cal and cultural conservatives, Cuccinelli was the new hero. He took pride at being on the losing end of a lot of 39-1 votes in the Senate. “Ken was one of those guys who was always trying to amend bills on the floor and force people to take votes, and a lot of times I’d say, ‘Ken, why don’t you give us a break for a couple days?’ ” says Sen. J. Chapman “Chap” Petersen, a Fairfax Democrat. There were times Cuccinelli practiced
tism, which he overlaid upon the value system he already possessed. “I said to him, ‘Don’t ever think
about running for office,’ ” she says. On a couple of occasions, she awoke
to find him staring at the ceiling. He told her he was imagining political speeches he would give, if he could. “I realized at some point, maybe Ken
has a purpose and I was standing in the way,” she says. The next time she heard him griping
about another moderate Fairfax Re- publican, she said, “Why don’t you run against him?” It was like unleashing a tornado.
That instant, Cuccinelli picked up the phone and began plotting his first race.
in the halls of Richmond, the freshman senator, at 34, looked as young as some of the aides and preferred springing up the stairs to waiting for the elevator. He was a little too eager, out of step with the clubby
culture of Richmond. He had won his first race, to repre-
sent southwestern Fairfax County, in 2002, the way he always would, under- funded and underestimated. He took positions that were less nuanced and more conservative than his rivals’ and summoned a cadre of true-believing volunteers. Republican Warren Barry, who had
resigned the seat Cuccinelli filled, was ap- palled: “The GOP picked someone whose thinking is so ancient he would be an em- barrassment to Northern Virginia.” So, too, were the Republican Brah-
mins who ran the state senate, who thought some of his early legislative pro- posals embodied an anti-tax extremism that was not then acceptable in Virginia. “Everyone lamented he wasn’t channeled in the right direction,” says John H. Chichester, the retired GOP chairman of the finance committee. Yet to a small but growing core of fis-
political heresy. He supported conser- vative challengers of GOP incumbents, angering party leaders. He spearhead- ed a legal attack on the state law that let any voter, not just party members, vote in party primaries, a policy seen by in- surgents such as Cuccinelli as a way to entrench more moderate incumbents. In 2007, he switched sides and voted against the final version of a transportation pack- age supported by GOP leaders. Cuccinelli said the amended bill violated the state constitution. If he had been attorney gen- eral, he later said, he would have issued an opinion against it — unlike then-At- torney General Bob McDonnell (R), now the governor. A reliable conservative vote on abor-
tion, immigration, taxes and gun rights, Cuccinelli also bucked conservative pi- eties. Mental health reform was an area where, to the surprise of some, he fa- vored more government involvement in people’s lives. “If you’re going to spend money on things, you start at the bot- tom,” he says. “And on the human side, as opposed to, say, building roads, that’s taking care of those who, through no fault of their own, can’t take care of themselves.” His interest dates to his days as a
young lawyer, when he started rep- resenting people facing involuntary commitment to hospitals. He took hun- dreds of those cases, each a window into a family in crisis. He also opposed expansions of the
A reliable conservative vote on abortion, immigration and gun rights, Cuccinelli favored more government involvement on mental health.
death penalty, notably a proposed re- peal of the “triggerman” law. Repeal would have allowed the state to execute accomplices, not just the person who pulled the trigger. Cuccinelli stuck to this position at some political peril. “It would be an enormous expansion of the death penalty, and we would often be
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