Bacon's Rebellion

Earlier this week, I received an email message from Ken Hutcheson, Jerry Kilgore’s campaign manager (see here). Hutch’s diatribe was in response to my column, “Winning On Principles,” that was published in Bacons Rebellion this week.

Hutch’s email vent speaks for itself. Nonetheless, I thought that I should give this young lad some sage advice, lest he finds himself unemployable even by the RINOs. It’s too bad that Hutch didn’t have a meltdown earlier in the campaign cycle; perhaps, Jerry Kilgore would have then listened to those of us who repeatedly asked him to put some mature handlers at the helm of the campaign.

Dear Ken:

Thank you so much for your nice and thoughtful message.

Your message proved exactly what a number of conservatives said all along about you and the Kilgore campaign: You simply don’t posses the maturity or political acumen to head any campaign, never mind a statewide initiative. Perhaps, your message to me has finally opened Jerry’s eyes…

You ask who cares about my columns. Well, the answer is obvious—you do! My writings couldn’t generate so much passion in anyone if they are irrelevant.

If you haven’t figured out by now that email messages are not the way to vent anger, then you are more hopeless than I originally thought. Let me spell it out for you: Email messages can be easily circulated! In the future I recommend you don’t use emails to air your diatribes. If you continue, even your RINO patrons may have second thoughts about engaging your services again.

________________________
Phillip Rodokanakis
President
Virginia Club for Growth
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.virginiaclubforgrowth.org

Bob McDonnell has reversed Creigh Deeds’ inexorable chipping away at his lead in the AG’s race.

McDonnell has gained one vote since the last SBE update. He now leads by 351 votes.

Update: As noted by a commentor, SBE has updated again and Deeds has restarted his pick-up. McDonnell now only leads by 341 votes.

Giving some heft to the word “trust” in Virginia’s “Transportation Trust Fund” is back on the front burner with Governor-elect Kaine’s transportation town meetings. Here is a column I wrote for Bacon’s Rebellion about a year ago on the topic for a bit of background.

It became a high priority for many in the business community after the 2002 failed referendum votes, and as the Virginia Chamber’s lobbyist I spent three sessions working with others to try to coax it out of Senate Finance. (We got it out of Senate Privileges and Elections once, for a couple of glorious hours, then it was re-referred to Finance to die.) I think I stood up once or twice in Finance to speak for Kaine’s amendment version (and if I didn’t, let’s tell him I did!) But there was never any support from the Warner Administration. Now there will be from the Kaine Administration (as there would have been from a Kilgore Administration, I’m sure.)

There are problems with this idea. The financial community hates to see states substantially earmark funds, reducing flexibility in hard times. And there can be too many earmarks — but Virginia is hardly there. We have constitutional directives that lottery profits go to education and that criminal fines go to the Literary Fund. The “Rainy-Day” Revenue Reserve is constitutional, meaning the General Assembly can’t override it. This would be the largest protected pot of money, but if you read the previous proposals, there are safety valves built in.

Good to see our intrepid (Update: Oops! See Steve’s comment) Bacon’s Rebellion colleague Steve Haner providing Chris Jenkins of the Washington Post some good quote at last night’s Gov-elect Kaine transportation meeting in Roanoke:

“He’s going to hear more songs than a Broadway musical,” said Steve Haner, the lobbyist for the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and a spokesman for the advocacy group Virginians for Better Transportation. “There remains a lot of debate, a lot of discussion and a lot of disagreement on these things, and I suspect he will get them all on this issue.”

“He isn’t giving any indication of which way he wants to go on any of this,” Haner added. “I think it’s going to be wide open. I’m not expecting any deep insights.”

I may be in the minority here, but I am still baffled why we had an election campaign with transportation as a top issue. Why didn’t Kilgore and Potts think to just promise statewide meetings, instead of promising to complete specific projects or raise taxes? The genius of Kaine is becoming apparent.

Fellow bloggers, Bacon’s Rebellion has activated the “back links” feature of the Blogger software, which alerts readers to other blogs that have linked to a particular post. The idea, as Blogger explains, is to expand the comment feature so that related discussions on other sites can be included along with the regular comments on a post. If the other Virginia political blogs activate their back links, we can all interconnect with each other, creating a richer experience for our readers.

It sounds good in theory. But, then, the concept is quite new to me. If anyone knows of a good reason to de-activate the back links feature, please let me know!

Michael Shear reported in today’s Washington Post that Governor-elect Tim Kaine has asked Governor Warner’s Chief of Staff, William H. Leighty to stay on and that Leighty has accepted.

