The final results for VA-35 are in:

Mark Keam (D)   12,588 (%50.65)

Jim Hyland (R)   12,242 (%49.25)

Write-in                      22 (%0.08)

Congratulations to Mark Keam, VA-35’s newest citizen legislator. Between the two candidates running, Keam’s campaign was better funded and a lot more organized. All of this is my subjective opinion but the facts back me up. Keam was visible; both on TV and in the mailbox. On the other hand, Jim Hyland was MIA months, and I only received one mailing from his campaign. Keam personally knocked on my door, taking a lesson learned from Chap Petersen’s winning strategy that has paid him big dividends. If Hyland did knock on my door he didn’t leave anything suggesting he’d been there.

What really amazes me is for all the hard work and money Keam (and the Democratic Party of Virginia) poured into this campaign it came down to 346 votes separating winner from loser. Keam spent lots of money, sent out colorful mailings, knocked on doors, appeared on TV, and had the backing of current “part time” Governor, err… I mean “full time” DNC chairman Tim Kaine, Senator Jim Webb, and former Governer (and current Senator) Mark Warner. Hyland may have done better had he put more personal investment (time and door knocking) into his campaign.

But… could he (Hyland) have done more? He lost by 346 votes, what could he have done to offset those votes? I have a suggestion: Show some principle, state what you support and believe in, and be willing to walk the walk. I explain below.

From day one Keam was very adamant about his desire to legislate more gun control. His stance was clear and unquestionable, just check out the mailings he sent to my mailbox on the issue:

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Keam is clearly your man if you support gun control. Knowing that Keam has the gun control crowd locked in (and how could he not?) if I were Hyland (and I did not support gun control) I’d contrast myself… campaigning FOR gun rights. However, Hyland also appeared to be a supporter of gun control. According to the Fairfax Connection newspaper he stated he supports closing the “gun show loophole”, supports the “one-handgun-a-month” law, and he refused to return the Virginia citizens Defense League’s candidate gun rights survey. How do I know Hyland refused to return the survey? I ran into him Saturday night (Oct 31) and asked him about it, and his apparent lack of respect towards gun rights. What I was surprised to learn however was that Hyland claims to support gun rights in private but felt he had to take a pro gun control stance or else his Democrat opponent Keam would use gun control “as a wedge” against him! Talk about lack of principle! Good grief, Jim… grow a backbone already! How could you not know that you weren’t going to take any votes from Keam the “gun grabber“? Who was advising your campaign, that failure Jean Marie Devolites-Davis? If Hyland felt he had to kowtow to Keam how could we expect him to stand up for himself in the legislature as a freshman delegate? Over the course of our roughly 10 minute conversation I also explained to Hyland why requiring private citizens to run background checks through dealers wouldn’t work like he hoped, discussed Jean Marie Devolites-Davis’ loss to Chap Petersen due to her gun control ideas, and finished up by telling him that VCDL’s VA-Alert reaches over 12,000 Virginia voters; of which he could easily expect several HUNDRED VA-Alert subscribers to reside in his district (VCDL’s VA-Alert readership is more concentrated in the Northern VA, Richmond, and Hampton roads areas). I explained to Hyland that if he lost this election by “several hundred votes” he could lay it squarely on his refusal to return the VCDL Candidate Survey and his expressed public support for gun control. Gun activists are one of the MOST active voting block in Virginia, and Hyland stupidly shunned several hundred of them in his district. I cannot say if returning the survey would have helped him win, but what’s not debatable is he lost crucial votes from gun owners for not being principled, not contrasting his opposing position with a known gun grabber,  and allowing Mark Keam to manage a crucial campaign issue for him.