoring a resolution calling for a federal amendment to invalidate any same-sex marriage, civil union, domestic partnership, or “other relationship analogous to marriage.” He has opined that “giving public sanction to homosexual marriage ends up redefining marriage and it’s certain to harm children.” He even opposed a state bill that allowed private companies to voluntarily provide health insurance benefits to employees’ domestic partners, warning it might “encourage this type of behavior.” His advisory opinion that Virginia’s public colleges and universities should rescind their nondiscrimination policies was called “reprehensible” by a former Republican state legislator. As recently as February, he reaffirmed his fealty to Virginia’s marriage inequality amendment, saying, “Virginians decided this in 2006 that we were going to respect traditional marriage… I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

After unsuccessfully attempting to block a non-binding resolution honoring a Richmond-based LGBT charitable group, Cuccinelli explained, “When you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.”

E.W. Jackson

Bishop E.W. Jackson (R) As a pastor and unsuccessful 2012 Senate candidate, Jackson has never been shy about expressing his strong opposition to LGBT people. He believes gays and lesbians are “very sick people, psychologically and emotionally” whose minds are perverted. He has also said, “Homosexuality is a horrible sin, it poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few things that we can think of.” Read more

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Election

For Terry McAuliffe To Beat Ken Cuccinelli, He Needs To Win Over Democrats

By Ruy Teixeira, Guest Blogger on May 7, 2013 at 10:15 am

Credit: National Journal

Virginia gave President Obama a fairly comfortable 4-point victory (51 percent-47 percent) victory in 2012. Yet the Washington Post has just released a poll showing Democrat Terry McAuliffe trailing arch-conservative Republican Ken Cuccinelli by 5 points in the race for the 2013 Virginia governor’s office. Why the discrepancy?

Well, elections will always going to be harder for Virginia Democrats in off years like 2013 than in a Presidential election year due to turnout patterns that favor the other side. But on the evidence of the poll, McAuliffe’s problems may run deeper than just getting voters to the polls. He may also have trouble generating the kind of enthusiastic support Obama received from key demographic and geographic segments of his coalition.

Start with Obama’s minority support. In 2012, Obama received overwhelming 83-16 support from Virginia’s minority voters, a 67 point margin. By comparison, McAuliffe’s margin among minority voters (57-21) is little more than half of Obama’s margin. This has a great deal to with McAuliffe’s performance among African-American voters, who only favor him by 69-10 in the poll, compared to Obama’s 93-6 in 2012.

Breaking McAuliffe’s support down geographically, he is dramatically underperforming in areas where Obama was strongest in 2012. In Northern Virginia, McAuliffe is only leading by 4 points, compared to Obama’s healthy margin of 16 points. That’s potentially fatal given that this area is Democrats’ strongest in the state and accounts for about a third of ballots statewide.

McAuliffe’s other big underperformance is in the Virginia Beach/Tidewater area. In the poll, McAuliffe is actually trailing Cuccinelli by 2 points, compared to Obama’s strong margin of 12 points. The Virgnia Beach/Tidewater area accounts for another fifth of the Virginia vote.

McAuliffe is not known as a Democrat with particularly strong ties to the base of the party, having functioned mostly at an elite level, particularly as a fundraiser. On the evidence of this poll, it may not be enough for him to call out Ken Cuccinelli as a right-wing extremist (as deserved as that criticism is). If he wants the Obama coalition to power him to victory in the state, they are likely to need a reason to vote for him as a representative of their interests, not those of elites.

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Climate Progress

Dirty Energy Fuels Climate Change Denier Ken Cuccinelli’s Campaign

By Josh Israel on Apr 16, 2013 at 11:46 am

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R)

In the first quarter of 2013, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) raised about $2.4 million for his gubernatorial campaign. Of that, a huge portion came from oil and gas interests — likely impressed by his long record of active climate denial.