I’m a little surprised, just because Chief of Staff is a job that has a very high burn-out factor. Leighty apparently has a high tolerance for heat!

From my less-than-lofty perch in state government, I can’t say that I’ve noticed much that’s emanated from the Chief of Staff’s office. I’ve been disappointed, after what seemed like a strong start to the Warner Administration, at the seeming lack of on-going initiatives to cut costs, foster innovation, or encourage cooperation across agencies. Of course, a lot of stuff doesn’t filter down to my level.

From the same perch, however, I’ve seen Mr. Leighty make his boss look good, even great at times, and keep his boss away from any hint of trouble within state government. There is no higher accomplishment for a Chief of Staff, so I’d say Governor-elect Kaine has made an excellent choice and that Leighty is performing a tremendous public service by agreeing to remain.

Creigh Deeds has only picked up 7 votes in the last 23 hours. McDonnell’s lead in the State Board of Elections AG count stands at 350 as of 11:17 today.

Yesterday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch carried a series of articles on the aging population of Virginia, including this alarm-sounding Betty Booker report.

Today’s Washington Post offers economics pundit Robert J. Samuelson’s takedown of the AARP approach to policies on aging.

If a party or candidate wants to get out ahead of the next great domestic challenge, it’s policy area just waiting for them, as is the ambush that will be launched by the AARP and their dedicated voters.

As tempting as it is to focus on GOP bloodletting and email etiquette, I’m going to be the “bad guy” and write about boring policy stuff.

Yesterday brought headline news of state/Northrop Grumman IT outsourcing details. To the extent that there’s conventional wisdom on this massive change, everyone except counties like Wise that have lost out on a facility seem to be dazzled by the scope of the deal, the promised savings to the state, and the projected benefit to the counties that got a piece of the action.

Here’s a slightly contrarian view from an e-zine that apparently specializes in news about outsourcing, with this little snippet of hypothetical number-crunching being the gist:

The average taxpayer in this state pays our imaginary defense contractor $2.50 a year but, if you calculate the net effect of the new payroll money, it works out to only about $2.13 per taxpayer per year. Net-net, the taxpayer is giving the defense company $.37 cents a year.

I would hope that General Assembly would look closely at this deal before ratifying it, not because I necessarily think it’s a bad thing, but just because any expenditure and change this large ought to be able to stand up to scrutiny.

I will repeat my reaction to this deal: Here’s Virginia, named the best managed state in the nation, led by a Governor whose creation of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency was a large reason why Virginia was been so recognized, suddenly outsourcing to private industry the very organization deemed so praiseworthy. Not only that, but the idea to oursource didn’t even come from the state, it came from a proposal thrown over the transom. I like Virginia being an innovator, but we could possibly end up regretting not seeing the concept proven in another state first.

Phil Rodokanakis ran a column,”Winning on Principles,” in Monday’s edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine that was critical of Jerry Kilgore’s campaign manager, Ken Hutcheson. Here is Hutcheson’s reply, which Phil has asked me to publish on the blog. I post Hutcheson’s missive without comment. It speaks for itself.

Phil

I read with great amusement your latest “column” on Bacon’s Rebellion. Simply put, you are a spineless, gutless coward who is as stupid as he is petty. Do you really think anyone of any relative significance in VA cares what you write? I mean let’s face it, you are the epitome of an armchair quarterback with an opinion (which are like a**holes—everyone’s got one). Really, what makes you think anyone cares about your opinion in particular?

Where do I begin, there is just too much good stuff to discuss. First, let’s take a moment to ponder your “organization” that bestows upon you the fancy title of President. The Virginia Club for Growth—sounds like an impressive organization, but aside from the email list you conveniently ended up with from me after the Allen Campaign in 2000, who are your members? How many dues paying members are there in VA? Just exactly how many people voted you in as President of the VCOG? Did anyone else run for the position? Can you point to me anything that your organization does other than opine on public policy matters? Can you point to me any meaningful accomplishments of the VCOG? And why do the respected National Club for Growth leaders look down on you and think you and the VA Chapter are a joke?

Ok, now let’s review your impressive resume that makes you qualified to judge people like Jerry and me. Name one campaign you have ever managed. Name one race you have ever officially consulted on. In fact, name one race where any candidate paid you for your advice and/or work? Oh wait, I don’t recall any, but to be honest, you have never made an impact or had a significant role in Virginia politics, so I might not know off the top of my head. But, I typically don’t pay much attention to the bottom feeders who look for scraps and constantly 2nd guess those who have a seat at the table. If you aren’t happy in your mediocre job and career, why not whip up the courage to come do what I do on a yearly basis instead of hiding behind a computer keyboard or better yet, run for public office. You have all the answers, surely you could win any race you ran for based upon your principles and then certainly do a better job than the guys who have the guts to put their name on the ballots and stand for election.

