Here’s what we know about the average amount raised by candidates in each locality.

Note: Numbers are based on campaign finance reports filed April 28 and subsequent 24-hour reports of any donation of $500 or more. Candidates for whom fundraising totals were not available were excluded from the data.

Look for election results Wednesday at vpap.org

Chesapeake City Council

• View overview
• View top donors

Fairfax City Council & Mayor

• View overview
• View top donors

Hampton City Council

• View overview
• View top donors

Lynchburg City Council

• View overview
• View top donors

Newport News City Council & Mayor

• View overview
• View top donors

Norfolk City Council & Mayor

• View overview
• View top donors

Roanoke City Council

• View overview
• View top donors

VIEW ALL LARGE PRE-ELECTION DONATIONS

The mayor has made it abundantly clear that he does not need or want an alternative in the event the land acquisition and developer contracts for the Shockoe Bottom project do not materialize.

During the weekend, Jones shot back with a promise to veto the change. But in the vote to cut the funding, councilmen with two key swing votes signaled that they’re leaning away from the Shockoe Bottom stadium plan. Making matters worse for Jones, his administration has struggled to finalize the terms of the stadium deal in the Bottom with private developers. Jones had said the agreement would be completed more than two months ago.

The average number of vetoes upheld has declined sharply since the 1990s, when Republicans George Allen and Jim Gilmore resided in the Executive Mansion, as can be seen on the chart below.

A vetoed bill fails to become law unless two-thirds of both chambers vote to override the Governor’s objections. On the April 23 veto session, the legislature could not muster the votes to override any of Gov. McAuliffe’s vetoes in both chambers.

The vetoed bills were: 

• HB962 - Concealed handgun; carrying in a secured container or compartment in vehicle.
• HB1040 - Traffic light signal photo-monitoring; use of system, appeals.
• SB236 - Students; codifies right to religious viewpoint expression.
• SB310 - Senate districts; technical adjustments of certain boundaries.
• SB555 - Chaplains of Virginia National Guard and Virginia Defense Force; sermons.

Here are the latest pre-election finance disclosures for candidates running in municipal elections tomorrow in Chesapeake, Fairfax, Hampton, Lynchburg, Newport News, Norfolk, and Roanoke. Beginning April 25, candidates are required to report donations of $500 or more within 24 hours of receipt.

Chesapeake City Council

John DeTriquet

• $14,000 from John Michel DeTriquet (loan)

Fairfax City Council

Jeff Greenfield

• $1,000 from Jiangsu International Chamber of Commerce
• $500 from Asian Delight

Fairfax City Mayor

Scott Silverthorne

• $500 from Thomas M. Davis

Lynchburg City Council

Rhonnie Smith

• $500 from Brad Greer

Norfolk City Council

Bill Cook

• $500 from John Cooper

Rodney Jordan

• $1,500 from Kenneth Alexander for Senate
• $500 from Mary Becker

Tommy Smigiel

• $500 from Virginia Education Association - Norfolk
• $500 from Kent L. Winquist

VIEW ALL LARGE PRE-ELECTION DONATIONS

Certified Public Accountants PAC of Virginia

• $10,000 from Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP

Common Good Virginia

• $10,000 from Rivada Networks

Virginia Beverage Association PAC

• $22,000 from Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of Central Virginia

Virginia Senate Republican Caucus

• $15,000 from Alpha Natural Resources
• $10,000 from Eckert Seamans

VIEW ALL RECENT LARGE DONATIONS

State law requires non-candidate political committees to report any single donation of $10,000 or more within three business days.

Arlington tops the list (even though it’s a county and not a city), while Alexandria ranked No. 3. No surprise there. But how about this — Norfolk scored 13th out of the 288 cities surveyed and Richmond scored 18th.

As is always the case, semantic confusion surrounds the use of the word “city.” Chesapeake and Virginia rank disappointingly low on the list. But Chesapeake and Virginia Beach are not urban-core jurisdictions; under Virginia’s unique system of government, they are classified as cities even though their sociological profiles are all suburban. They are bedroom communities geared to households raising children, not urban hipsters.

Greg Toppo and Paul Overberg with USA describes a trend they describe as the “post-college town” — places where college grads head to look for a job and sink roots.

This is a new kind of city, born of deep demographic shifts and the power of technology. Where traditional college towns have long attracted young people who get an education and then leave, another kind of town is emerging: the post-college town.

“These places seem to be built for people, not for automobiles,” says University of Nevada-Las Vegas demographer Robert Lang. “And the 20-somethings love the people, not the automobile.”

The USA Today rankings are based on the ratio of the number of people 20-29 to the number of teens. Cities with high ratios suggest that a large number of Millennials have moved in. Some high rankers are to be expected – Cambridge, Mass. (No. 2.), San Francisco (No. 5) and Seattle (No. 6). But there some surprises like Tallahassee, Fla., Fargo, N.D., Springfield, Mo. — not to mention Norfolk and Richmond, which few people regard as magnets for young people.

