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Poll: McDonnell Popular With Va. Voters 64 percent say they approve of the job governor is doing
“He realized he had a bunch of his ideas that he wouldn’t get through unless he agreed to compromise.”
Richmond, Va.
PLAN. “I’VE BEEN RATHER IMPRESSED BY HIM, UP UNTIL THE PAST FEW WEEKS,” HE ADDED.
In the last year of his four-year term, Gov. Bob McDonnell remains firmly popular with Virginia voters, getting high marks on how he is handling his duties as governor and his personal ethics, according to a new Washington Post poll. Overall, 64 percent of all registered voters in the commonwealth say they approve of the job McDonnell is doing, up 6 percentage points from two Post surveys last year.
washingtonpost.com
Meanwhile … Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has an early 46 to 41 percent lead over businessman Terry McAuliffe in their race for governor, a new Washington Post poll shows. Among those who say they’re certain to cast ballots in November, Cuccinelli has a 51 to 41 percent lead. However, barely 10 percent say they are following the campaign “very closely,” and nearly half of the electorate say they’re either undecided or could change their minds. (T WP)
— PAUL SL AT TERY, 71, OF McLEAN, ON BOB McDONNELL’S BIPARTISAN TRANSPORTATION
His approval rating is as high as it has been in periodic Post polls over his tenure. The positive ratings cut across the political spectrum, with the biggest improvement coming among Democratic voters. Fifty-two percent of them say McDonnell is doing a good job, compared with 38 percent last September. There is also generally crossparty agreement that McDonnell
has “high personal moral and ethical standards.” Fully 59 percent of all Virginians say so; just 16 percent say he does not; and 25 percent are unsure. The latest poll numbers come soon after McDonnell, who is termlimited, claimed a major legislative victory with the passage of a landmark transportation plan expected to raise $1.4 billion a year for road projects over five years and
Catch Me if You Can
Cambridge, Md.
LINDA DAVIDSON/TWP
— CHRIS BA NGS, A FORMER CO-WORKER OF ERIC TOTH, ABOVE, REFERRING TO THE MAN WHO WAS ON THE RUN FROM POLICE FOR FIVE YEARS, ACCUSED OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY. OFFICIALS SAY TOTH USED ALIASES TO CONCEAL HIS IDENTITY WHILE ON THE FBI’S TEN MOST WANTED LIST.
62%
PINT-SIZE ATHLETES READY for the 50-meter race for 5-year-olds at Springarn High School in Northeast on Saturday. More than 600 young athletes competed in the fifth annual Dr. Tommie Smith Youth Track Meet. It may be the last time the event will be held at the school, which is slated to close this year.
The amount of high school students in Montgomery County, Md., who
failed their final exams in geometry in January. There was a 57 percent failure rate for those taking Algebra 2, while about a third of honors-level students didn’t pass the exams, according to figures recently released by the school system. The results have prompted school officials to look into whether students are being adequately prepared for the tests. (AP)
ERRIN W H ACK A ND PE Y TON M. CR A IGHILL (THE WASHINGTON POST )
Behold the Bivalve, Nature’s Janitor Study: Oyster reefs greatly improved river’s water quality
“He was refined, very intellectual and geekish. He was someone you might meet at a renaissance fair discussing world civilizations.”
as the FBI raises questions about his relationship with donor and Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie Williams Sr. McDonnell, often mentioned as a potential national candidate, has been caught in a media storm over his relationship with Williams, who paid a $15,000 catering tab for the 2011 wedding of one of the governor’s daughters. McDonnell has said that he did not disclose the gift because it was not made directly to him but to his daughter. Under Virginia law, elected officials are not required to report gifts to members of their family.
A reef in the Choptank River seeded with oysters by the state of Maryland — about 130 oysters per square meter — removed 20 times more nitrogen pollution in one year than a nearby site that had not been seeded, according to a recently released study. The upshot, said Lisa Kellogg, a researcher for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who led the four-year study, is that oyster reefs could potentially remove nearly half of nitrogen pollution from that river in eastern Maryland “if you took all the areas suitable for restoration and restored them.” A wider restoration could help clean the Chesapeake Bay, where the Choptank and other major rivers drain. Man-made nitrogen pollution is part of a one-two punch that cre-
ates oxygen-depleted dead zones that have bedeviled the bay. At one time, when oyster reefs were so plentiful the European explorers complained about navigating around them, the Chesapeake was crystal clear. Excessive oyster fishing, combined with massive farm and urban pollution, depleted oysters, denuded reefs and clouded the water by the 1980s. About that time, two diseases, Dermo and MSX, came out of nowhere to decimate the stock in Maryland and Virginia. Oysters in those two states are experiencing a modest recovery because of the restoration and farming known as aquaculture. Kellogg and her fellow researchers wanted to show that oyster reefs could greatly improve water quality and are worth the millions of dollars being invested in their restoration. Nitrogen removal “is just one of the ecosystem services that oysters provide,” she said. “It’s clear that they were doing far more than we even know now. It’s a huge loss.” DARRYL FEARS (THE WASHINGTON POST )