Month: July 2010

On July 1, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli II and his legal team appeared in Richmond’s U.S. Circuit Court as they attempted to dismantle federal health care reform. While monumental enough—a state attorney general taking on a bill passed into law by Congress and signed by the President—it’s hardly all. Cuccinelli is also suing the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that it used bad science to conclude that greenhouse gases are harmful. And he’s being sued by UVA because he is demanding that the University turn over reams and reams of documents, e-mails and scientific models from a professor who hasn’t worked there in five years.

Those are just the still-raging tempests. In March, he sent a letter to Virginia state colleges and universities telling them they could not specifically ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which led to campus protests until Republican Governor Bob McDonnell intervened [Not kept up with all the Cooch has been up to? See sidebar, below.]

Six months into the Ken Cuccinelli regime, many Virginians are rubbing their eyes and wondering: Have we elected a kook?

Most of this—the states’ rights battles, the challenge to the university elites, the culture-war skirmishes—has endeared Ken Cuccinelli to the conservative base both in Virginia and across the country. He’s the toast of the Tea Party, “a tea partier before there was a Tea Party,” in the admiring words of Republican State Delegate Dave Albo. Even nationally embraced conservative darling Marco Rubio calls on Cuccinelli to headline a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign.

That same stuff has made “Ken Cuccinelli” a punchline on the political shows. But looking past the polarized praise and ridicule Cuccinelli has manufactured with his political gambits, is there sense to be made of Virginia’s activist attorney general? Is he truly Kookinelli—a crazy radical who slipped through Virginia’s moderate radar? Or is his real identity Craft-i-nelli—a savvy political gamer harnessing the winds of public opinion to propel himself to higher office?

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Well-worn conservative dogma

Cuccinelli’s “craziness” as attorney general, to date at least, can be explained by three beliefs: that the threats of global warming are overblown; that homosexual acts are wrong; and that government power—and federal power in particular—needs greater limits.

Those aren’t his explanations, by the way—Cuccinelli tries to explain his activism as simple reaction.

