INTERVIEW — DR. STEPHEN FARNSWORTH – Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA

@drsfarnsworth

• Donald Trump battles to retake Virginia, once-reliably red state gone blue. (Washington Times) — FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Donald Trump hasn’t given up the fight to win back Virginia for the Republican Party in November, but he is battling strong political headwinds that have the once solidly red state poised to vote Democrat for the third consecutive presidential election. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holds one of her biggest advantages among battleground states in Virginia, where she leads Mr. Trump by as much as 12 percentage points in polls. She has made the Old Dominion an anchor for her electoral strategy, which she underscored by tapping the state’s former governor, Sen. Tim Kaine, as her running mate. Mr. Trump pushed back Saturday at a rally in this bedroom community on the southern edge of Northern Virginia, where his supporters reeled at the thought of their state remaining blue this year.
• Clinton campaign not planning to air ads in Virginia. Los Angeles (CNN) – Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign will make their final ad reservations for the fall this week, according to an aide, reserving — in total — $80 millions in ads through Election Day in eight states. Two states that the Clinton campaign is not planning to air local ads in through September and October: Virginia and Colorado. In total, Clinton will spend $3 million in ads for the remainder of August and $77 million in September and October, according to an aide. The states part of Clinton’s ad campaign: Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina and the Omaha market in Nebraska.
• Terry McAuliffe’s Second Try at Restoring Felon Voting Rights. Weeks after the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the governor’s order giving 200,000 ex-offenders back the franchise was unconstitutional, he’s trying a different method. Virginia Gov. McAuliffe restores voting rights to 13,000 felons, after being blocked by the state Supreme Court.  Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe today restored voting rights to 13,000 felons, circumventing a court ruling and defying objections to his earlier attempts from Republican legislators.  The move comes after Republicans and the Supreme Court of Virginia stopped his earlier wide-ranging clemency effort, an executive order issued in April that would have restored voting rights to about 200,000 felons who had served their sentences. Republicans were upset that the order included both violent and nonviolent offenders — en masse instead of case by case — and they accused the governor of trying to add voters to the registration rolls before November’s presidential election in a bid to help Hillary Clinton, a longtime friend and political ally.