Want to read more? Click on the “comments” button to the lower left.

As of 12:57 today, the State Board of Elections is showing Bob McDonnell ahead of Creigh Deeds by 357 votes. McDonnell lost 89 votes in the last 24 hours. At this rate, Deeds will be Attorney General by Friday.

How about those 1500 folks who couldn’t pick the evil of two lessors or vice versa? Their write-in votes could have been decisive, but they decided to pull a Larry Sabato and vote for Thomas Jefferson, Mickey Mouse, or some other worthy.

From today’s Road to Ruin blog:

The Route 288 project, which Virginia taxpayers funded to the tune of $434 million, was always billed as an “economic development” project. The primary impetus for overriding the normal allocation of state transportation dollars and running up a $248 million project deficit (which was repaid subsequently with General Fund dollars) was the desire to attract Capital One to the West Creek office park.

In 1999 the giant credit card company was searching for a site to establish a national operations center expected to employ 8,000 employees. One of the sites under consideration was the West Creek office park west of Richmond. Capital One demanded some $240 million in transportation improvements, including completion of 288, as a condition for locating there.

It turns out, according to a nugget buried in a Richmond Times-Dispatch investigation into the politics of Route 288, that Capital One was seriously considering another site to the north of Richmond. Indeed, when Richmond business tycoons William Goodwin and “Booty” Armstrong revived an option to purchase West Creek from the original developer, the newspaper reports, “they thought the company had chosen a site north of Richmond at Interstate 295.”

That’s quite a revelation: There was another site in the Richmond region that satisfied, or came very close to satisfying, Capital One’s requirements — without the need to build a $434 million, four-lane, limited-access highway!

Let me clarify the issue here: The Commonwealth of Virginia spent $434 million to ensure that Capital One would locate in West Creek west of Richmond as opposed to a different location north of Richmond.

Pardon me while I temporarily take leave of my senses. That’s absolutely friggin’ insane! That is an unprecedented waste of state funds! No friggin’ wonder people don’t want to pay more in taxes to build more roads! Politicians cannot be trusted to make intelligent decisions! Politicians should all be hanged!

OK, I feel better now.

At this point, I don’t know if the State Board of Elections count matters much, but as of 12:57 today they are showing a 446 vote lead for McDonnell.

I would suspect the legal teams for both sides consider plenty of votes still “in play.”

Sorry: One more post on the election. Last week both of the campaigns mentioned the July Mason-Dixon poll showing Kaine up by one as a turning point in the campaign. Just for giggles here is the long string of comments it produced on this blog at the time. We should all read it and reflect on the genius or foolishness we displayed (Day was the genius, of course). If any of you want to come out from behind the “anonymous” tag, now’s your chance. Did the blog echo chamber add to its impact?

Reviewing some of my own comments on polls this cycle one of my major screwups was reading the final Washington Post poll. Once they posted the full results I read it as a sample error that was too Democratic. What is showed, and I’m sure smarter folks than me saw, was an increased level of Democratic intensity among likely voters (and/or a drop off of intensity among Republicans, who were getting less and less likely to vote.) The tip off — the higher percentage of respondents listed as “pro-choice” than in the earlier poll. I read that as a sign the poll was in error, but in reality it was an indicator of who was planning to come to vote and who was scheduling a dental appointment on that day.

Jim, I’ve just read your New Man, New Ideas piece in this week’s Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. You sound breathless and almost giddy at the potential of Governor-elect Kaine to integrate your long-advocated transportation solutions into state policy. Your picture even has the Tim Kaine eyebrow thing!

Wait a minute.

None of these new policy initiatives were debated during the campaign–there was no time, what with Hitler and all. They’ve barely been debated on these pages, except between Risse and Hyde. As you note, toward the end of the campaign, Kaine suddenly unveiled “growth curb” language and not much else. A lot of these ideas, when commuters learn about them, will not be greeted with instant enthusiasm. A lot of the ideas are very long-range and hold no real promise of relief anytime soon.

Let’s see how these regional meetings go before you get too carried away. Will these ideas be presented at the meetings or will the meetings just be for a long line of speakers to sound off with their pet ideas? Are advocates of smart growth policies prepared to speak and attempt to capture the media’s attention? I’d certainly like to see Governor-elect Kaine make an affirmative case for the things you hold dear, Jim, but I wonder if he and his staff have really thought this through–or had time to think it through.