RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) – Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has some advice for the candidates running to take his place at the governor’s mansion.
“Talk about stuff people care about,” Governor McDonnell said outside his Ask the Governor radio segment Thursday morning in Richmond.
The governor said he believed Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe did good job focusing on jobs, medicaid and policy differences between the two candidates.
“I thought the debate last night, while instigated by Chuck Todd to have a lot of conflict and controversy and negativity, I thought there was a lot of substantive discussion on important issues,” the governor said.
Two new polls released earlier this week show McAuliffe with a single-digit edge over Cuccinelli; in both surveys McAuliffe’s advantage seemed to be fueled by a large lead among female voters.
McAuliffe held a 43 percent – percent advantage over Cuccinelli among likely voters in an NBC4/NBC News/Marist poll, with Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis at 8 percent. And in a Washington Post/Abt-SRBI survey, McAuliffe was at 47 percent, with Cuccinelli at 39 percent and Sarvis at 10 perecnt among likely voters. McAuliffe’s advantage in both polls was within the surveys’ sampling errors.
McDonnell, who said he supports fellow Republican Cuccinelli campaign, also said he never focuses too much on the polls.
“There’s been a lot of reporting, much of which has been inaccurate, about me the last few months. And yet the NBC poll said that the job approval rating was 55 – 35 positive. So, that’s nice, with about 100 days to go in my term. Ultimately I have not worried about that because I have the simplistic view that if you do the right thing, you get people to work together, you get results, people feel good about the direction of the state, then they’ll say ‘Governor, you’re doing a pretty good job.’ That’s all I can worry about.”