COOCHNESS 101 Your primer to the Attorney General’s many controversies February: EPA lawsuit Controversy: Cuccinelli sues the EPA to make it reconsider its classification of carbon dioxide and other gases Cooch’s core issue: Whether humans are responsible for increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere What’s at stake: Federal standards for automobile fuel emissions Outcry: “It’s disturbing that our state attorney general chooses to challenge the mountain of evidence, considering the number of Virginia businesses and residents experiencing firsthand the consequences from rising sea levels and other impacts of a changing global climate.”—Morgan Butler, Southern Environmental Law Center Cooch’s response: “The methods and objectivity of the global warming scientists on which the EPA relied for its decision have been seriously questioned.” Status: In D.C. Court of Appeals March: Discrimination ban Controversy: Cuccinelli advises state colleges and universities to strike down discrimination bans that specifically mention sexual orientation Cooch’s core issue: The state constitution What’s at stake: Civil rights at Virginia’s colleges and universities Outcry: “What he’s saying is reprehensible. I don’t know what he’s doing, opening up this can of worms.”—Vincent F. Callahan Jr., former Republican member of the House of Delegates, current member of George Mason’s Board of Visitors. Cooch’s response: “A public university lacks the power to create a new protected class because that power only rests with the General Assembly.” Status: Governor McDonnell mitigated Cuccinelli’s ruling with a directive to state agencies prohibiting discrimination, in-cluding on the basis of sexual orientation. March: Federal health care lawsuit Controversy: Cuccinelli sues federal government over health care reform, calling it unconstitutional Cooch’s core issue: Federal power and state’s rights What’s at stake: Federal power; afford-able health care for uninsured Americans Outcry: “These cases are all but sure to be promptly tossed out of court for procedural reasons obvious to a first-year law student.” – Simon Lazarus & Alan Morrison, Slate.com Cooch’s response: “Just being alive is not interstate commerce. If it were, there would be no limit to the Commerce Clause and to Congress’s authority to regulate everything we do.” Status: Federal Fourth Circuit judge is deciding on a motion to dismiss. April: UVA investigation Controversy: Cuccinelli launches an investigation of former UVA professor Michael Mann and demands that UVA turn over reams and reams of emails, documents, and computer models Cooch’s core issue: The veracity of global warming research What’s at stake: Academic freedom at state schools Outcry: “This investigation is a threat to scientific discoveries everywhere.” – Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific Integrity Program Cooch’s Response: “Neither academic freedom nor the First Amendment have ever been held to immunize a person, whether an academic or not, from civil or criminal actions for fraud, let alone immunized them from an otherwise authorized investigation.” Status: UVA and Cuccinelli have a hearing slated for August 20. May: Boob-gate Controversy: Cuccinelli gives his staff lapel pins with modified (and modest-ified) Virginia state seal emblems, cover-ing the breast of the Amazon woman Virtus Cooch’s core issue: Humor What’s at stake: Cuccinelli’s reputation for prudishness Outcry: “God forbid his highness should ever happen to stroll by the Library of Congress, and see the various church and school groups jostling to get their pictures taken at the fountain, where a well-endowed Neptune and his buxom nymphs frolic. He won’t be able to sleep for weeks.” – John Aloysius Farrell, U.S. News & World Report Cooch’s Response: “I cannot believe that joking with my staff about Virtue being a little more ‘virtuous’ in this antique version has become news.” Status: Dead. Cuccinelli backed off the lapels muttering that no one can take a joke. May: Gun ban case Controversy: Cuccinelli files brief that de-fends George Mason University’s ban on guns on campus in State Supreme Court case Cooch’s core issue: According to Cuccinelli, state constitution; according to critics, gun rights What’s at stake: Ability of universities to prohibit guns on campus Outcry: “That looks like something that Sarah Brady would write!” – Philip Van Cleave, president of Virginia Citizens Defense League Cooch’s response: None, beyond what’s in the brief: “Students do not have the right to interrupt a class, alumni function or grad- uation ceremony to express a particular viewpoint, and neither do they have a right to carry a firearm anywhere and at any time.” Status: Case will be heard at the Virginia Supreme Court June: Funeral protest case Controversy: Cuccinelli is one of only two attorneys general in the country who don’t file an amicus brief supporting the family of a dead Marine whose funeral drew pro-testors from the infamous Westboro Bap-tist Church Cooch’s core issue: Freedom of speech What’s at stake: Ability to stand on public property outside a soldier’s funeral saying “Semper Fi fags” Outcry: “We are getting to be the laughingstock of the country for the things [Cuccinelli] is doing.” – Ward Armstrong, state House minority leader Cooch’s response: “The case could set a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech.” Status: Case will be heard during the U.S. Supreme Court’s next session.

“The office is by its nature a very reactive office,” says Cuccinelli in an interview with C-VILLE. “The EPA—we don’t sue the EPA if they don’t have an endangerment signing. Health care, we’re not in that lawsuit unless there’s a bill that contradicts a Virginia bill and the Constitution. A lot of the things that have made news out of our office have been simply us responding to the circumstances that we’re confronted with.”

Cuccinelli’s explanation would be more convincing if he hadn’t promised his activism in advance. In fact, what Cuccinelli has actually done is less shocking than the idea he might not have done those things. None of these views was a secret as he campaigned for attorney general in 2009, as The Washington Post made clear in its Cuccinelli profile several weeks before the election: “In addition to talking up gang prevention, Internet crimes and sex offenses against children, Cuccinelli promises to make defending Virginia’s ban on gay marriage a top prority. He doesn’t believe the theory of climate change. He is ready to sue the federal government if it restricts emissions or expands union powers.”

Cuccinelli told The Virginian-Pilot in a written response that homosexual acts are wrong,and that “I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

In his seven years in the General Assembly, he patroned bills that tracked conservative dogma—bills that would have made it harder to get an abortion, limited local governments’ ability to raise real estate taxes, and restricted the use of eminent domain. He repeatedly tried to make life harder for immigrants. One bill, introduced in 2006, would have allowed businesses to sue competitors “if the [competing business] employs or employed persons it knew or should have known were illegal aliens.” In 2008, he proposed a resolution to urge Congress to amend the Constitution to limit citizenship only to those whose parents are citizens.