Virginia has many, many problems, as Bacon’s Rebellion bloggers make abundantly clear. But the ability of Virginia cities to attract and retain educated young people bodes well for the future of the Old Dominion.

– JAB

At last, we have concrete numbers documenting a long-suspected flaw of Obamacare: Not everyone who signs up for insurance will pay for it. What the Obamanauts failed to consider — d’oh! – is that millions of Americans don’t have bank accounts. Without bank accounts, they can’t write checks to pay their premiums!

The most recent numbers I have uncovered, based upon a 2011 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation study, found that 17 million adult Americans are “unbanked,” which means they have no checking account, while 51 million are “underbanked,” which means they have bank accounts but they rely upon alternative financial services such as payday loans, rent-to-own services, pawn shops, or refund-anticipation loans. It is safe to say that people relying upon pawn shops and payday loans don’t carry big cash balances in their checking accounts.

It should come as no surprise that there is a significant overlap between those who are unbanked or underbanked and those who are unable or unwilling to purchase health care insurance. It seems the geniuses who designed Obamacare didn’t consider this — indeed, they still haven’t figured it out (or, if they have, they haven’t fessed up to it yet).

This is just one more example of the colossal incompetence of those who designed the insurance scam, I mean scheme, and of those who argued that we should pass the legislation to find out what’s in it.

Another bad sign: There is a direct correlation between age and the likelihood of having a bank account. The under-24 crowd is more than three times as likely as the 55- to 64-year-old cohort to not have a checking account. Thus, a disproportionate number of non-payers will be the coveted healthy young people whose payments into the exchanges subsidize the payments of older participants. This imbalance increases the likelihood of a demographic death spiral in which the average cost per insured is higher than the insurance companies projected, insurers raise rates, more healthy people drop out, and the cycle repeats itself.

The hubris of the do-gooders: There’s a special irony here. One reason that so many Americans are unbanked is that Obama-era economic policies — the super-low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve Board and consumer “protection” initiatives such as the crackdown on overdraft practices — make small checking accounts a drain on banks. Rather than sign up new accounts, banks are incented to weed them out. In other words, Obama-era banking policy works to undermine Obama-era health care policy.  But the do-gooders never learn. They always know better than everyone else and their appetite for meddling never ceases.

– JAB

The Virginian-Pilot

If I locate a similar guide for the contests on the Peninsula, I will post that as well.

The election is tomorrow, May 6. Polls are open from 6am to 7pm. To find your voting location, you can use this tool from the SBE.

Former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli may be out of public office, but he is not quite out of the spotlight. 

Cuccinelli remains actively involved in a number of causes that he championed during his often controversial time in office. He currently serves as lead counsel in a lawsuit filed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) against the NSA. Paul is widely considered to be a candidate for president. Cuccinelli is also popping up on national talk shows to defend conservative policy as he did recently as a guest on CNN's Crossfire. 

But his activism is not relegated to the national debate. Cuccinelli is also in the mix at a very base level, offering his services as a defense attorney to gun owners who are nervous about their legal rights being violated.

Cuccinelli's new firm, Virginia Self Defense Law, allows clients to put his firm on a monthly retainer. In the event they find themselves in legal trouble the firm will represent them for no additional cost. 

But the concept is not without it's critics. Here is a preview of our special report set to air Monday night at 11 on NBC12. 

It is difficult for Cuccinelli to do much of anything, even in his post-public life, without drawing controversy, but there is some scuttle about his effort with this particular firm. 

On Monday we sit down one on one with the former AG, look in depth at the legality of his firm and hear why some are concerned about what he plans to do. 

That is Monday night at 11 on NBC12. 

 By Peter Galuszka

The news from Ukraine grows progressively more disturbing with dozens of deaths in recent days in the seaport of Odessa and in some Ukrainian cities near the Russian border.

Meanwhile, Russians forces, some at involving brigade-strength units of tank, motor-rifle and airborne troops, plus Spetnaz special forces, are taking up positions on the border of eastern Ukraine.

It is chilling to think how quickly and mysteriously this situation all came up. As a former Moscow correspondent for a U.S. magazine, I find some of the city names oddly familiar since I have visited them. I was in the eastern Ukrainian industrial city of Sumy and also in Rostov on the Russian side where I reported stories on privatizating Russian farms. Kiev was a regular destination.

The horrific assaults of 9/11 notwithstanding, Iraq and Afghanistan do not pose the immediate threat to the U.S. and the West as an out-of-hand conflict in Ukraine would with Russia. The parallels are simply too fantastic. Bosnia in 1914? The Sudetenland in 1938? Poland the following year? All helped spark world wars with phony calls for a Great Power to help fellow language-speakers who were being abused.

That seems to be Vladimir Putin’s obvious ploy. Each ratcheting up of pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine beats Putin’s drum. News reports keep noting that some of the rebels have serious background from the Soviet days, such as service as Spetznaz in Afghanistan. To be sure, there are plenty of reports that the CIA and other American operatives, private and government, are active in Ukraine, an area hardly unfamiliar to them.

