Updated: October 31, 2013, 3:32 pm.
A second Virginia newspaper has decided not to endorse any of the three candidates in the Virginia gubernatorial race.
The Roanoke Times published an editorial on Thursday that argued “none of the three candidates deserves an endorsement in this year’s gubernatorial contest.”
The non-endorsement comes less than a week before Election Day, and polls show Democrat Terry McAuliffe leading Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) by around 7 or 8 percentage points.
The editorial said that Cuccinelli would be an obstructionist governor that would likely “condemn the state to four numb years of status quo under the most appealing scenario, decay and disarray under the more likely scenario.”
For McAuliffe, the editorial is a bit more forgiving — but only slightly. The Roanoke Times editorial board writes that while McAuliffe offers some good policy proposals, he still lacks experience.
“Democrat Terry McAuliffe espouses some good government goals, including expansion of Medicaid,” the editorial said. “But his glib and ambiguous efforts at policy analysis, punctuated by name-dropping, are a nagging and annoying reminder of his lack of experience in elected office at any level.”
And for Libertarian candidate Rob Sarvis, the Times argued that he is incapable of handling the dismantling of government that he proposes.
“If there is a task he is less qualified to handle than running a state government, it is the dismantling of that government, an inevitable consequence of his proposal to eliminate income taxes,” the editorial said.
The Roanoke Times’s editorial came a few weeks after came ten days after the Richmond Times-Dispatch published a similar piece refusing to endorse any candidate in the race.
