Groundhog Chaos

Here come the city elections

Here’s this week’s cartoon for the FXBG Advance.

While people in other states are taking a break from politics after the presidential and congressional elections, we get back into it quickly here in Virginia. We have off-year elections. We get midterms next year. In case you’re a Republican and can’t do the math, we have elections three years in a row. The advertising industry LOVES Virginia.

The year after the presidential election, we have state and city elections. Governors here can only serve one term and we usually elect a governor who’s a member of the opposite party of the president. By November, the new president’s approval ratings are very low, so it’ll be pretty difficult for the GOP to retain the governor’s mansion this year. And thanks to Trump’s first term (sic), the General Assembly is still controlled by Democrats. The Dems’ majority in the Senate is 21-19 and in the House it’s 51-49. It’s tight.

It was our blue General assembly that prevented Governor Glenn Lying McLying Pants Youngkin from totally destroying our state. If it wasn’t for our blue General Assembly, women's rights would not be a thing in Virginia.

Virginia was a moderate reddish state when I moved here in 1998 and our senators were Republican John Warner and Democrat Chuck Robb. Our governor was Jim Gilmore who later ran for president, maybe even twice, but nobody remembers that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s selling cars today. And then Republican George Allen defeated Robb while the state went for George W. Bush in 2000 and everyone thought we would be red forever. But Allen was defeated by Democrat Jim Webb in 2006, shocking everyone, and Virginia went for Obama two years later and hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since. Now we have two Democratic senators. Speaking of Virginia senators, I have a rambling story.

It was in 2005 that the assistant editorial page editor of The Free Lance-Star and I went to a Christmas party at the Heritage Foundation. I know…don’t bust my balls. My editor had worked there years ago, and the Heritage Foundation was stocked with goons, but they had a good spread. I would meet other journalists there, even liberals (I met a guy from USA Today’s opinion page who told me Henry Payne was a funny cartoonist. I thought he was joking). If you remember correctly, liberals and conservatives weren’t enemies to the point we are today. The national atmosphere was divisive but you could have some Christmas ham together. It was 20 years ago, but I had a good time at the Heritage Foundation believe it or not. I went to at least two of those parties.

I was hired by The Free Lance-Star in 1998 as a conservative but by this time, I had become extremely cynical and was out of my deep blue closet thanks to a push by George W. Bush. Things were a bit tense at the office because I wouldn’t draw cartoons supporting the Patriot Act or the war in Iraq or that kids should start pulling their pants up and stop wearing their baseball caps backward (really). Amazingly, I remained on staff for 14 years.

I’ve always believed in ethics and my editor believed in them too, despite once having worked at the Heritage Foundation. The assistant…he did not. He wrote as if our page was an extension of the GOP. Today, he works for an anti-Climate Change think tank funded by oil companies. Let’s call him Jeff.

So Jeff and I are at this party at a goon think tank. We were both eating, drinking, schmoozing and of course, I was mostly talking to the women (and I had to get away from that USA Today Henry Payne fan). Guess who walks in. Senator George Fucking Allen and Jeff promptly crawls up his ass. It was like that scene in Family Guy where Quagmire leaps over people to get across the room when he sees Lois in a singles bar. Or if you’ve never seen Family Guy, it was like when George Costanza ran over old ladies, children, and a clown played by Jon Favreau (yes, that was the director of Iron Man) when a kitchen fire broke out. Jeff couldn’t stop himself from licking Allen’s balls all night.

At this point, Allen’s looking good to be reelected the next year. Nobody saw Jim Webb coming in 2005 (my bass player at the time, Phil, quit his job and joined the Webb Campaign as his body guy. He also quit the band. He was later arrested for carrying Webb’s bag into the capitol…because the bag contained a gun, which Phil didn’t know until Capitol Police were slamming him against a wall. My friend spent the night in jail on his birthday).

Back to the party. Jeff is still licking balls when I walk over to say hello to Allen and just as I get there, Jerff promises the senator that our paper will endorse him for reelection the next year. I didn’t say anything at the party but I reamed his ass on the ride home, even though he was technically my boss.

