(WMR)—Former neighbors of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, paint a picture of a confrontational individual who was always spoiling for a fight, whether as the Sully region representative on the Advisory Committee for the Fairfax County Public Schools Social Studies curriculum or as the self-designated gauleiter of his North Riding community in Fairfax County in suburban Washington, DC.
Ken Cuccinelli: The neighbor from hell.
Cuccinelli, a favorite of the Tea Party, defeated Virginia’s more moderate Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling in the GOP primary. The upset victory has divided the state’s Republicans with many deciding to either sit out the campaign or support Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chair.
WMR spoke to a Cuccinelli’s North Riding neighbor who stated the father of seven often accused other neighborhood children of pranks and minor vandalism without proof. Cuccinelli also used his position as a Fairfax School System adviser to push for historical revisionism in school texts to reflect his beliefs in creationism, European manifest destiny in the “New World,” and global climate change as “junk science.”
While Cuccinelli tried to alter high school history and social studies curricula, his children are home-schooled by his wife Teiro Cuccinelli. His two daughters began attending Roman Catholic parochial school after the sixth grade, an education that awaits the Cuccinellis’ three remaining daughers and two sons.
As a member of the Virginia Senate and attorney general, Cuccinelli has adopted anti-gay rights, anti-immigration, anti-oral and anal sex, anti-environmental, anti-abortion, and anti-sex education stances. Cuccinelli also altered the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia on his lapel pins by covering the Roman goddess Virtus’s left bare breast with a metallic plate.
In the 1990s, Cuccinelli often banged on neighbors’ doors in North Riding, even late at night, to complain about their children’s activities in the neighborhood. One resident threatened to “punch out” Cuccinelli if he ever knocked on his door again.
Eventually, Cuccinelli moved away from suburban North Riding and to increased isolation in rural Nokesville in Prince William County.
Cuccinelli is considered an extremist by many Virginians and he has been working overtime to clean up his and other websites of his more extreme positions taken over the years. However, for his neighbors in Fairfax, Cuccinelli is far from just an “extremist.” One man who tangled with Cuccinelli said, “He’s fucking nuts!”
Cuccinelli’s communications director and ghost writer is Brian Gottstein, who has served as a lobbyist for the anti-tax group Virginia Institute of Public Policy. The institute, which is linked to a group called Tertium Quids (Third Way)—not to be confused with the former pro-business Democratic Leadership Council which also adopted the name “Third Way” for its newest incarnation—rails against taxes and “radical Islam.”
After initially calling him an embarrassment to Virginia, The Washington Post has gone relatively easy on Cuccinelli, merely referring to him as a conservative Catholic Republican. However, Cuccinelli’s opposition to public education fits in nicely with the Post’s Kaplan business unit, which seeks to replace public schools with private, Kaplan-run charter, magnet, and special schools with high tuition costs. When candidates like Cuccinelli and newspapers like the Post with interests other than journalism meet, the public suffers. And Virginia may be on the verge of a very painful experience if Cuccinelli is elected governor.
But for the Tea Party, their sights are set beyond the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond. They have other lofty plans for the late night door-banging neighbor from hell.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2013 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