Patricia Ticer, a Democratic State Senator from Alexandria, says that Cuccinelli was easy to get along with in a social context and difficult to deal with in a political one. “He pretty much was off the wall on most of his issues,” says Ticer. “So I don’t know that he really expected most of the things that he patroned to pass.”

To win the nomination for attorney general, Cuccinelli beat out more moderate opponents at a May 2009 GOP convention. At the time, some Democrats were pleased with a polarizing figure considered more vulnerable in the general election. As a state senator representing a swath of Fairfax County, Cuccinelli eked out his 2007 election by only 101 votes.

Yet in the general election, Cuccinelli won 58 percent of the statewide vote—more total votes than any other AG candidate in Virginia history (a fact he is fond of pointing out). Did his big win come because of or in spite of his far right views?

“He was treated like he was a normal, nominal Republican instead of the true activist conservative that he is, and I don’t think that ever got across to voters before they voted for him,” says Ben Tribbett, who runs the left-leaning blog “Not Larry Sabato.”

“I think McDonnell took such a big lead [over Creigh Deeds] that the whole ticket was sleeping and the media was so busy covering the sleep that it wasn’t really covering the issues.” That killed the down-ballot candidates, in Tribbett’s view. “An attorney general candidate can’t go organize 20,000 canvassers.”

Isaac Wood, political analyst at the UVA Center for Politics, also thinks Cuccinelli’s win is explained by McDonnell’s huge lead over Deeds. “If you’re looking for the main explanation of why he won, I’d say that has to be it,” says Woods. “At the same time, nobody can claim that Ken Cuccinelli was hiding his true ideology on the campaign trail. It’s impossible to say if voters were holding their nose and voting the Republican ticket.”

The Madison-Reagan axis

Cuccinelli was born in New Jersey, but schooled in Virginia. A Catholic, he got a mechanical engineering degree at UVA and a law degree at George Mason University, and co-founded a small firm in Fairfax County.

“I think of myself as a Madisonian liberal,” Cuccinelli says with a chuckle in a phone interview with C-VILLE. “In today’s parlance, I’m basically a small government conservative.” He cites James Madison and Ronald Reagan as the two political thinkers who have influenced him most. Both were firm believers in limited government—as is Cuccinelli.

“Unless something very unforeseen happens,” he says, “I’ll probably always be arguing to reign in the growth of government for the duration of my political career.”

Cuccinelli doesn’t consider himself a libertarian—he doesn’t go for the legalization of drugs and prostitution (his opposition to gay marriage also stands in contrast to many libertarians). He does, however, share a libertarian concern of government overreach that verges on paranoia. At a campaign event last year, he told an audience that he and his wife, Teiro, were considering not getting a social security number for their seventh child because “it is being used to track you.” Four of their children are home schooled.
It’s no wonder, then, that the white whale of Cuccinelli’s current targets is the health care bill—and that at its core is an issue of federal power.

The health care bill includes a provision that requires individuals to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty to the IRS. That provision is a linchpin of the health care reform bill, justified, says the federal government, by the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

But does this allow the federal government to require individuals to buy health insurance? Cuccinelli argues that the demand crosses a line by regulating inactivity. “If commerce comprehends a decision not to engage in economic activity, and the command to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty is valid, Congress has a power under the Commerce Clause indistinguishable from a national police power,” his office argues in court documents. The first judicial ruling will come within a month, on the federal government’s motion to dismiss.

Cuccinelli is not alone in seeing this Commerce Clause issue. As the health care bill worked its way through the legislature, the Congressional Research Service told the U.S. Senate, “it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or a service.” Florida’s attorney general has also filed suit over the health care bill, and that lawsuit also has this individual mandate issue at its core.

While 19 other AGs have signed onto the Florida lawsuit, none have joined Cuccinelli in his. Ostensibly, that’s because Cuccinelli’s argument is rooted in a Virginia law that hasn’t been passed in other states.

What’s hardly unique, however, is Cuccinelli going it alone. A few weeks ago, he chose to write his own letter to BP rather than sign on to one with other AGs. Cuccinelli was one of only two attorneys general not to join a Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of the family of a soldier killed in Iraq whose funeral was picketed by Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, and his “God Hates Fags” followers.

