Democratic Party of Virginia, Dwight C. Jones, Ken Cuccinelli

Because Virginia-born William Henry Harrison was a Congressional Gold Medal recipient and the only president to have practiced medicine, but is remembered today as the man who died a month into his presidency, here are today's nominees for Worst Virginians in the World!

The bronze goes to the Democratic Party of Virginia. It's election season so it must be hyperbole season. The crux of the Democrats' strategy to hold onto its two-seat majority in the Senate is to portray their GOP challengers as too radical for 2011 – or 1911, or 1811.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that party Executive Director Dave Mills and Sen. Donald McEachin, D-9th (Charles City and Henrico counties, Richmond), held a conference call with reporters to slam Republican senatorial candidates as extreme right-wingers who are more interested in pursuing an agenda than helping the economy or creating jobs.

Yet, one of them said on the call that these Republicans are "the most radical extreme slate in history." Even if we assume they mean Virginia history, really, the entirety of this state's history?

More radical than Virginia's two senators who were expelled from Congress for supporting the Confederacy? More radical than Prince Edward County lawmakers who closed its public schools for five years rather than desegregate them in the early 1960s? More radical than Harry F. Byrd Sr., Edmund Ruffin, or Nathaniel Beverley Tucker?

Not to mention that the expelled senators and Sen. Byrd were Democrats.

The silver goes to Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones. He failed to report on his 2011 Statement of Economic Interests in January that he bought a 1,200-square-foot condo in April of last year for $252,500 in Palm Beach County, Florida, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Wednesday.

Jones said it was an honest mistake, since the paperwork was filled out by someone else for his signature. An amended form will be filed with the county clerk's office. If prosecuted for knowingly filing an inaccurate Statement of Economic Interests, a defendant would face a $500 fine and removal from employment.

However, the Times Dispatch also reported, "On the form, Jones reported 'No' when asked whether he or an immediate family member had any interest valued at $10,000 or more in real property other than his principal residence, which also was not listed as required."

Maybe the mayor is just homeless and lives in his office.

But our winner is Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday threw out his much-publicized lawsuit against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act over the individual mandate.

Virginia passed a law forbidding state residents from being forced to buy health insurance, so Cooch sued the federal government. This lawsuit was separate from a multi-state case in the courts. The appeals court didn't even weigh in on the merits of the case but dismissed Cooch's suit entirely for lack of standing.

Simply borrowing a page from the nullification playbook to fight a federal law because it conflicts with a state law is insufficient, the court ruled. What if a state law prohibited residents from paying into Social Security?, it asked.

"To permit a state to litigate whenever it enacts a statute declaring its opposition to federal law ... would convert the federal judiciary into a 'forum' for the vindication of a state's 'generalized grievances about the conduct of government.' Under Virginia’s standing theory, a state could acquire standing to challenge any federal law merely by enacting a statute – even an utterly unenforceable one – purporting to prohibit the application of the federal law."

When he first filed the lawsuit last year, Cooch said, "We need to reemphasize that there are sovereigns in America. One of those is the Commonwealth of Virginia." The appeals court saw it differently: "When a state brings a suit seeking to protect individuals from a federal statute, it usurps this sovereign prerogative of the federal government and threatens the 'general supremacy of federal law.' ... A state has no interest in the rights of its individual citizens sufficient to justify such an invasion of federal sovereignty." For a man who believes he is carrying James Madison's constitutional torch, Cooch conveniently forgets the part of the Constitution that says federal laws are "the supreme law of the land."

The fact that Cooch filed the suit on behalf of the state alone also hurt. "It challenges a statutory provision that applies not to states, but exclusively to individuals," the court ruled. A Cornell law professor agreed, quoted in The Washington Post saying, "It’s not clear to me why they didn’t at least enlist individual plaintiffs."

Cooch told the Heritage Foundation last year, "That’s actually secondary to the real important aspect of the case, and that is to protect the Constitution as we essentially define the outer limits of federal power. If we lose, it’s very much the end of federalism as we’ve known it for over 220 years." Cooch's form of federalism died at Appomattox nearly 150 years ago.

That's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, whose views remain unchanged since 1791, today's Worst Virginian in the World!