There’s plenty of criticism of Barack Obama for not “standing up” to Putin but there’s not a lot he can really do militarily. He was wise not to suggest putting American troops in Crimea. He needs to keep his dialogue strong with our NATO allies, although it is true they haven’t really paid much of the burden of security since the late 1940s. If things really pop, and they may well do so soon, cool heads must prevail.

A few random observations:

• It seems rather obvious that Russia has really spiffed up its special operations forces but the jury’s still out on the regular army. Of course, that was true before. I remember in Moscow during an attempted coup against Boris Yeltsin in October 1993 that I covered, the Spetnaz guys were true pros. They were the ones who retook the rebel-held White House and put a stop to things. Of course, other special ops troops have really screwed up, leading to the deaths of hundreds during several hostage situations.

• Is it 1960? That’s what I wonder when I see the air show Putin is putting on as he prepares to visit Crimea. Some of the Russian warplanes thundering low overhead seem late model, but some are ancient Tupolev 95s that flew first in 1952 and still have propellers. Others are Ilyushin-76 jet cargo planes so ubiquitous that even I have flown in them. BTW, the Tu-95s have been active recently off of Alaska, Guam and Scotland forcing scramblers of U.S. and U.K. interceptors.

• One has to wonder where the nukes are. By some accounts, Russia has at least 1,800 strategic nuclear warheads available for launch on big mother ICBMs like SS-18s or more modern SS-27s. They still have some subs and aircraft that can launch them. How many are operational right now? Have they increased in number? Do we have more Trident subs at sea? Are our missile silos out in the Dakotas and Montana and other other places more active these days?

• What about Russian sabotage? Apparently, there was a Russian intelligence officer who had defected not long ago. He had been with the GRU, military intelligence, as opposed to the KGB. The man, Stanislaw Lunev, talked about how the Russians were thinking about placing hidden, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs called RA-115s in the U.S. They could be set to go off by radio code. Lunev apparently said one of his intelligence missions was to recon possible hiding places in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. This was before the Cold War ended. Why nuke Harrisonburg and its nearby turkey farms? That’s near where our leaders would take shelter during a nuclear war. Is Lunev some kind of nut? Or is this serious? Are the suitcase bombs out there?

• It looks like sanctions is all Obama and the West have. It doesn’t sound like much, especially since much of Europe is in Russia’s economic pocket already and are sharing the wealth legally or illegally. As Washington Post commentator Anne Applebaum notes, it is a little late to be discovering that rich Russians have inundated the global financial system. It’s also too late to discover that Putin may have his own huge but hidden personal slush fund.

• If the West really wants to punish Putin (and it isn’t really certain they do) the way to do so is to force a drop in world oil prices from $100 a barrel to something a bit lower. This could be accomplished by putting more oil or gas on the market perhaps by tapping strategic reserves. Talk about LNG exports  is meaningless in the short term because building infrastructure would take several years. But oil prices do affect Russian behavior.

In the end, the battle now is one of wills. The problem is that Americans are truly tired of war, having just spent nearly 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have lost thousands of men and women. We haven’t even started paying for the efforts and one war, Iraq, wasn’t necessary. Meanwhile, we are stuck with security and diplomatic policies that are focused on Islamic terrorism and are woefully inadequate to deal with the current crisis in Ukraine.

On this point, a couple of weeks ago, I was in New York attending an awards dinner at the Overseas Press Club of America, an organization of which I have been a member for nearly 20 years. The keynote address was delivered by Ambassador Samantha Power, now the U.S. Rep. at the United Nations and a key member of Obama’s national security staff.

She is a highly intelligent and articulate government official and former journalist. But I kept on poring over her biography. She made her chops writing about genocide in places like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She has no military experience. What makes her qualified to deal with this bizarre new form of the Cold War that has extreme security implications?

On this podcast edition of “The Score” radio show…

Scott Lee takes on Joe Biden and the notion that government is a better steward of your money than you will ever be (with both Tim Kaine and Mark Warner making special guest appearances on the evils of tax cuts).

Then Scott hits a hornets’ nest, discussing the topic of racism, both real and imagined, and whether we should entertain the prospect of thought police with an open-ended mission roaming the landscape (and, finding racism in…climate change?).

And Scott looks at the issue burning brightest in Harry Reid’s mind. No, not the Koch Brothers, but the Redskins.

“The Score” is syndicated across Virginia and can be heard on WLEE 990 AM in Richmond, WLNI 105.9 FM in Lynchburg, WMBG AM 740 in Williamsburg and WINC 1400 AM in Winchester. “The Score” is also a proud member of the digital Red State Talk Radio Network, and can also be heard on its broadcast affiliates.

“The Score” can always be heard on demand at Bearing Drift. Or you can take the show with you wherever you go through iTunes.