Virginia Election Results

It's been 30 years since there's been a competitive race for the House of Delegates in one particular Virginia district. That's because the retiring incumbent, as well as his predecessor, never faced any challengers. Not even in their primaries did they need to break a sweat.

So it was both exciting and surprising to see several candidates compete for the nomination. And given that only one party has the capacity to field an electable candidate in that remote corner of Virginia, the nominee almost certainly becomes the delegate-elect.

We got involved in this race the usual way -- by talking to each of the candidates. In most cases, the candidates showed us the usual arrogant antagonism. No surprise there. But one candidate actually took the time to listen to us, and clearly demonstrated an open mind on the issues.

That's when the trouble started.

I posted a blog that stretched his response into outright support (which he never actually offered). Then a political blogger appeared seemingly out of nowhere, took advantage of my mistake, and hastily mounted a smear campaign against our candidate. As it turned out, the sneaky snake was supporting a different candidate -- one that dismissed bikers as a burden to society. (Ever heard that one before?)

So in order to avoid any possible injury to the one friendly candidate in the pack, I deleted every blog entry pertaining to his race. I went one step further and deleted all Virginia blog entries, just to be on the safe side.

But the smear attacks continued, even to the point of publishing my name and address on the web. Eventually the sneaky snake moved on to exploit other opportunities for mischief. But I felt really bad about exposing our candidate to such needless distractions. So we stuck to campaign work for the next several weeks. Just anonymous hard work.

That explains the scarcity of blog entries over the past month. Same goes for the lack of naming names. But the rest of the story is that bikers rose to the occasion. We planted over 400 campaign signs along major roadways. We also delivered flyers to over 2,000 doorways, right before the election.

As it turned out, our candidate won by double-digit percentages. And when it comes to acting on legislation, I hope he remembers how hard we worked to help him. And how one particular sneaky snake deserves nothing but contempt.