He always has his reasons. And in the Phelps case, those reasons earned some support from the left. While Cuccinelli deplored the “vile and despicable acts” of Phelps, “the case could set a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech,” he argued in a press release. “If protestors—whether political, civil rights, pro-life, or environmental—said something that offended the object of the protest to the point where that person felt damaged, the protestors could be sued.”

Cuccinelli caught quick flak. Some wondered whether his motive was protecting the First Amendment or specifically protecting homosexuality protestors. Ward Armstrong, a Martinsville Democrat and state House minority leader, said that Cuccinelli went “beyond the pale”: “We are getting to be the laughingstock of the country for the things [Cuccinelli] is doing.”

Yet it cheered Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia. “This is the mavericky libertarian Cuccinelli we’ve been looking for all these months,” he wrote on the ACLU of Virginia blog.

State Senator Ticer says she saw the same pattern over and over. “He does everything on his own,” she says. “His is better, his solution is better, his effort he always thinks is better. He has the answer that other people don’t have.”

At times, that go-it-alone approach seemed even to embarrass Republican Governor Bob McDonnell. In early March, Cuccinelli sent letters to the heads of Virginia’s state colleges and universities advising them to rescind anti-discrimination policies that specifically protected people based on their sexual orientation. Predictably, the letters were leaked to the press, and a firestorm ensued. More than 1,000 protested at Virginia Commonwealth University. Outgoing UVA President John Casteen expressed concern. Some universities passed resolutions reaffirming their policies in direct defiance of Cuccinelli. McDonnell finally issued a nonbinding executive order that prohibited discrimination, including against homosexuals, in an attempt to clarify Cuccinelli’s supposedly clarifying letter.

In some ways, Cuccinelli’s extremism works in McDonnell’s favor—a conservative foil that makes McDonnell look more moderate. Yet the discrimination letter raised issues about Cuccinelli’s relationship with McDonnell.

“We frequently communicate beforehand about things he might want to know about just so that he has a heads up,” says Cuccinelli. “He’s my main client, if you think of it in those terms, and we have a great working relationship.”

Mann up

Cuccinelli’s other two attention-grabbing lawsuits both stem from his skepticism of global warming, and in both cases he draws justification from “Climate-gate.”

The “Climate-gate” scandal emerged in November 2009 when a hacker somehow copied a server full of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and put the information in the hands of global warming skeptics.

More than 900 professors have signed a letter urging Cuccinelli to drop his investigation of climate scientist and former UVA professor Michael Mann. In connection with what some see as an academic witch hunt, UVA is suing Cuccinelli. Albemarle County Circuit Court will hear the case on August 20.

Though thousands of e-mails were pilfered, the controversy revolves around only a handful of them among four scientists. One of them is a former UVA professor of environmental science, Michael E. Mann, whose most well-known research charted a dramatic recent rise in global temperatures. In 1999, a CRU professor wrote Mann and two others an e-mail referencing a statistical “trick” developed by Mann in order to “hide the decline;” in 2009, Mann wrote in an e-mail that “As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, it’s about plausibly deniable accusations.”

Global warming skeptics read these as confessions of bad research, at least intentionally obfuscated if not completely fabricated. Yet various investigations in the U.S. and in the UK have so far concluded that no data-tampering took place and that the basic science produced by CRU is sound. Mann has worked at Penn State since 2005, and its investigation into the e-mails and Mann’s conduct cleared him of all charges, finding no credible evidence that Mann suppressed or falsified data.

“The so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field,” it ruled. It is still investigating whether Mann’s conduct deviated from “accepted” practices.

Still, Cuccinelli has used “Climate-gate” to justify his legal escapades against the Environmental Protection Agency. He claims that “Climate-gate” invalidates a December “endangerment finding” by the EPA, one of its last necessary steps before regulating emissions from vehicles. Cuccinelli’s rationale? The EPA ruling relied heavily on data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose research arm is CRU. That tainted the ruling, according to Cuccinelli. He demands that the EPA reconsider its finding, and 14 other states eventually joined him. Cuccinelli’s lawsuit is awaiting hearing in the D.C. Court of Appeals.

