When Ken Cuccinelli ran last year to be attorney general of Virginia, he made no effort to hide his strident conservatism.
Cuccinelli made the Gadsden Flag — which, with its “Don’t Tread On Me” message, has lately been adopted by Tea Partiers — an official symbol of his campaign. He told a crowd he was thinking of not registering his son for a social security number because “it is being used to track you.” He even seemed to flirt with Birtherism. “Ken was a tea partier before there was a Tea Party,” one Virginia Republican told the New York Times recently.
Still, few observers expected Cuccinelli — a former state senator whose wife home-schools four of the couple’s seven children — to go far as he has. In just the three months that he’s held office, the AG has developed a national profile by making a bold and overt bid to establish himself as a leading figure on the flourishing right wing of the Republican Party. There’s no need for Sarah Palin to watch her back just yet. But in that short period of time, Cuccinelli has:
⢠Filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health-care reform law, despite a solid expert consensus that the law is constitutional. In doing so, Cuccinelli declined to join a similar lawsuit filed by 12 others attorneys general, instead going out on his own.
⢠Created an online anti-health-care-reform petition, entitled: “Stop the Mandate, Support Liberty Now.”
⢠Spoken at a “Tenth Amendment Rally” in Richmond.
⢠Informed the state’s colleges and universities that they could not legally ban anti-gay discrimination, because only the legislature can offer protections to new classes of people. That move, which provoked an uproar on Virginia campuses, was quickly walked back by Gov. Bob McDonnell, himself a staunch conservative.
⢠And — maybe most revealingly, in terms of his plans — launched a political action committee designed to bolster his influence within state politics.
It’s no stretch to suggest that Cuccinelli already has his eye on higher office — perhaps a run for governor in 2013 when McDonnell is term-limited out, or maybe a challenge to Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, in 2012.
In the meantime, though, he seems eager to keep burnishing his right-wing cred: he’ll speak at a Tea Party rally tomorrow.