I told him he can’t promise an endorsement, especially a year away because things can change, even if we’re absolutely and 100 percent positively sure we’re going to endorse the person. It’s also extremely unethical. We didn’t work for George Allen. I also told him that no matter what he writes for the paper, even if we did endorse Allen and even though we work in the opinion section, we’re journalists, not fanboys. We argued in the car from Washington to Fredericksburg. Because I knew Allen would eventually visit for a meeting with the editorial board during his campaign, I felt a responsibility to give my editor a heads-up. My editor thought we’d be endorsing Allen, and so did I, but he also knew we couldn’t make promises to politicians. My editor needed to know that while talking to the senator, Allen would have the belief he had our endorsement in the bag He didn’t.

We endorsed Jim Webb. Webb won, helped turn the state from red to blue, Phil got arrested, and Jeff left FLS to be a reporter at The Washington Times despite the fact he didn’t fuck all about being a journalist which was OK because it was The Washington Times. The Times is a Republican paper owned by the Moonies. Jim was in the Times’ Capitol office and I can only imagine all the ass he kissed while working there. But at the Washington Times, that was probably OK. At one point, a former president of the NRA was the Times’ opinion editor. I go to Washington, DC a lot and I can’t remember the last time I saw a copy of The Washington Times.

Anyway, Virginia is purple or blueish today, but I’m hoping Youngkin is an anomaly.

As for city elections in the Burg, many are expecting divisiveness and chaos this year. For what it’s worth, Fredericksburg is a blue city. The last Republican presidential candidate to win here was George H. W. Bush. Biden beat Trump in 2024, 64 percent to 32 percent in the Burg. Unfortunately, the Burg is surrounded by two very red counties, so if you go out to a bar, there’s a very good chance you’ll be sitting between Yee-Haw fuckers.

The Advance has an Election Guide that will be updated throughout the year. You should bookmark it if you live in Virginia. You will probably see more election cartoons from me this year on state and city elections.

So how are we supposed to celebrate Groundhog Day? Are we supposed to eat Groundhog? You could because they’re not rare. Groundhogs are all over the East Coast and Midwest, but I never saw one until I moved to Fredericksburg. They’re everywhere. My first apartment in the Burg had a neighborhood groundhog. Mary Washington University in my neighborhood has groundhogs (and this neighborhood is infested with rabbits but. nobody gives a shit if a rabbit sees his shadow). I like groundhogs, but I like all animals. But my new fascination is otters.

I was downtown last Friday and saw that the visitor center had moved to the Big Ugly. The Big Ugly is the tallest building in the city and it’s big and ugly, at least big for Fredericksburg.

The Big Ugly

While I’ve seen groundhogs here, I’ve never seen an otter (other than in zoos and aquariums). So I was curious why there was merchandise featuring otters next to T-shirts with “Virginia is for Lovers.” There were otter keychains, shirts, and even stuffed toy otters. I asked and was informed that there was a large otter population many years ago in the Rappahannock River, but we kinda chased them away. But good news. The otters are back and have been seen at the river landing. I kinda geek out about that stuff but I’m very happy the otters are coming back and to the organization that helped spur that along, thank you. Otters are cool and maybe we should have named our minor league baseball team The Otters instead of the Nationals, or FredNats. did you know that otters hold hands? Now, I wonder what otters taste like. I’m kidding.

Groundhog update: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today which indicates six more weeks of winter. But according to the National Weather Service, which hopefully hasn’t been compromised by Trump and his Sharpie yet, Phil has only been correct 35 percent of the time over the last 20 years. The only ones who have a worse record at predicting are those fundamentalist fuckers who promise the world is going to end tomorrow. Who could have foreseen that a rodent wouldn’t be the best source of weather information? Alexa from Amazon isn’t much better because I better take an umbrella with me every time she tells me it’s not going to rain.

Note: No groundhogs or Bill Murray were harmed in the creation of this cartoon, but where is Pizza Rat?

Sheesh! Why did I write such a long blog today?

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