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In
an ordinary election year, the race for
Virginia’s 12th district Senate seat would be a
snoozer. The incumbent, Republican Walter Stosch,
would win merely by showing up, and he could put
his time and ample campaign resources to work on
behalf of his colleagues.
But
this isn’t an ordinary year. This election cycle
is the first in which the GOP’s anti-tax wing
has an opportunity to exact a bit of revenge on
those senators who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with
then-Governor Mark R. Warner to enact a huge tax
hike in 2004.
And
one of their biggest targets is majority leader
Walter Stosch.
Challenging
Stosch is Henrico County lawyer Joe Blackburn (to
whom this writer has made a campaign
contribution). At first glance. Blackburn
doesn’t seem to fit the anti-taxer stereotype.
He’s smooth on the stump and in person. He’s
conservative but not the sort of conservative who
gives moderates hives. He’s got deep roots in
the area, and has a list of contacts (including
consultant Boyd Marcus) and endorsers (including
Delegates Jack Reid and Bill Janis as well as
former Rep. Tom Bliley) devoted to his cause.
He
also has that 2004 tax hike vote of Stosch’s in
his favor. While it’s true that 2004 is ancient
history in political terms, the vote still rankles
portions of the GOP rank and file… particularly
when the tax hike was followed by huge budgetary
surpluses. If there was ever a silver bullet in
politics, this would seem to be it.
But
in speaking with Blackburn, he told me that one
thing he noticed while ringing doorbells was that
some people seemed willing to give Stosch a pass
on that vote. It really didn’t affect them a
great deal and, well, Walter is still a good man.
What still sticks in their minds, however, is the
infamous transportation session in 2006, when the
Senate and House bogged down for months over how
to finance additional road improvements.
The
Senate, or more specifically, Sen. John Chichester,
stood by the notion that roughly a billion dollars
in new taxes were necessary to pay for the new
roads Virginia needs, including an increase in
fuel taxes. Eventually, the Senate’s proposal
for new taxes went nowhere.
But
at least some voters don’t seem to have
forgotten the attempt and more specifically, they
remember the Senate’s attempt to raise gasoline
taxes.
And
they aren’t ready to give Stosch a pass on that
one.
There
are other issues, too, that people no longer seem
willing to let slide. The growth in the state’s
budget is another issue that has folks wondering
where their money is going (and in an e-mail
exchange between Stosch and Blackburn, Stosch
admitted that spending will always follow
revenue).
This
feeds into the notion that the Virginia GOP, like
its federal counterpart, is no longer the party of
limited government. There is an excellent case to
be made that Republicans never really did
constitute such an entity and that their years in
the majority have made them far more comfortable
growing government, as long as they could grow it
in ways that favored themselves. (But that’s
another article for another time).
Challengers
like Blackburn are easy to dismiss as ideologues
more devoted to unworkable theories of governance
than in governing itself. That is probably true to
some degree. But the 2007 Senate challengers
represent more than just the latest right wing
hissy fit. Blackburn and Jill Holtzman-Vogel,
Scott Sayre and others represent a continuing, and
growing, discontent within the Virginia GOP. Since
the car-tax repeal battles of the Gilmore years,
Virginia’s Republicans have been fighting over
what it means to be a majority party. Some believe
in their bones that it means following Grover
Norquist’s lead and drowning the government baby
in its bathtub. Others, who are far less…
colorful… believe that having a majority means
making government work more like a business,
applying some sort of market discipline onto the
state to make it more efficient and less costly.
Others,
though, seem to have used the majority to follow a
course that’s not substantially different from
the way things were under the Bryd regime – pay
your own way, do what you’re told and things
will work out fine. For decades, this was enough.
No
longer. Republicans are restless. They watched as
the Senate rescued the Warner administration from
the footnotes of history by adopting his pro-tax
line. They watched as the Senate tried to do the
very same thing in 2006. And even this year, they
witnessed the Senate and the House propose new tax
authorities for regions of the state that rejected
very similar proposals in 2002. On top of that,
they have watched their two, recent,
top-of-the-ticket candidates (George Allen and
Jerry Kilgore) bungle their way to defeat in races
they were favored to win.
Losses
like that hurt. But it’s the defections along
the way that hurt even more. Increasingly, this is
a Grand Old Party the activist conservatives no
longer know, and perhaps can no longer trust. They
haven’t walked away entirely, at least not yet.
Candidates like Blackburn are their response.
We’ll
know soon whether their fellow Republicans like
what they hear.
--
May 28, 2007
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