In May, Cuccinelli’s obsession with climate-gate brought him into direct battle with the University of Virginia over its former professor, Mann. Not satisfied with the Penn State investigation, Cuccinelli started his own. He issued UVA a civil investigative demand—basically, a subpoena—requiring a litany of documents related to Michael Mann. Ostensibly, the investigation was about possible fraud involving five grants totaling $485,000 that Mann was awarded while at UVA.

But Cuccinelli’s demand went far beyond the grant applications to include: e-mails Mann sent to and received from 39 scientists and all of his assistants; all documents generated by the grants; and any computer algorithms, programs and source code created or edited by Mann at any time. The demand didn’t even spell out what alleged fraud Mann committed, only citing three sections of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA), which prohibits defrauding the Commonwealth.

The University bristled at the demand. It hired outside counsel and sued Cuccinelli in Albemarle County Circuit Court, asking it to set aside the demands entirely. Four of the five grants, it argued, were federal and therefore outside FATA’s jurisdiction. The fifth was awarded in 2001, two years before FATA was passed into law. “Investigating the merits of a university researcher’s methodology, results, and conclusions (on climate change or any topic) goes far beyond the Attorney General’s limited statutory power,” UVA argued. “…Permitting them to be used in the sweeping fashion attempted here would impair academic freedom in the Commonwealth.”

The perceived threat to academic freedom set off alarm bells within the academic world. More than 900 professors signed a letter urging Cuccinelli to drop the investigation. The Albemarle County Circuit Court is set to hear the case on August 20.

Getting nippy in here

For the most part, Cuccinelli has weathered the criticism his actions have created. But at times his skin has worn thin, particularly during “Boob-gate.”

He says he was trying to make Virtus, the Amazon on the state seal, “more virtuous” by covering her bare breast. But instead, Cuccinelli made himself ridiculous. “Liberals don’t have a sense of humor,” he pouted, when “Boob-gate” hit the national media.

Cuccinelli had lapel pins made for his staff with the state seal of Virginia, which depicts an Amazon—Virtus—standing atop a defeated man with the caption “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” In the version of the seal used since 1930, Virtus has one exposed breast. But Cuccinelli went with an earlier version, used during the Civil War, that depicted Virtus in a full breastplate. The joke: Cuccinelli wanted “to make Virtus a little more virtuous.” Soon he was mocked and pilloried across the World Wide Web as the second coming of John Ashcroft.

In the immediate aftermath, a bruised Cuccinelli refused to answer questions from a Roanoke TV station about it.

“We took an amusing comment and turned it in to a serious policy statement,” says Cuccinelli. “I was making a joke. I’m a firm believer that liberals don’t have a sense of humor, and I believe that based on massive empirical evidence, and that’s just more proof of it. I’m going to keep making jokes, and they’re going to keep jumping down my throat for them, but life is too short to give up a sense of humor.”

More concerning, however, is Cuccinelli’s slow response to the controversy surrounding one of his biggest donors, Bobby Thompson, who gave him $55,000 for his AG campaign. Thompson’s nonprofit, U.S. Navy Veterans Association, is under investigation in multiple states for fraudulent fundraising, and Thompson has gone AWOL. While other politicians—including McDonnell and Ticer—have pledged to give away donations from the group, Cuccinelli said that he wouldn’t give away the money unless Thompson was convicted and the money was supposed to have gone to veterans. All he’s done so far is set aside the money in a separate account.

Last month, his former opponent, Steve Shannon, turned up the heat on Cuccinelli. In a Virginian-Pilot op-ed, Shannon outlined some eyebrow-raising timing. Virginia’s Office of Consumer Affairs revoked the U.S. Navy Veterans filing exemption. Thompson gave Cuccinelli $5,000, and four days later, Cuccinelli said that the Office of Consumer Affairs should be moved under the attorney general’s umbrella instead of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Several weeks after Thompson gave Cuccinelli $50,000, Cuccinelli reiterated his call.

The response so far from Cuccinelli’s office? Only two words from Cuccinelli’s political director: “Sore loser.”

From ref to guv?

One of Cuccinelli’s interests outside politics is sports, and he spent time as a youth basketball referee.

