The Huffington Post says Newt Gingrich hosted “his first big D.C. fundraiser since he began leading the GOP presidential primary, and tickets cost $1,000 a person,” last night at the Willard Hotel, but the venue “proved an especially regrettable choice” as Occupy DC protesters pressed up against the glass windows as “Newt and his 50 or so guests -- mostly young men and middle-aged couples -- huddled like penguins around a 20-foot Christmas tree at the center of the room.”
Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was in the building at the same at a fundraiser for the conservative Legacy Political Fund.
* PolitiFact says it was fair for Tim Kaine to claim during yesterday’s Virginia Senate debate that “the national debt increased ‘by $16,000 every second of the six years’” George Allen served in the Senate. The “actual number, from the day Allen entered the Senate to the day he left, is $15,555.38 per second,” and Allen “voted for budgets that increased the debt by $16,896.68 a second.”
Alec MacGillis writes for the New Republic that during the debate, Kaine offered a clear reminder of why Barack Obama came very close to picking him as his running mate in 2008 -- he is about as loyal a defender as Obama could ask for. … It was striking to see just how staunchly Kaine stuck up for Obama in his debate with Allen, at a time when many other Democrats in Virginia have been trying to distance themselves from the president.”
Bearing Drift’s Shaun Kenney says “there was a sideshow outside” the debate as the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation rallied to protest the exclusion of candidates other than Allen and Kaine. Kenney is disappointed by the small turnout “in the beating heart” of Tea Party Republican Jamie Radtke’s “base of support.”
* The Washington Post’s Anita Kumar writes, “Chalk it up to interesting timing,” but Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli must now defend GOP gubernatorial primary rival Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling “in a lawsuit filed by Sen. Don McEachin on behalf of Senate Democrats over control of the state Senate.” Cuccinelli “said he was ‘surprised’ to hear that Senate Democrats filed their lawsuit already.” He told the Post, “They really ought to wait until there’s something to fight over instead of just fighting over stuff.”
The Manassas News and Register says Bolling was in Manassas yesterday, where he “drew questions about health insurance, privatizing Va. Alcohol Beverage Control stores and hiring veterans” during a meeting with about 25 business owners at City Hall.
* The Annapolis Capital says “veteran politics watchers exchanged knowing smiles yesterday at the Board of Public Works when Comptroller Peter Franchot implied that Attorney General Doug Gansler lacks his predecessor’s mojo.” Franchot and Gansler are both expected to seek the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2014. A third prospective candidate, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, was presiding over the meeting. Discussing one case, Franchot said, “I wish in many ways we wouldn’t settle, and we would litigate, and if it costs us more, so be it.”
* Republican Tim Day suffered a huge defeat in his run for Ward 5 D.C. Council last year, but Huffington Post blogger Jody Melto gives him a lot of credit for exposing Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr.’s financial dealings -- which have led to a federal investigation and a raid on Thomas’s home. Melto says Day started looking into Thomas’s activities on his own. Day said, “After a long day of campaigning I came home and started reading a publication Thomas put out, a quarterly report. And it just didn’t make sense. So I opened my computer and asked myself, ‘What is Team Thomas?’” His looking into questionable allocations by that ostensibly charitable organization got the ball rolling on the probe that now threatens Thomas’s career.
