Virginia’s Gubernatorial Elections, 2017
Introduction
This paper is all about the gubernatorial elections to be held in November 7, 2017 in the United States of Virginia where three candidates Ralph Northman, Ed Gillespie and Jill Vogel are the contestants. The state’s gubernatorial election will be the main election to be held. However, the other delegates’ house seats will be up for re-election. The elections both for the seat of governor and for the House of Delegates seats had taken place in June 13, 2017. In Virginia, there are various state executive offices with the main branch being governed by Article V of the Virginia constitution. The executive branch is made up of officials who are appointed and others elected (Jens, Candace, 2017). The following is the Virginia’s list of state executive offices (Gray et al., 2017).
a) Attorney general of Virginia; this office is made up of an executive official who is publicly elected in to the state government of Virginia. The duty of the elected attorney general is to provide a legal advice in a written form and represent all state agencies. This advice is in form of opinions of officials to the Virginia General Assembly members and to the officials of the government. In accordance with the Virginia constitution, there will be no term limits of the attorney general and his length of service is 4 years. His method of selection is by election by the commonwealth members.
b) Governor of Virginia; this is the state’s highest office in Virginia and also the head of executive branch ended by a constitutionally elected officer. The state is governed by a state government trifecta when the governor’s office is held by one political party and the majority in both houses of the state legislature. Before the November 2016 elections. Under the divided government, Virginia was one of the 20 states but not among the 30 government states’ trifectas. The constitutional state is the one that addresses the governor’s office in Article V which is the executive. The length of term is 4 years but the candidates are not allowed in office to succeed themselves and also do not have restrictions on how many times they hold that position. This is continually applied in Virginia among the gubernatorial offices in America.
c) Lieutenant governor of Virginia; the office is led by a lieutenant governor who is an officer constitutionally officer ranked as the second officer of the branch executive and is in line with the succeed of the Virginia governor. The lieutenant governor of Virginia is elected every 4 years and can also be re-elected. The length of the term limit is 4 years.
d) Insurance commissioner of Virginia; the official is appointed to the position in the government of Virginia state. This commissioner leads the insurance Bureau. The function of the Bureau is to license, regulate, investigate and examine companies that offer insurance services, agency and agents standing in for the Virginia commonwealth citizens. Also involved in registration, examinations and investigations of agents and agencies of real estate settlements. The commissioner is appointed by the governor and thus the length of the term is per the pleasure of the governor.
e) Virginia commissioner of labor and industry; the candidate is selected by a method of appointment by the governor and thus the length of the term is as per the pleasure of the governor. The commissioner is the head of the labor department and the entire industry and is also involved in the administration and enforcement of safety in occupations and also in the health care activities that have been lawfully prescribed.
f) Virginia secretary of agriculture and forestry; the governor appoints the secretary who then oversees the agricultural and forestry departments. He or she is also responsible for the marine products board of Virginia. Since the secretary is appointed by the governor, he has length of term limit but he serves as per the pleasure of the governor. The time that the governor declares that the term is over for the existing secretary then now he or she will be succeeded.
g) Virginia secretary of Natural resources; the secretary is appointed by the governor of the government state of Virginia and his or her duty is to advise the governor of Virginia on matters dealing with natural resources and also focus on advancing the priorities of the government. He or she works at the governor’s pleasure who decides on the length of the secretary’s term.
h) Virginia state secretary; the position is appointed to the state government of Virginia. His or her duty is to serve as an ex officio secretary to the governor of Virginia and thereby is concerned with sales keeping of the commonwealth and maintenance of the official records of the state. The office term length is 4 years and the method of selection is by appointment by the governor.
i) State corporation commission of Virginia; this is a constitutional position comprising of three members of the commission who work within the state government of Virginia. The general Assembly appoints the commissioners to serve in a term of 6 years. Their responsibility in the commission is to handle all charters of domestic corporations and also license the foreign corporations to carry out business within the commonwealth. Mark Christie is the current chair of the commission working with Judith Jagdmann and James Dimitri. Among the three commissioners the chair is rotated annually on every 1st February.
j) Treasurer of Virginia; this is a position appointed within the state government of Virginia. The treasurer’s duty is to perform activities of banking and investments needs of the state government. Since the method of selecting the position holder is by appointment by the governor, he or she serves at the governor’s pleasure in terms of service length. The candidate does not require any qualification specific for the office.
Among the three candidates Northam, Gillespie and Vogel, I have chosen Gillespie to be the one who will win the gubernatorial elections. This is after the analysis of the strengths of the other candidates and also from the debates they have held at various places. According to his arguments from the debate held in October 9 where he was invited with Northam to participate in the debate, the two of them agreed to discuss on issues like development of coal and renewable energy to fund the state for opioid addiction treatment and also on the idea of using public-private partnership in development of broad bank in the rural state. They all presented their views on those issues with Gillespie prioritizing to expand rural universities like Virginia University and also promote Indrial hemp production and expanding the rural areas in terms of economy. In response to this, Northam advocated for free tuition for students in college who have willingness to work in the rural of Virginia so as to promote growth in science. From this debate, Northam faced some criticism on his ideas but Vogel was not invited. Virginia is all focused on economy growth of those in rural but not on the growth of science (McKay, David, 2017).
