Virginia 37th State Senate District Results

Released November 9, 2007

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Virginia Governor Results in the 37th State Senate District

Released November 9, 2007

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Is North Carolina the New Virginia?

National Journal - August 11, 2007

© National Journal Group, Inc.

ANYONE looking for a meal in Wake County, N.C., will get a taste of how quickly the community is changing. In western Raleigh, a joint called Ole Time serves traditional Carolina-style barbecue, made with what proprietor Jerry Hart calls the two most important ingredients: "time and patience." Ole Time is a symbol of what Wake used to be. Five miles away, in Cary, is a symbol of what Wake is becoming: California-based grocery chain Trader Joe's sells sushi and organic snacks to the throngs of new Wake residents who have neither the time nor the taste for slow Southern cooking.

Wake is a county in transition. In the past 20 years, it has evolved from a sleepy bedroom community to a national biotech hub and a magnet for health research. Across the county, farms are being replaced by clusters of town houses, and woods are being cleared for office parks. Wake's current population of 755,000 is expected to grow 50 percent in the next 15 years, according to Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina's Center for the Study of the American South.

This rapid sprawl probably would seem familiar to anyone who knows Fairfax County, Va., another mid-Atlantic tech haven. As recently as the 1970s, large swaths of Fairfax County were still pasture. "Tysons Corner was fields and farms," AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis recalls. "Today, there's more office space in Tysons Corner than in Miami."

Fairfax has become the economic engine of Virginia, but it has also emerged as the commonwealth's most pivotal voting bloc. It now provides one of every seven votes cast in Virginia. And a once reliably Republican electorate in the county has trended away from the GOP, and tipped the state into the Democratic column in last year's U.S. Senate contest.

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Loudoun County Election Results

Released June 23, 2007

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Released July 16, 2007

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Fairfax County Election Results

Released December 14, 2006

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Right click here and select "Save File As" to download full map

Right click here and select "Save File As" to download full map

Speculation In Full Bloom

June 15, 2007

In the last 72 hours, Mike Bloomberg has been on the cover of TIME, the subject of the feature story in Business Week and a special guest on NBC's "Nightly News."

The three media outlets described the NYC mayor as "forthright," "prosaic," "self-confident," "tough," an "Eagle Scout," "an executive," "a CEO," "a cutthroat businessman," "a press mogul," "a Wall Street mogul," a "technocrat," someone who "isn't typical," "a risk-taker," "self-made," "a billionaire," "a self-made billionaire" a "pint-size billionaire" and, of course someone with "no political debts" who is "beholden to no one."

Sounds like the media has found a new sweetheart. Interviewing Bloomberg, Brian Williams even swooned, "Oh, you must have an opinion on whether or not you'd make a good president."

Our question: Couldn't Bloomberg, forthright Eagle Scout and cutthroat mogul that he apparently is, cool down the courtship if he wasn't just as interested?