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In October, we announced an online contest to reward the person who distributed the most voter guides prior to the election. We also announced a drawing for all who participated in our online contest.

Congratulations to Donna Moore, our contest winner, who distributed nearly 10,000 voter guides to churches and various groups in the Fredericksburg area. Donna is a member of the Rappahannock Family Forum and has been actively engaged in making a difference in that region for years. We will send Donna a beautiful framed photograph of the state capitol.

Also, congratulations to Tony Armstrong of Newport News, who won the overall drawing. He will receive an autographed copy of the book From Hope to Higher Ground by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

We offer our sincere thanks to all who distributed voter guides during the past campaign. With your help, we placed nearly 900,000 voter guides in churches and with civic groups throughout The Old Dominion! This is by far our largest voter guide distribution effort and we believe our voter guides had a big impact on the election. CNN exit polls reported that 34 percent of those who voted were born again/evangelicals, 83 percent of whom voted for the winning candidates. That is the highest percentage of voting for that demographic since CNN began exit polling in Virginia, giving the winning ticket nearly 50 percent of their votes.

This does not take into account our many African-American friends, such as new Pastors For Family Values Chaplain, Bishop Earl Jackson. We also published our first voter guide in Spanish and received much positive response from pastors in the Hispanic community. But . . . there is still work to do!

Please continue to keep our Winning Matters efforts in your prayers. There are at least two special elections to fill vacant Senate seats (to replace Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli and Virginia Beach Sheriff-elect Ken Stolle) and maybe more as Governor-elect Bob McDonnell selects his cabinet appointees. We will be “on the job” and “on the ground” with our Winning Matters team, covering these elections, motivating and educating voters to make an informed choice at the ballot box.

In his thumping of Creigh Deeds Tuesday night, Bob McDonnell nearly garnered as many votes as . . .

Marriage.

Yup, that’s right. McDonnell’s 1,160,365 votes (as of this posting) fell just 168,172 short of the 2006 marriage amendment. That proposal received 1,328,537 supporters. Talk about a “bipartisan,” “center,” “mainstream” vote, marriage is the model. 

We also found some interesting tidbits from Tuesday’s exit polling (yes, I know, exit polling . . . but it makes for good fodder).

According to exit polling from CNN, 34 percent of those voting identified themselves as “Evangelical/Born Again” and, of that block, a whopping 83 percent cast their vote for Mr. McDonnell. Now, if you run the numbers that equates to nearly half of all voters that cast their ballot for McDonnell were of the “Evangelical/Born Again” group. (To our liberal friends, breath, breath . . . there you go, breath. It’ll be ok. Breath . . . .)

So, as all the pundits, experts, campaign consultants, etc. inform us that the campaign Mr. McDonnell ran is the “model” for future GOP candidates, lets all remember that the “model” only works if “the base” is motivated. Otherwise, well, see John McCain. And Jerry Kilgore. And . . . well, you get the idea.