Who says local politics is boring?
Richmond is nearing the climax of a mayoral race you couldn’t have scripted to be crazier. While this has led some reasonable people to question what will become of our fair city, it’s been a glorious few months for political junkies following the happenings in the ever-expanding #rvamayor universe. You want knee-jerk reax? Covered. You want armchair pundits? We’ve got ‘em. You want a binge-drinking former candidate riffing on municipal shortcomings? Well, we’ve got that, too.
Because it’s too entertaining to let slip into the virtual ether without proper documentation, we compiled an A-to-Z guide of the Richmond mayor’s race according to the Internet. Enjoy one last laugh before reality sets in on Wednesday morning.
A) Alford Plea — Did you know the front-runner in the mayor’s race signed a plea agreement acknowledging that Henrico County investigators had enough evidence to gain a conviction against him for contributing to the delinquency of a minor? Apparently a lot of people didn’t. What was the most incriminating evidence investigators unearthed, you ask? Illicit texts! Watch unsuspecting people recite said texts in this widely circulated video.
B) Burger, Scott; see also Berry, Jack – If you said "Burger who?" hop on the Facebook and find any post, positive or negative, mentioning former Venture Richmond executive Jack Berry. In the comments, you’ll see Burger peddling his preferred mantra: “Jack Berry cannot be trusted.” Burger is remarkably consistent and quick on the draw (a Goggle Alerts enthusiast, perhaps?). But the one-man army has not stymied Berry’s following on the platform. Facebook is Jack Berry country, which is to say it’s the social network frequented most often by Baby Boomers.
C) Campaign Commercials — Speaking of Berry, he and former Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney have spent piles of cash on television time and slick commercials. Each candidate has taken a different tack. Berry has stuck to the Richmond-on-the-rise-I-can-keep-it-going message that forms the foundation of his campaign. Stoney’s ads are more autobiographical. The most cinematic one shows him going through his personal workout routine. It could just as easily double as B-roll for an ESPN "30 for 30"-style documentary about his campaign should he lose (“What if I told you that they chose more of the same instead of something new …?”). Some branded Stoney the “Crossfit Candidate” after its release. That actually has a nice ring to it.
D) Dropout shaming – Joe Morrissey is only winning because the other candidates are splitting the vote, the hordes said. Then they said it again and again and again. One of the prevailing narratives of the race on its face had merit, and so many decided the most logical course of action was to berate certain candidates, determined to have “no chance to win,” to drop out. It essentially boiled down to: GTFO Jon Baliles; do right by the city you claim to love. Last week, the West End councilman finally withdrew, the hordes rejoiced, and the remaining candidates entered the long-awaited Baliles-supporter-sweepstakes portion of the race.
E) Endorsements – Candidates and supporters alike seemed to assign more weight to each endorsement the closer we inched to Election Day. You could almost picture the proverbial scales tilting as this lobbying group or that former elected official hopped on board the Berry or Stoney bandwagon.This culminated with the Richmond Free Press endorsement of Berry last week, which the candidate called the highlight of his career. Stoney countered by pronouncing Baliles' backing the biggest of the election. Back in August, I asked a few politicos: Do endorsements really matter? The answer was a definitive sort of. What feels like a zillion endorsements later, I'm still unsure of their value.
F) Forum Fatigue — Remember how exciting it was when L. Douglas Wilder announced he was hosting a forum for mayoral candidates way back in April, two months before the ballot was even finalized? Turns out Wilder knew something the rest of us didn’t yet: By October, the sheer number of forums – 29 by the time it was all said and done – would all but guarantee they would get stale. Really stale. This is not to say the forums were of no value to voters who otherwise didn’t have the opportunity to see the candidates in action or, say, visit their websites.
G) Goldman, Paul — The old school Democratic operative isn’t on social media, but he pounds out emails in 10-point font and blasts them out from his AOL address. His dispatches are part fireside chat, part pat on the back, part hot take. Goldman feigns impartiality despite public knowledge of his status as a Morrissey acolyte. He was particularly prolific after the front-runner’s October Surprise. Excerpted below is a rare all-caps proclamation from Goldman. Perhaps he shouted it at his iPhone: “FAIR IS FAIR; IF THE MEDIA IS GOING TO HOLD MR. MORRISSEY ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS ACTIONS – THE NEWS MEDIA SHOULD DO THAT AND OF COURSE HAS DONE THAT – I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH FAIR REPORTING IN THAT SPHERE. BUT IF THE SYSTEM IS GOING TO BE FAIR, THEN THE MEDIA HAS TO HOLD RTD EQUALLY ACCOUNTABLE FOR ITS ACTIONS SINCE THEY MAKE NO BONES ABOUT TRYING TO DESTROY MR. MORRISSEY’S CAMPAIGN.”