Ken Cuccinelli denies that he has gubernatorial ambitions. Instead, he told the Washington Post, he envisions “a long career as Virginia’s top lawyer—and a dramatic, if slow, transformation of government, state regulations and the lives of Virginians.”

“What I tell people is that the best training for being in public office was being a basketball referee because the minute you blow the whistle half the people are mad at you,” says Cuccinelli. “So it’s good practice.”

He’s blown the whistle a lot so far as AG—but how many Virginians are mad at him? The best reading on what Virginians think of Cuccinelli might not come until his next election, and right now at least he’s in the catbird seat to pick what that will be.

The biggest speculation is that he’s in it for governor. If Cuccinelli did run, however, he would disrupt an agreement made between Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling and McDonnell—Bolling stepped aside in 2009 with the idea that 2013 would be his turn.

Given Cuccinelli’s history of going it alone, that’s not too hard to imagine, particularly since if he did not run, he would interrupt more than 30 years of precedent of Virginia attorneys general running for governor.

In his campaign, Cuccinelli indicated he was more interested in a second term as AG than a run for governor. According to his Washington Post profile, he envisioned “a long career as Virginia’s top lawyer—and a dramatic, if slow, transformation of government, state regulations and the lives of Virginians.”

Now he won’t say whether or not he’ll run for governor, for re-election, or for something else entirely. “Decisions of things like that are for the future,” he says.

“Bolling has been raising gobs of money already for [governor],” says Wood. “So it’d be pretty tough for him to cut in line there.”

Tribbett thinks it plain enough that Cuccinelli will run—and wipe the floor with Bolling. “I would be shocked if he deferred to Bill Bolling. I’m not sure Bill Bolling could hang within 50 points of him for the Republican primary right now.”

Even if he doesn’t end up with that long career as AG that he envisioned, Cuccinelli could still end up dramatically transforming the lives of Virginians, as he planned. If his health care lawsuit is successful and Florida’s fails, then he gets both the credit for restoring more balance to federalism and the blame for taking away affordable health insurance from millions of Americans. If Cuccinelli succeeds in forcing UVA to produce those reams of e-mails, he will have all kinds of fodder from which to make political hay, fairly or unfairly, as well as a dangerous precedent that allows the state to poke around in academics’ work with little justification.

It’s also possible that his actions, in the long run, will benefit the groups he’s targeting. His discrimination missive proved a rallying cry for civil rights groups. If his Mann hunts end up witch hunts, Cuccinelli could be consigned to a McCarthy-esque footnote in American history.

Regardless, don’t expect the name Cuccinelli to disappear from the news any time soon. We’re only six months into the Cuccinelli era—and three and a half years of antics, capers and crusades lie ahead.

Depending on your allegiances, UVA sports teams brought either joy or frustration to die-hard Cavaliers followers during the 2009-2010 season. For the all-around fan, however, it was a banner year for UVA athletics—and the school has the ranking to prove it.

The NCAA champion UVA women’s rowing squad, led by ACC Coach of the Year Kevin Sauer (center), is one of a few Cavalier teams bringing national attention without generating the revenue of sports like basketball or football.

UVA ranked third in the 2009-2010 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup competition, after top-ranked Stanford and the University of Florida. The Directors’ Cup, awarded July 1 by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, ranks athletic programs based on the performance of every sports team. The award marks the first time in the 17-year history of the cup that the Cavaliers have ranked in the top five.

And with UVA’s two biggest revenue-generating sports—men’s basketball and football—posting losing records last season, many of the teams responsible for UVA’s overall dominance may be those with the smallest crowds or cheapest tickets.

“I think it demonstrates that the blueprint that we established eight years ago—in terms of where we wanted to take the program to establish the University of Virginia athletics as being a top 10 program, and as a program that could consistently perform from a national standpoint—is coming to fruition,” says Craig Littlepage, UVA director of athletics, about the Directors’ Cup finish.

During the last academic year, UVA athletes or teams in 21 of the school’s 25 sports competed in the postseason. Of the 21, three won NCAA championships: women’s rowing, men’s soccer and men’s tennis. UVA also nabbed seven ACC championships in sports like women’s rowing, women’s swimming and diving, wrestling, men’s lacrosse and men’s soccer.

