Terry McAuliffe is Barack Obama

Salon
May 14, 2009
By Mike Madden

It was getting late Monday night, and Biz Markie had been playing hit after hit from his laptop at a nightclub in the D.C. suburbs, running through different sounds from the ’80s and ’90s — a little “Livin’ on a Prayer” here, a little “The Freaks Come Out at Night” there, then the first verse or two of “The Choice Is Yours.” Suddenly the club’s lights went down all the way, and a spotlight shone out onto the stage. Biz stopped DJing and started singing “Just a Friend,” the single that shot him up the rap charts 20 years ago — but with a strange new twist in the lyrics. Instead of, “But you say he’s just a friend,” the song’s chorus became, “Because Terry is our friend.”

That’s “Terry” as in Terry McAuliffe. And this has been, for most of 2009, how McAuliffe rolls. The consummate Democratic Party insider — and the single most loyal supporter of both Bill and Hillary Clinton over the years — is now running in Virginia’s gubernatorial campaign, trying to become the state’s very own Barack Obama. Polls show he’s got the lead, and the momentum, with less than a month before the Democratic primary on June 9. McAuliffe says stepping up from campaign chairman to candidate was a natural fit. “It’s fun doing it for yourself,” he told Salon Wednesday. “You got control.”

If he wins the nomination, the general election that would follow might give the political world the first hint of an answer to two questions: One, just how blue is Virginia these days? The state’s demographics have shifted; this isn’t the same Virginia that Clinton lost twice in the 1990s. But it still isn’t reliably in the Democratic column. How well a nationally prominent fundraiser who’s never so much as run for dogcatcher will do seeking to become chief executive of a purple state remains to be seen. The second question — which a McAuliffe loss in the primary might help settle, too — is, can the Obama campaign’s strategy and grass-roots tactics work with a rich white guy at the top of the ticket instead of Barack Obama?

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