H) Hot Takes – Everyone is a political savant in the first week of November. One of my favorite hot takes is the claim that a candidate has “momentum,” a fleeting and invaluable thing in any political race. Most candidates had it at some point: after a forum performance, after a new poll came out, after a fundraising deadline, after an endorsement. Candidates and their supporters had to rush to tell the Internet they had momentum because just as soon as they had it, someone else would steal it away.
I) International Intrigue – There’s nothing Richmond loves more than when people outside of Richmond notice Richmond, and wow, has the world been taking notice of Richmond during this election cycle. First came The Washington Post, which documented Joe Morrissey’s unsavory past and unprecedented staying power. Then the Toronto Star quoted Morrissey’s staffer saying he was going to be the city’s “first real black mayor.” The venerable Economist took notice of our plight. Then that Swiss-German newspaper likened Morrissey to Donald Trump. DailyKos and Wonkette got in on the action, too. The Huffington Post, Daily Mail and New York Times were fashionably late to the spectacle, but made it just before Election Day.
Bobby Junes cutout
J) Junes, Bobby, but mostly his campaign sign – A first-time candidate for office, Junes produced head-scratching moments while sharing the stage with his more polished peers before dropping out last Friday. Infinitely more interesting than his candidacy was his campaign sign. People mocked it, understandably. But I’d be willing to argue that it’s actually the most effective yard sign of the season for the sole reason that it’s so bad you can’t help but gape at it. What else is a yard sign supposed to accomplish? In its awfulness lies its genius.
K) Klout Champion Levar Stoney – We should have known this man meant business when he had an official Snapchat filter for his campaign office opening … in June. If this election was decided by likes and retweets, Stoney would be the guy to beat. The I’m-With-Jack bloc put up a formidable fight, but the 35-year-old is a certified social media juggernaut playing with a home field advantage only a millennial can claim. His army of social disciples faithfully shares everything that has his name or face on it. No, I do not know his actual Klout score, but I bet you’d be envious of it. Also: Does anyone still use Klout?
L) Let’s get Drunk and Talk About It – The YouTube series sprung from the brain of the most relevant VCU dropout in city politics history, Nate Peterson, and pairs candidates and media types with alcoholic beverages. Guests sip while Peterson chugs. The conversations that unfold are entertaining, if not always substantive. A one-time mayoral candidate, Peterson snapped up his opponents' web domains in one of the best trolls of the cycle. On Monday, he released an hourlong episode featuring his interview with Coleman Pride, Myrna Morrissey’s estranged father.
M) Mayoral Fixation – Richmond’s funniest faux talk-show host, Beau Cribbs, bestowed upon us a series of video interviews with the candidates. Below is my personal ranking of their comic value.
- Williams – Obama Lite for the win.
- Stoney – Wilder impression is the funniest he has ever been.
- Morrissey – You may not like him, but his charm is undeniable.
- Berry – Wins points for unexpected Jones dig.
- Mosby – First (only?) time she’s given an explanation for the Mosby Mobile.
- Junes – The phrase “Bro-Romance” was used.
- Baliles – He participated.
N) #NeverJoe; see also #NeverMorrissey – The preeminent social movement of the election was born after the first publicly released poll showed Morrissey as the de facto front-runner in the crowded field. Reinforcements for the movement arrived when a second poll also showed Morrissey winning. A third poll produced the same result, cementing #NeverJoe as the rallying cry for an online scramble to organize around a candidate best positioned to defeat him (See Dropout Shaming, Undercard Uprising and Vote Together). Hashtag movements typically die a swift death, but #NeverJoe’s staying power is akin to the Crying Jordan meme. It’s one of the only constant things about this race on the Internet, and it will endure so long as the politician remains polarizing.
O) Open Source RVA – The WRIR program’s SoundCloud is a repository of rich interviews. Each of the three leading candidates sat down with Don Harrison, a veteran journalist who isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions, such as this of Joe Morrissey: “Do you consider yourself a sex addict?”