A ThinkProgress review of data from the Virginia Public Access Project reveals that, by far, his largest donor in the period was the Republican Governors Association — a 527 political committee that works to aid Republican governors and gubernatorial candidates. While it is impossible to know the exact origin of the RGA’s $1 million contribution, the group receives a significant portion of its money from polluter interests.

In 2012, Koch Industries contributed more than $2 million, $800,000 from Devon Energy, and more than $639,000 from CONSOL Energy. According to a Center for Public Integrity investigation, oil and gas interests used the RGA to as a conduit for millions in donations in 2010, allowing them to circumvent campaign finance laws and invest heavily in electing candidates who supported fracking and other drilling expansion.

More directly, Cuccinelli accepted about $200,000 from energy companies and executives. These included:

1. Murray Energy Corporation, $50,000
2t. CONSOL Energy Inc., $25,000
2t. Dominion Political Action Committee (Dominion Resources, Inc.), $25,000
4t. Marvin Gilliam (retired VP of Cumberland Resources Corp.), $25,000
4t. Koch Industries Inc., $25,000
6t. American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government (American Electric Power), $10,000
6t. William B. Holtzman (president and owner of Holtzman Oil), $10,000
6t. Range Resources Corporation, $10,000
9t. Thomas Farrell (CEO of Dominion Resources, Inc.), $5,000
9t. Michael G. Morris (President and CEO of American Electric Power), $5,000
9t. Baxter F. Phillips Jr. (an executive with Alpha Natural Resources, Inc.), $5,000
9t. Clyde E. Stacy (an executive with Pioneer Group/Rapoca Energy.), $5,000

Between these donations and the RGA’s funds, about half of Cuccinelli’s contributions over the reporting period were tied to oil, gas, and coal.

Their support is unsurprising given Cuccinelli’s record as Attorney General. As part of his efforts to cast doubt on climate-change science, he used his position to launch an inquisition against a former University of Virginia climate scientist. Citing possible “fraud against taxpayers,” Cuccinelli demanded the university provide him with a wide range of records relating Dr. Michael E. Mann’s grant applications.

A circuit judge and then the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the Attorney General was incorrect in believing he had the legal authority to undertake such a fishing expedition. When he blasted the ruling, newspapers blasted him for wasting Virginia tax dollars. He also failed in his federal lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas — a unanimous appeals court upheld the agency’s regulations as based on an “unambiguously correct” reading of the law.

Since his legal efforts for climate-change denial failed, he often relies on mockery, asking audiences to exhale carbon dioxide in unison, during his speeches, to annoy the EPA .

According to Greenpeace, he also worked with coal companies to roll back Virginia’s clean energy program. In the “energy” section of his campaign website, Cuccinelli says that we “need oil, natural gas, and coal to power our homes, cars, and economy and Virginia could be doing more to provide that to the world while growing job opportunities for our middle class.” To get that, he says, Virginia should safely take advantage of “all of the resources” it has on- and off-shore, “with as little government intervention as possible.”

Health

BREAKING: Virginia Board Of Health Passes Regulations Meant To Shut Down Abortion Clinics

By Sy Mukherjee on Apr 12, 2013 at 12:56 pm

The Virginia Board of Health voted 11-2 on Friday “to require abortion clinics to meet strict, hospital-style building codes” that many women’s health advocates say will put abortion providers out of business and prevent women from accessing essential medical services.

Pending final approval by conservative state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) — which is almost definite — Virginia will join other GOP-led states such as North Dakota, Mississippi, and Alabama in imposing stringent regulations meant to arbitrarily shut down abortion clinics.

The regulations — part of a nationwide anti-choice campaign to adopt so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP, laws — would require clinics that provide abortions to meet the same standards as outpatient hospital facilities, forcing many clinics to choose between expensive and medically unnecessary renovations such as widening halls and doorways or shutting down entirely. While the health board originally wished to grandfather existing clinics from having to comply with the new rules, Cuccinelli threatened to make its members foot the bill for any litigation that resulted from the law.