Also, on the second debate they were invited, Gillespie appeared to have good points on how to improve the state of Virginia in comparison with his opponents. From the majority view of the people of Virginia are focused on economic growth because many working on part time jobs want to move to full time jobs. From his manifesto, I think Gillespie will win the gubernatorial elections of the state of Virginia. Besides, he also has the required qualifications and experience for the position he is contesting.
Edward Walter Gillespie as his full name was born in August 1, 1961 being the son of John Patrick Gillespie, the father and Connie Carrol his mother. His parents owned a grocery store at JC market where he grew up working. He has 3 sisters Sharon, Joanne and Theresa and one older brother Dennis John Gillespie. He is married to one wife Cathy Hay Gillespie and was blessed with three children John Patrick, Mollie and Bridgid.
Ed Gillespie was born and raised in mount Holly Township and grew up while working at her parent’ grocery store, JC market. He attended Pemberton Township High school, Pemberton (1979) and later joined the Catholic University of America (1983) and graduated with a BA political science (Wagoner et al., 2008). He was the administrative trustee of Catholic University of America and also at Johns Hopkins medical school. Ed Gillespie is a roman catholic (Small, Leslie, 2017).
Before he became a politician, Ed Gillespie worked on his parent’s grocery store and later became an attendant of the senate parking lot and eventually became the counselor of George the president. He also was a business owner of Quinn Gillespie and associates, a bipartisan lobbying firm. He was a leader of so many republican parties. After which he began his political career (Neal, 1987).
Gillespie started his career politically as Andy Ireland’s intern. In 1984, together with Ireland joined Republican Party where Gillespie worked as a telephone solicitor for the national committee of the republican. In 1994, he worked for the former House majority leader Dickey Armey. In 1996 he was the director of RNC and in 1997 he joined a lobbying firm Barbour where he was the advisor of the senate republican during the Bill Clinton’s impeachment. 1999 he was the press secretary during the presidential campaign of John Kasich where he acted well during the whole financing campaign. 2002, Gillespie became a strategist for Elizabeth Dole’s campaign. He always did his best to ensure she won the election. 2003, he was the RNS chairman through the 2004 and worked under that office until he witnessed president Bush win the re-elections. He was really a good leader. 2006 to 2007, he chaired the Republican Party for six months and later in 2007 he became the counselor of the White House. Later on in 2014 he ran for senate position in the U.S and won and lastly in 2017 he is now running for the seat of the governor in the state of Virginia. Having come from a democratic family, he was able to carry out his duties as the leader in all the offices he served.
Among the issues that candidate Gillespie is passionate about and is running on are economy where in September 2016 he talked of a 10% cross-the-board cut on income tax. He argued that this would improve the economy of the rural of Virginia and thus he is passionate about it. In 2014 he increased the federal spending in defense where he in specific stated that the U.S Navy needed more ships and was passionate about this because he won over that issue during senatorial elections. His idea based on all these is to ensure economic growth for his state.
The other issue is on immigration, where in July and August 2017, Gillespie opposed the sanctuary cities which adopted policies that were designed not to prosecute people for not being documented. In September 2017 he was in support for the executive order from Donald Trump banning immigration from the 7 predominant Muslim countries. He supported this order because he needed safety for his state. He ended up opposing so many evils that came from the immigrants. Other issues he is running for are health care, energy improvement and on environment and he shows his passion for all these issues. He needs the best for his Virginia state (Brown, Lara M, 2017).
Conclusion
From the academic qualifications of Ed Gillespie, he demonstrated his academic qualifications for the position because he is a graduate. He was raised in a democratic family that made him grow democratically before he even joined his political career. He was taught by his parents on how to work even when he was a little kid working at the grocery store and so he knows how it feels like being in a rural area. After growing up he started and owned various businesses upon which he led in some of the political offices and never failed on any duty assigned to him. He also advised President George on his campaigns and campaigned for others like Elizabeth until when he ran for the seat of senate and won. He raised $ 4.4 million to fund his campaign and by September 30, he only had $2.2 million. From all those experiences I believe Ed Gillespie is the right candidate for this gubernatorial run as his track record has shown that he is qualified for the position. Let’s all vote in Ed Gillespie as the next governor of the state of Virginia.
Works Cited
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Gray, Virginia, Russell L. Hanson, and Thad Kousser, eds. Politics in the American states: Press, 2017.
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President Barack Hussein. “ADREAM THAT OCCURRED ORADREAMDEFERRED?.” Dream and Legacy: (2017): 129.
Small, Leslie. “Endarch, Fall 2017.” Endarch: Journal of Black Political Research 2017.1 (2017): 4.
Neal C. “Natural history, education, and social order: Gillespie and the “Newtonian ideology”.” Journal of the History of Biology 20.1 (1987): 1-49.
Wagoner Jr, Jennings L., and Wayne J. Urban. American education: A history. Routledge, 2008.
Brown, Lara M. “How close is too close?: the 2017 gubernatorial elections:” Society 49.5 (2017): 418-422.
