Who are these guys again?

Bearing Drift finds the important numbers about the 2013 campaign - nobody knows these guys yet.

Ken Cuccinelli: 44% have no opinion
Terry McAuliffe: 63% have no opinion

Half of women have no opinion of Ken Cuccinelli. 60% of blacks have no opinion. Over half of Democrats have no opinion. A third of Republicans have no opinion. As you’d expect, all of those numbers are even higher for McAuliffe.
Also worth noting, neither candidate has increased their name ID since Quinnipiac went into the field in January. All of the shots across the bow from Cuccinelli and McAuliffe have been part of the quiet, cold war where no one’s paying attention except those who already know who they’re supporting.
Just over seven months until Election Day.
We'll learn to be tired of them in their TV ads.

Bolling backs out

Bill Bolling ended three months of speculation Tuesday by giving up an independent bid for governor.
It's Cuccinelli vs. McAuliffe.
Just as we thought months before.
Let the fun begin.

Shaking McAuliffe's tree

Blue Virginia sees the only way for Bill Bolling to win a three-way race for governor - cripple Terry McAuliffe.
The only way for Bolling to win would be for the McAuliffe campaign to totally collapse. Should Bolling actually ever mount a serious campaign with a chance of winning, it would require Terry to run third!

Do the math. Cuccinelli has the anti-abortion base of the GOP. By backing McDonnell's record tax increase in an election year, Bolling has sacrificed any credibility with the Republican anti-tax base. The business base of the party is leery of Cuccinelli but they have more money than votes. Meaning: Cuccinelli has most of the GOP base locked up on ideological grounds.

He basically has 30-35% locked in a three-way race unless something unexpected happens. In large measure, this is now a personal base as well. They are very pro-Cuccinelli. Further meaning: There is no way Bolling can get into the race with a reasonable expectation of shaking any useful number of these voters loose from the K-Man. If Bolling is going to have any chance of winning, he has to shake the McAuliffe political tree and get voters to fall off.

Think Democrats will abandon their party's choice for governor, with all the problems that creates down ticket?

Then you think Bolling has a chance.

Does Bolling have a chance?

NRO looks at Bill Bolling's chances with an independent bid for governor.
Earlier this week, Bolling stoked the chatter when he fired off an email to his donors and political allies, asking for their advice regarding a gubernatorial run. “I know it won’t be easy to win the governorship as an independent candidate, but with your help I believe it can be done,” he wrote.
But not all of Bolling’s allies are buying it. They say that money, more than anything else, will be the factor that keeps him out of the race. Unaffiliated Virginia Republicans agree, arguing that Bolling would need to raise millions fast. Running a credible independent campaign would take at least $15 million, and the lieutenant governor has less than $800,000 on hand. He also has little to no campaign apparatus.
Show me the money. And there's not much time to get the money before March 14.

Here to help, T-Mac

NRO's Jim Geraghty offers his help to Terry McAuliffe - a review of his book.
It’s time for this commonwealth to have a governor who has had a wacky caricature of himself framed upon the wall at The Palm since 1980, marking his influence and stature among the lobbyists and power brokers who meet for steaks and martinis. It’s time for a governor who has spent his adult life rubbing shoulders with the powerful at Pamela Harriman’s house in Georgetown, and who has a regular table at Café Milano. It’s time for a governor who can tell the best stories about Walter Mondale and about the hookers at Walter Shorenstein’s mansion in the Santa Cruz Mountains.