www.roanoke.com

Earlier this week, the Old Dominion Watchdog website questioned why Del. Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke, was spending campaign funds on things such as five nights at a bed-and-breakfast in Clarke County.

In a story in today’s Roanoke Times, Ware explains that he’s been travelling the state to test the waters for a possible bid for lieutenant governor or attorney general in 2013.

Now, spending five nights at a bed-and-breakfast in the northern Shenandoah Valley seems an unusual way for a Democrat to begin an exploratory campaign: In five days, you could meet every Democrat in that very Republican part of the state and still have time left over for sight-seeing.

Still, let’s move on to speculation and analysis time: What kind of statewide candidate would Ware make?

It’s always struck me that as a black legislator representing a majority white district in Western Virginia, Ware has an interesting story to tell. I mentioned that once to a well-known Democratic operative in Richmond and he just laughed; he didn’t think Ware was statewide material at all. But how many statewide candidates really are?

True, Ware does have some baggage — a youthful involvement with drugs which led to him getting arrested on heroin charges while in college in 1975.

The arrest, he said in a 2007 interview with The Roanoke Times, was a “wake-up call from God.”

“I realized God had something special for me to do,” Ware said.

So maybe this is it?

Democrats don’t have much of a bench after going 1-for-6 in the 2005 and 2009 races.  And I’ve always been one to think that Democrats do better when they pay at least some attention to Western Virginia. Conversely, Republicans do better when they pay attention to the swing suburbs of Northern Virginia; the point is, to be competitive statewide, you’ve got to do at least respectably everywhere. So an argument can be made that Democrats ought to nominate someone from this part of the state. However, would Ware help the ticket in the same way that, say, Del.Ward Armstrong of Henry County would? Maybe Armstrong’s recent crusade against high electric rates is simply policy work, or maybe it’s his own way to lay groundwork for something.

It does strike me that if Ware is looking statewide, Armstrong might be his biggest problem even if they seek different offices — because Democrats are unlikely to nominate TWO people from this end of the state. And let’s not forget that Roanoke lawyer John Fishwick explored a bid for attorney general last time. Anyone who has seen Fishwick in the courtroom has got to think he’d have given Ken Cuccinelli more of a fight than the nearly invisible Steve Shannon did.

So, how would you rate Ware’s chances — first for the Democratic nomination (against unknown opponents), and then in a general election against equally unknown opposition?