As head of the Virginia Association of Counties, a group that lobbies at the state Capitol for local government, Jim Campbell meets a lot of people. One person he may not have expected to encounter: Jim Melia, a new member of the public-corruption squad of the FBI’s Richmond office. “He told me his boss told him to get to know lobbyists and probe a little bit,“ said Campbell, who met with Melia for about an hour June 9, primary day. “I hope he doesn’t find anything.“

Virginia’s $2.3 billion smooch with Northrop Grumman for computer services is behind schedule and another $6 million in the red. More than a year late and $8.5 million over budget, Motorola Corp. has yet to deliver a $340 million radio system to state police. And what does Bob McDonnell do about all this? He issues a press release criticizing cap and trade.

Giant tax increase for cops, kids and welfare notwithstanding, could Mark Warner’s legacy as governor be summed up with a four-letter word: VITA? There’s something rotten in Chesterfield—at the headquarters of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, created by Warner as a Price Club for the state to buy and maintain computers and software.

Election results

Terry McAuliffe called Creigh Deeds to concede at 8:06 p.m., little more than an hour after the polls closed. About 150 people gathered at an Arlington County hotel for the McAuliffe event.

In his “Brady Bunch” ad, Bob McDonnell, sitting on the front stoop of his house in the Henrico suburbs, is typecast. The message—as the Republican gubernatorial nominee and unflappable pater familias of a vast, bubbly clan is, among other things, fleeced for car keys by his twin sons—is that McDonnell is the friendly, sort of dull everyguy.

A. BARTON HINKLE It’s not yet clear whom Virginia Democrats will pick on Tuesday to run against Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling, the GOP candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. (The unopposed Democratic candidate for attorney general, Steve Shannon, will square off against Republican Ken Cuccinelli.) But this much is clear: Whatever the Democratic ticket looks like, it will be the most extreme, radical, wild-eyed bunch of borderline psychotics ever to campaign for public office in the history of the universe.

Conservatives cheered George Bush’s re-election in 2004. Fools likened Bush to William McKinley, who opened an era of Republican dominance more than a century before. Other eyes noticed Colorado. Bush carried the Centennial State, but with a smaller margin than in 2000. Moreover, Democrats won an open seat in the U.S. Senate previously held by a Republican. They picked up an open seat in the U.S. House as well. Democrats gained in local races, too.

And then there were two? Three names for governor appear on the Democratic primary ballot: Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran. Beyond the curiosity of polls that show Deeds gaining on early front-runner McAuliffe, why does it seem, with nine days to go, that only they stand out? This is not to suggest that Moran is dead in the water. Nothing would please him more than serving doubters steaming helpings of crow.

It’s an oldie but maybe no longer a goodie. Virginia’s 62-year-old prohibition against union membership as a condition for a job—the so-called right-to-work law—is popping up in the preliminaries of the 2009 campaign. As an issue, it’s largely manufactured, the handiwork of Republicans trying to get back in the good graces of checkwriting businesspeople and business organizations trying to remain relevant.

Recent History Terry McAuliffe—Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former head of the Democratic National Committee, and former director of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—says Republicans in the House of Delegates are not bipartisan enough. McAuliffe castigates them for thwarting Gov. Tim Kaine’s demand for higher road taxes and bigger unemployment benefits. “I’ve got to have a House of Delegates that agrees with me on these big issues,“ he says. But House Republicans “are impossible to deal with.“ Really?

For Bob McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor, this is a Sunday of sacrilege. His alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, today is awarding an honorary degree to President Barack Obama. That a great Catholic university would do so, given Obama’s support of abortion rights, is an affront to the faith’s social teachings, McDonnell says.

No president—perhaps no other human being—in the past century has so perfected the art of flimflam as Bill Clinton. Recently he demonstrated once again his uncanny facility for mendacity. Clinton appeared at the Farmer’s Market in Richmond with gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, whom he praised as “the right sort of bipartisan guy.“

The switch of Pennsylvania’s Sen. Arlen Specter from the Republicans to the Democrats serves those Neanderthal Bush-Cheney Republicans right—don’t you think? Yes and no. The decision by the always liberal Sen. Specter says a lot about him and a lot about his party. About him it says that even at 79, his primary interest is power—specifically re-election next year—and he has so abused Pennsylvania Republicans and their values with his wacky positions and votes on so many issues for so long that only running as a Democrat can bring him victory.

Virginians need only look to their state and local budgets, their politics, their schools and highways and their military bases to measure the impact of President Barack Obama’s first 100 days. Budgets Recession-wracked Virginia is closing a hole in its two-year, $77billion budget with more than $1.5 billion in cash from Obama’s plan to kick-start the economy with a gush of federal spending.