Friday’s vote represents the latest skirmish in an ongoing conservative war on abortion clinics. In the past three months, states have proposed an astonishing 694 provisions restricting or rolling back women’s reproductive rights. Efforts to shutter local abortion clinics disproportionately impact low-income women and significantly increase the incidence unintended pregnancies.

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Justice

Full Federal Appeals Court Unanimously Rejects Cuccinelli’s Bid To Reinstate Anti-Sodomy Law

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 9, 2013 at 5:20 pm

Late last month, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) filed a petition asking the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reinstate Virginia’s “Crimes Against Nature” law, which makes oral and anal sex a felony. A three-judge panel of that same court had struck down the law, noting that it cannot be squared the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which prohibits laws criminalizing non-commercial sexual activity between consenting adults. Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit issued an order rejecting Cuccinelli’s request. Notably, not one of the court’s judges requested a poll of the court to consider Cuccinelli’s petition, so his petition received no support whatsoever from the court’s members.

As ThinkProgress noted last week, this case involved a felony prosecution of a 47 year-old man charged with soliciting oral sex from a 17 year-old girl. While a blanket ban on oral sex is unconstitutional under Lawrence, Virginia is permitted to pass laws criminalizing sex with people who are underage. Indeed, the Virginia legislature considered a bill which would have done exactly that, by bringing the “Crimes Against Nature” law in compliance with Lawrence, in 2004. Cuccinelli voted against that bill because he wanted to keep an outright ban on gay sex on the books, even if that ban was unconstitutional.

In other words, if Cuccinelli had not refused to bring state law into compliance with the Constitution, he wouldn’t have lost his case before the Fourth Circuit.

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Justice

10 Years After They Were Declared Unconstitutional, 14 States Still Have ‘Sodomy’ Laws

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 9, 2013 at 9:00 am

Ten years ago this June, the Supreme Court struck down Texas’ ban on “[d]eviate sexual intercourse” in Lawrence v. Texas, declaring in the process that the law may not criminalize non-commercial sexual activity between consenting adults. As Dana Liebelson reports, however, 14 states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books nearly a decade after the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional. These include four states — Montana, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas — which specifically outlaw gay sex, in addition to ten other states outlawing oral or anal sex between any two partners. In 2011, Tim Murphy mapped this out:

Last week, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) filed a brief seeking to keep Virginia’s so-called “crimes against nature” law on the books. Although he claims he’s doing so merely to allow prosecutions against adults having sex with children and similar crimes, he had the opportunity to vote for such a narrow and constitutional sex ban when he was a state lawmaker. Instead, he voted to keep Virginia’s broad and unconstitutional ban on the books.

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Justice

Ken Cuccinelli’s Legal Appeal And How He Helped Undermine Virginia’s Protections Against Adult Sex With Minors

By Josh Israel on Apr 3, 2013 at 2:40 pm

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R)

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) filed an appeal last week after a federal appeals court struck down Virginia’s sodomy law as unconstitutional. Virginia prosecutors had charged a 47-year-old man with soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old girl — a felony under the disputed law. But whether or not Cuccinelli’s appeal succeeds, his vote to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court ruling when he was a state Senator in 2004 helped create the uncertainty over the provisions.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling held that states may not ban private non-commercial sex between consenting adults. Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature statute, which made oral sex (even between consenting married couples) a felony, was clearly the sort of legislation the Court was referencing.

A year later, a bipartisan group in the Virginia Senate backed a bill that would have fixed the state’s Crimes Against Nature law to comply with Lawrence — eliminating provisions dealing with consenting adults in private and leaving in place provisions relating to prostitution, public sex, and those other than consenting adults. Cuccinelli opposed the bill in committee and helped kill it on the Senate floor. In 2009, he told a newspaper that he supported restrictions on the sexual behavior of consenting adults: “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law.” As a result, the law’s text remains unchanged a decade after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

While the state could have brought misdemeanor charges under other statutory rape laws, the prosecution instead utilized the felony provisions of the Crimes Against Nature law. Because its provisions were never updated to comply with the constitutional privacy protections, the appeals court ruling determined that the law itself is unconstitutional. Even if Cuccinelli wins, the cost in time and money to Virginia will be huge — and could have been entirely avoided had he and the Republican majority in the Virginia General Assembly not been so determined to ignore the Supreme Court.