“We’ve been knocking on the door for a long time,” says Kevin Sauer, coach of the women’s rowing team. Sauer was named ACC Coach of the Year, and nabbed other national coach of the year honors, as did men’s soccer coach George Gelnovatch and field hockey coach Michele Madison.

“This is the 15th year of our sport at UVA, and we have finished in the top four nationally nine times,” says Sauer. “So we feel that we’ve done a lot of the homework, so to speak, to get us to the championship. And we were able to pull it off this year.”

The two top-dollar sports didn’t fare as well. Football’s last season ended with a disappointing 3-9 record; former head coach Al Groh was booted from the program with a $4.3 million severance package; University of Richmond’s Mike London replaced him. Meanwhile, men’s basketball began the era of head coach Tony Bennett—hired after a 10-18 season under former coach Dave Leitao—with a 15-16 record.

“Our goal is to have every one of our teams competitive in a national environment,” says Littlepage. “And for many people, success in intercollegiate sports is measured by how you’ve done in football and basketball. I understand that. Our goal is to have a comprehensive, broad-based competitive program across all 25 sports.”

He adds that he is “very pleased” with the new coaches hired to lead both the football and basketball team.

And other UVA sports cheer for the big teams’ success. “We all very much care about what they are doing and are very supportive,” says Sauer. “We want them to succeed just as much as we want each other to succeed … we look at it as ‘UVA Athletics’ and we’re pulling for each other in every way shape or form.”

Littlepage names two sports that exemplify the progress of UVA Athletics: wrestling, which won the ACC championship, and softball, which for the first time competed in an NCAA tournament while only three years ago it had “difficulty winning an ACC game.” The hiring of softball head coach Eileen Schmidt, whom Littlepage says is a “unique, talented and dynamic leader and educator,” provided the right ingredient for a winning season.

“We think again in football and basketball we have the right leaders,” says Littlepage. “We are providing the right type of resources, they are bringing the right type of student athletes into the program and they have the talent as coaches and as builders to be able to put together a truly and consistently performing program.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

While Landmark Hotel owner Halsey Minor recently won $6.4 million in an arbitration hearing between him and former developer Lee Danielson a couple of weeks ago, and says additional legal battles between the pair are far from over, the fate of the existing structure on the Downtown Mall remains uncertain.

“It will either be completed or torn down,” said Minor in an interview after the arbitration ruling. “It’s one or the other.”

From Landmark Hotel to plain old landmark? Following the end of arbitration between Halsey Minor and Lee Danielson, the Downtown Mall’s halted, 101-room hotel could stay or go—but paperwork for demolition might take a while.

Tearing it down, however, isn’t as easy as simply swinging a wrecking ball. The city’s half-finished hotel is a contributing structure to an Architectural Design Control (ADC) district, namely, the Downtown Mall, which means demolition of the structure would require formal city approval.

According to the city’s website, the purpose of the ADC district is to preserve structures and buildings, and ensure that any additions and landscape changes complement their character.

All to say, the demolition of a building like the Landmark Hotel is no easy feat. Mary Joy Scala, preservation and design planner for the City of Charlottesville, says that a demolition request requires approval from the Board of Architectural Review (BAR), a nine-member body appointed by City Council that includes historians, licensed architects, landscape architects and owners of a business in an ADC district, among others.

“All structures in the Downtown ADC District are considered contributing, and therefore require approval of a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) from the BAR prior to demolition,” says Scala in an e-mail.

After that, a demo building permit is also required, which could take a few days in order to make sure that utilities are disconnected from the structure. Applications to the board must be filed three weeks prior to the BAR meeting, so the process could be lengthy—as much as a month or more for paperwork alone.

The site of the current Landmark Hotel received a demo permit once before. In October 2008, the BAR approved the demolition of the black granite facade of the former Boxer Learning Center on Main Street, should the hotel project require it. The permit was granted on the condition that developers of the Landmark Hotel reconstruct the facade if they decided to take the granite front down—a decision similar to the one made for 219 W. Main Street, the old Victory Shoe Store whose storefront was demolished without BAR approval.

