Fairfax, Va. — Ken Cuccinelli couldn’t watch the video clip of President Obama going 2 for 22 in shooting free throws. As a basketball fan, he says, he found it too painful. “I sort of felt for him,” Cuccinelli recalls. “There are just some things about being president that are difficult.”
“I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat,” he adds. “Going 2 for 22 is embarrassing. I just don’t think we should beat on the man for that.”
Yet Cuccinelli can’t resist taking one jab at Obama: “Maybe he’s putting his recreational time into golf, and so he’s not getting his basketball time in,” he cracks. Still, “I could easily see going 2 for 22,” Cuccinelli laughs. “So I’m not going to say anything.”
Keeping his opinion to himself is not something Cuccinell is known for. As Virginia attorney general, he led the legal fight against Obamacare. In February, he released a new book on politics that was rather less bland than most politicians’ books: “If Virginia’s ultra-conservative attorney general needs to appeal to moderate Republicans in his campaign for governor, his new book probably isn’t going to help,” wrote the Associated Press about The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty. A U.S. News interview with Cuccinelli about the book was headlined “Ken Cuccinelli: Obama Has Trampled the Constitution and Hurt Our Economy.”
Cuccinelli brushes off concerns that he’s too conservative to be elected governor in Virginia, a once solidly Republican state that went for Obama narrowly in 2008 and 2012. He doesn’t deny that Virginia is “about as split as you can be.” But he points out that while commonwealth voters have elected Democrats at the federal level in recent years (Obama, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner), Republicans still dominate the top positions in the state government, including governor (Bob McDonnell) and lieutenant governor (Bill Bolling). “That’s fine,” Cuccinelli remarks of the newly purple Virginia. “Competition’s a good thing. So let’s compete.”
On this first Saturday in April, Cuccinelli is at the opening ceremonies for local Little League teams. There is a parade: Cuccinelli, like other local politicos, rides in a convertible, waving to the bystanders, who are bundled up in brightly colored coats on this sunny, chilly day. Wearing a navy sport coat, a yellow polo shirt, and loose blue jeans, with a baseball glove on his left hand, the graying Cuccinelli looks Dad-like enough to give Full House’s Bob Saget a run for his money. Marching behind the politicians are hundreds of Little League youngsters who play for the Blue Wahoos, Ironbirds, and Hot Rods, among other teams.
At the baseball field where the parade ends, Cuccinelli points out that if one of his aides stations himself at the announcer’s booth behind home plate, the aide will be positioned at a great angle to a capture Cucinelli throwing one of the ceremonial first pitches. When Cuccinelli throws out the pitch, the aide snaps the shot. Hours later, Cuccinelli’s campaign tweets a wide-angle photo of Cuccinelli on the mound, about to throw, with hundreds of Little League kids behind him. Cuccinelli was right. It’s a great angle.
Walking to the car afterward, I ask Cuccinelli about his family. He and his wife, Teiro, have seven children, ranging from three years old to college age. “Going home” is his favorite part about having so many kids. “It’s a great arrival when they’re up, which is most days,” he says. “It’s wonderful. I don’t even know how to describe it.” Swimming, not baseball, is the sport most favored by the Cuccinelli family. Cuccinelli says he’s risen many a Saturday morning at five to take the children to swim meets.
The five oldest children are daughters; the two youngest, who tussle occasionally, are boys. (Cuccinelli refers to one of his sons as “Osama bin Cute-in” because he’s a “domestic terrorist.”) Cuccinelli insists that he generally does not, as do the fathers of some large families I know, accidentally call his children by the wrong name. “The two there used to be a problem with were [daughters] Riley and Reagan,” he reminisces. “We named two children in a row with the same first letter. It never occurred to me this would be a problem, but in that period of their lives where I needed to yell at them a lot, then it was a problem,” he says lightly, before launching into an imitation of how he would shout their names.
Reagan wasn’t initially slated to be named after the president. “She was going to be Adalida, which was torture to my wife,” Cuccinelli recalls. But “she had her way on the first three, and I said that this is my turn, and so she was Adalida until eight months in.” Then one day his wife called him up at work: “‘How about Reagan for Adalida?’ And I said, ‘Well, for Reagan, I’ll give up Adalida.’” His fondness for “Adalida” comes from George Strait’s 1995 country song by that name.
The older Cuccinnelli children are still in school, and the younger ones are homeschooled. Cuccinelli, who majored in mechanical engineering as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, helps the older children with algebra. “They like to hate it, I love to love it,” he says of the subject. “I love algebra,” he stresses. “Love it.”
On the car ride to a campaign event, I pepper Cuccinelli with questions, and he’s good-natured about the randomness of the topics. Does he have a favorite Supreme Court case? Cuccinelli is stumped: “No one’s ever asked me that before.” He doesn’t have one. What book would he write about if he had to write a college-admissions essay? “Well, mine,” he says. Not allowed, I tell him. “That’s fine, then. McAuliffe’s,” he says, alluding to What a Party! My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals, by his opponent in the gubernatorial race, Terry McAuliffe. “Although if I wanted to get in, I probably wouldn’t write on that one,” he snarks. Ultimately, he picks Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
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This article first appeared in the National Review Online on April 14, 2013.