P) “Path to Victory”; see also Polls – The Internet thinks the three public polls that have been released are essentially BS. The first was conducted too early to show anything of significance. The second was commissioned by an interest group that had previously endorsed a candidate. The third was conducted by a marketing entity, not a professional polling firm. All imperfect, and therefore all worthless. Then again, what the three polls showed – Morrissey winning outright – is the reason why armchair pundits wanted to trim the field, and Baliles was called upon to drop out. Out of the worthless polls came the impetus to “vote strategically” to stop the front-runner (See Vote Together). When debating how one could most strategically cast one’s ballot in a particular district, the so-called worthless polls became a justification for backing one candidate or another (“Berry is leading three districts”; “Yeah, but Stoney is second everywhere”). In fact, the polls were only worthless insofar as they didn’t support the scenario the hordes were advancing for their candidate of choice. That scenario, a candidate’s “path to victory,” was, actually, 100 percent contingent upon the polls that no one admitted they believed, as well as the vague immeasurable notion that their candidate had “momentum” (See Hot Takes).
Q) Queen of Google Michelle Mosby – The City Council president, a candidate who at one time had as good a chance as anyone to be the city’s next mayor, proclaimed herself a “Google Queen” in front of a capacity crowd gathered at Virginia Union University for the first forum of the year. Touting your reliance on a search engine as it pertains to problems that have confounded generations of political leadership does not inspire confidence in your qualifications, in part because literally anyone could do that. To be fair, though, the gaffe probably didn’t hurt Mosby’s chances any more than Googling “How do I win the Richmond mayor’s race?” helped her campaign.
R) RVAdirt – At times clever, at times schlocky, but always a part of the online conversation, the city’s newest citizen journalism publication has gained a dedicated following in its short life span. It scored a scoop when it fact-checked Berry’s assertion that he had nothing to do with the city’s Washington Redskins Training Camp deal. Its contributors, one of whom is actually running for School Board, have attended and live-tweeted more candidate forums than anyone else in town. When they aren’t sending 140-character dispatches, they’re communicating in gifs. What more could you ask for from a hyper-local politics blog?
S) Stain, RVA Coffee, and Church Hill People’s News tag team – This illustrated guide of the field when there were 17 (!) candidates may be the most accurate depiction of how effing bonkers this entire cycle has been. The duo has updated it along the way as candidates have dropped out. They also revised Jack Berry’s chances of winning, originally pegged at “Maybe in 1971” to the present day’s “surprisingly higher than we wiseassedly thought back in April.”
T) Top Tweets, a roundup:
Campaign shade category
Berated reporter category
Staffer-on-staffer crime category
Candidate meme category
Watchdog category
U) Undercard Uprising – Desperate times call for desperate measures. As fear of a Morrissey win grew, some down-ticket candidates took matters into their own hands and took up the #NeverJoe banner. Charlie Diradour, a 2nd District Council candidate, was the first to seize the opportunity. Andreas Addison, a 1st District Council hopeful, joined the cause as well. People praised both candidates for taking a stand. If Morrissey ends up winning, let’s see how they feel in a couple years, when the 1st and 2nd districts are swallowed by potholes and his administration doesn’t bat an eye.
V) Vote Together — This fascinating social experiment sought to consolidate support for a single candidate deemed most capable of defeating Morrissey. Nearly 1,700 people joined a Facebook group that served as a forum for dialogues about happenings, policy and, yes, paths to victory. Finally, someone pointed out what everyone who joined the group knew all along: This wasn’t going to work. Why? Because there’s no such thing as consensus on the Internet.
W) www.lawrencewilliamsarchitect.com – Perennial candidate Lawrence Williams is hard-wired to care about web traffic. In fact, this whole third-time-is-the-charm act was only about getting his uniques up.
XYZ) There's no guarantee the #rvamayor race will wrap up on Nov. 8, so how can we write the end of this? (You see this entry for what it is. Just roll with it. There are no applicable words that start with 'X' anyway.) Some are all-in for an outright victory on Tuesday. Others are crossing their fingers for a runoff and six more weeks of campaigning. No matter what happens, someone is going to sleep feeling like a loser tonight, so we'll just leave this here, you know, in case you need it.
