Thanks to VPAP, we can follow the money

And a lot of other things. My op-ed column this week for The Virginian-Pilot focused on the Virginia Public Access Project, a source of information about candidates and campaigns with which most political junkies are quite familiar. But it’s not all about the money, even if everything is about the money.

VPAP has done a tremendous job of putting information together relating to redistricting, making it easy to see the effects of the process on the districts. My new House district, the 83rd, is more Republican than it was before, making it difficult for a Democratic challenger to unseat incumbent Chris Stolle. My Senate district, the 6th, went the opposite way, becoming more Democratic. Note to John Amiral: don’t waste your money trying to unseat Ralph Northam 😉

VPAP is one of those non-biased sources that I mentioned in an earlier op-ed. Their work is invaluable (even if we don’t have mandatory electronic filing for all candidates) but as a non-profit, they rely on donations for survival. So as a user, I try to remember to send them a few bucks ever so often. If all the users – here’s looking at you, fellow bloggers – did so, it would be awesome. Skip a few Starbucks coffees and send the money to VPAP instead 🙂

And yes, I’ve been delinquent in my 2011 contributions, which is why I’m not on the sponsors page. But I just fixed that. You should, too.