Opinion: Updated: Terry McAuliffe gears up to buy the Virginia governor’s office

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(UPDATE: After a two-month tour of Virginia, Terry was so excited about 10 more months of touring Virginia that he couldn’t wait until Jan. 7 to announce his prefabricated decision to run for governor of the commonwealth. So he did it on Jan. 3 instead.)

Here’s the bad news for Virginia Republicans, who once ruled the commonwealth politically: There are no limits whatsoever on how much a person or union, say, can give to any one candidate.

Here’s the good news for Virginia Republicans: Terry McAuliffe, the ex-chair of the Democratic National Committee, the political powerhouse, is probably running for governor there.

Now, if Terry the Tiger’s candidacy is good news for the GOP, that tells you how bad things are. The Washington Post had a fascinating examination of McAuliffe’s cannonball into the political pond of Virginia.

Now that he’s done raising gazillions of millions for both Bill and Hillary Clinton, who lost anyway, McAuliffe is doing a fair bit of money-vacuuming now on his own. Without hardly trying, he’s already cornered the support of the state’s billionaire Randal J. Kirk, who’s given, oh, say, about $660,000 to Gov. Tim Kaine just in the last 36 months.

In the last 18 years, McAuliffe has raised nearly $940 million between the Clintons and the DNC. That’s even more than the magic new guy. But, of course, he did it in a much shorter time and is busy changing the way things are done next door in Washington as soon as he’s inaugurated Jan. 20.

Speaking of time, McAuliffe says he’ll announce on Jan. 7 what his plans are. Gee, whaddya think?

-- Andrew Malcolm

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