However, the original Boxer Learning Center facade remains, like the hotel skeleton, intact. “I would love to finish it, but there are so many questions that are up in the air,” said Minor following arbitration.

Meanwhile, the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville (DBAC) remains a fan of the hotel. The DBAC “has been very supportive of the Hotel from its beginning and firmly believes that a completed hotel project would greatly benefit all the businesses on and around the Mall,” says Robert Stroh, DBAC co-chair, in an e-mail. “We optimistically look forward to attending the opening ceremonies in the near future.”

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Add up the hours since George Huguely’s arrest in connection with the brutal slaying of his ex-girlfriend, Yeardley Love, and the 22-year-old former UVA student has spent fewer than four days outside of his cell in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Huguely, who is in segregation from the rest of the jail population, receives approximately one hour outside of his single-person cell every day, to wash or use the telephone.

Searches of the residences of murder suspect George Huguely and slain UVA student Yeardley Love were executed on May 3, after Love’s body was found. Search warrants had been sealed due to the media attention paid to the case, among other reasons, but were partially unsealed last week.

Asked why an inmate may be segregated from the general population, Major Adam Rodriguez, the chief of security at ACRJ, responded, “It could be either for disciplinary [reasons] or for his own protection—the safety and security of him.”

Contrast the safety and security of Huguely’s current quarters with the bedroom where Love was found. The location—Love’s bedroom, in a second floor apartment at 14th Street, a short walk from Huguely’s former residence—was rendered in grotesque detail last week with the release of five search warrants and two affidavits for warrants sealed after Huguely’s arrest.

The search warrant for Love’s bedroom lists 24 items seized by local law enforcement, from a Natural Light can to a pink laptop case. Six items on the list, from swabs and towels to a comforter, sheets and a bed apron, feature “red stains.”

Other seized items include multiple hair and fiber samples, two mobile phones and the door to Love’s bedroom. According to city police, Huguely admitted he kicked his right foot through the door. A black t-shirt from Love’s bedroom, retrieved by her family following initial crime scene processing, was reacquired by Charlottesville police “very shortly after the incident occurred,” according to city spokesman Ric Barrick.

While the phrase “red stains” remains legally opaque, one search affidavit mentions that Huguely told police he “saw blood coming from Yeardley Love’s nose” during their altercation. Huguely, who reportedly waived his Miranda rights, also told police that Love wore a t-shirt and panties when he arrived at her apartment, and he “pushed Yeardley onto her bed and left” following their altercation.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman told C-VILLE his comments would be reserved for future court hearings. “We’re not commenting independently outside of the court about the case, including the proceedings related to the release of search warrant-related materials.” Huguely’s next court appearance is scheduled for October 7.

Huguely’s lawyers, Francis McQ. Lawrence and Rhonda Quagliana, did not return requests for comment by press time. Thus far, the defense’s sole statement on the case is the reference to Love’s death as “an accident with a tragic outcome,” something Lawrence said after Huguely’s first appearance in General District Court via teleconference. A call last week to Sharon Donnelly, Love’s mother, was not returned.

The search of Love’s bedroom was the first of the five warrants executed, at 6:47am on Monday, May 3, hours after her body was found. Six hours later, while police collected DNA swabs, fingernail scrapings, hair samples and clothing from Huguely, more officers searched his apartment and seized a notebook, two laptop computers and a white UVA lacrosse t-shirt also bearing a red stain.

Huguely told police he was wearing a pair of blue cargo shorts during his altercation with Love. During the search of his residence, police found a pair of shorts matching the description, with Huguely’s passport and the keys to his 2002 Chevrolet Tahoe in the pockets.

Police searched Huguely’s car and seized a digital camera, phone, and multiple handwritten notes. The car, stored at Charlottesville Wrecker Service, was released within two days of the search to George Huguely’s father, according to Charlottesville Police Lieutenant Gary Pleasants.

At Huguely’s apartment, police also found a letter addressed to Yeardley Love. Pleasants declined to comment on the content or author of the letter.

“We’ve read it, certainly, but we’re not releasing the contents of the letter,” said Pleasants, who said the contents would come out in court. He also declined to comment further on details of the crime scene or other locations where warrants were executed.

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