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Health

Thousands Speak Out Against Virginia’s New Abortion Clinic Restrictions

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Mar 28, 2013 at 5:45 pm

Virginia is set to implement controversial new abortion clinic restrictions that could force many of the facilities in the state to shut down — a popular anti-choice tactic that indirectly undermines women’s access to reproductive care by targeting abortion providers. After Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) quietly approved the new regulations on the Friday between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, the state’s Board of Health will have the power to decide whether or not to adopt them on April 12.

Before then, however, thousands of Virginia residents are raising their voices in protest. Spearheaded by ProgressVA and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, women’s health advocates delivered over 3,000 public comments opposing the new abortion restrictions to the Board of Health on Thursday. The public comment period ends on Friday, and opponents of the new policy hope they can make an impact by expressing the same message with each of the thousands of comments: “Put women’s health above politics. Don’t let red tape trap women.”

The reference to “trapping women” is a nod to the fact that women’s health advocates refer to these types of restrictions as TRAP laws, or the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. Targeting abortion clinics and providers, rather than pushing for outright bans on the abortion procedure itself, allows the anti-choice community to avoid inciting as much public outrage — which helps their efforts fly mostly under the radar.

At Thursday’s event, ProgressVA’s executive director, Anna Scholl, urged the state’s board to put women’s health before politics. “These regulations should be based on evidence-based medicine, not political agendas,” Scholl pointed out.

In fact, even though health boards are intended to operate as nonpartisan medical bodies, Virginia’s proposed TRAP laws have sparked an intensely politicized battle in the state. Reports have emerged that State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) essentially threatened Virginia’s Board into approving the new restrictions by warning members they could be denied state-funded legal services if they voted against them. And last fall, Virginia health commissioner Dr. Karen Remley resigned from her position in protest over the proposed TRAP laws, citing her disapproval of the unnecessary abortion clinic restrictions as the primary reason she could no longer lead the Board “in good faith.”

If the Board of Health approves the final rules next month, they will likely take effect this summer. Many of Virginia’s 20 abortion clinics will likely be forced to close their doors when they are unable to adhere to the costly, complicated new rules.

Update

Protesters delivered the 3,600 comments in this giant box, wrapped in red tape (photo courtesy of ProgressVA):

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Health

Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli Thinks Women Will Back Him Because He Has Empathy For Mentally Ill

By Josh Israel on Mar 14, 2013 at 5:45 pm

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), the Republican nominee-apparent for governor this year, was asked by U.S. News how he planned to appeal to female voters. Rather than face up to his record of opposition to women’s reproductive rights, Cuccinelli told the publication that he thought women would vote for him because he’d worked to help the mentally ill:

US NEWS: [Can the GOP appeal] to women?

CUCCINELLI: I’m a person who appeals to women with a variety of issues that they just happen to care more about that I also happen to care about. I’ve worked to improve mental health and worked to help the mentally ill for over a decade and a half, including when I was in the legislature. Women’s issues aren’t just abortion. Women’s issues are everything women care about. And I have an awful lot of issues that I appeal to women on, just as a natural course.

While his empathy for mentally ill citizens is admirable, his record doesn’t hold up. Cuccinelli spent much of his tenure as Attorney General fighting against the Affordable Care Act — a plan that expanded mental health parity — even though the American Psychiatric Association called the landmark health care law “good for patients.”

He has also attacked Medicare as “despicable” and an attack on American freedom — despite the fact that the program provides mental health coverage for millions of America’s seniors.

(ht: Blue Virginia)

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Stories tagged with “Ken Cuccinelli”

Cuccinelli Endorses Running Mate, But Won’t Defend Anything He’s Ever Said