I recently blogged about what seems to me to be an inevitability; George Allen is running for his old Senate seat. The signs are there. He’s traveling the commonwealth. He’s helping elect candidates to local, state and US House seats. He’s honing a smart, forceful outsider message. He’s staking out issues, like energy, that will win over Virginia’s independents.

Flatly stated… George Allen is acting like a candidate. And, he’s not alone.

Today, I spent some time with former DNC Chair and failed gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe. Let me tell you, his moves are almost identical to George Allen’s.

McAuliffe is campaigning to get local Democrats elected. He’s raising money for Democrats facing tough re-elections to the US House like Glenn Nye and Tom Perriello. He’s traveling the commonwealth, just this week spending several days in Southside and Southwest Virginia. He’s continuing to talk up the issues that he spoke passionately about during the campaign including green jobs and energy. And, he’s defending the Democratic record in Washington just enough to be considered a team player without outright embracing Congress and President Obama, whose job approval ratings are falling.

But, McAuliffe is taking all of that a step further than Allen. In fact, he’s seems to be mimicking Virginia’s most successful politician: Mark Warner. Like McAuliffe, Warner lost his first bid for public office. It was 1996 and Mark Warner didn’t let that set back stop him. He continued to make connections across the commonwealth and started a job creation project in Southside and Southwest Virginia. That coupled Warner’s frequent trips to the area cemented his popularity in rural Virginia. Five years later he rode that into the Governor’s mansion.

McAuliffe is doing much the same. He talked today about his new company that is creating four new energy efficient cars. He dropped that he has purchased a Chinese company that makes electric cars and is moving the plant to Virginia, taking jobs away from China and bringing them to the Old Dominion. And, he mentioned his move to buy a recently shuttered plant in Franklin, Virginia. He plans to turn it into a bio-mass plant.

In three years, McAuliffe can take a record like that on the campaign trail. He can talk about what he’s done rather than spout off ideas. He’ll have an actual history of job creation in the green industry to hold up. And, he’ll have a host of new connections.

I asked him if he’s running for governor, and like any politician would, he danced around the question. The best I could get out of him was “it’s a possibility.” But, frankly, I didn’t need a “yes” out of him. His actions speak louder than any words could.