Posted on 06/03/2003 6:29:00 AM PDT by Gopher Broke
Attack may backfire… motivate conservative turnout for Mark Tate on Tue, Jun 10th.
(From an email on the Richmond Times/AP story).....
(6-1-03. AP) Sounding a combative, occasionally bitter tone in a June 1st Richmond Times Dispatch article, Sen. Russ Potts pledges, if reelected, to submit a bill to mandate public school SOL tests for home schoolers.
Potts says he is conservatives’ “worst nightmare.” In a move sure to ignite howls of protests and questions about his ethics, Potts invites Democrats to vote in the Republican primary to save him. Potts calls conservatives “Johnnies-come- lately…obsessed with abortion.” He acknowledges Mark Tate and his conservative backers present greatest threat of his political career. This year, Potts broke his 12-year pledge to voters to not seek reelection after his current term of office is up.
For more on this heated race, including a Voters Guide and the candidates positions on issues, click HERE.
Potts exhorts GOP moderates to save Senate from right wing
BOB LEWIS Associated Press Writer
WINCHESTER, Va. (AP) _ Russ Potts has his game face on.
Potts has made his living amid the pomp and bluster of big-time sports, and he knows how hearts race and rhetoric rages on the eve of the big event. So the irascible Republican state senator has this for GOP conservatives who want to oust him in the June 10 primary: "I'm their worst nightmare."
Potts, seeking a fourth term, is one of three moderate senior Republicans in the state Senate battling a resolute effort by the party's right wing to sweep key Senate seats and consolidate its hold on the General Assembly this year.
"What's happened here _ and I believe this to my core _ is that this has become a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. What we have here is a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies who want everything my-way-or-the-highway, always in your face and absolutely obsessed with abortion," said Potts, whose company, Russ Potts Productions, markets and promotes pro and college sports events nationally.
"They probably thought, 'This guy, he's 64 years old and we're going to work him into the ground.' Well, they're not going to work me into the ground, I'm going to work them into the ground," he said as his scowl deepened and his eyelids narrowed. "I believe you have to be a warrior."
His opponent is Mark Tate, a personable 37-year-old Middleburg restaurateur who staunchly opposes abortion and restrictions to gun ownership, supports home schooling and tuition tax credits for private school students, and flatly rules out supporting any tax increase.
Anti-tax activists, abortion foes and home-schooling advocates resolved more than a year ago to contest Potts' nomination for a fourth term after he backed a bill that would have allowed Winchester to boost its local sales tax rate to fund public school improvements.
A field of three tax-cutting social conservatives, each with the blessing of national home-schooling leader Mike Farris of Purcellville, coalesced earlier this year behind Tate. Farris lost a bid for lieutenant governor 10 years ago.
The winner of the primary is likely to win the Senate seat from the upper Shenandoah Valley district where Republicans in recent years routinely take 60 percent of the vote. Democrat Mark Herring is unopposed for his party's nomination.
Potts' race, along with conservative primary challenges to centrist Republican leaders John H. Chichester of Stafford and Thomas K. Norment of James City, will determine whether the Senate takes the sharp right turn the House of Delegates did in 2001.
Potts acknowledged that Tate and his committed conservative backers present the greatest threat of his political career, particularly in fast-growing, youthful and upscale Washington, D.C., exurbs of Loudoun and Fauquier counties. The 2001 reapportionment added part of Loudoun (36,000 residents) to his 27th District, and it took in more of Fauquier.
Tate canvassed door-to-door last week in a Fauquier subdivision that is a patchwork of homes newly finished or under construction, all well over $250,000. As youngsters frolicked outdoors, Tate gave their thirtysomething parents campaign fliers that commit him to reining in the "out-of-control spending habits" of a state forced to pare its budget by $6 billion in the past 15 months, protecting their gun rights and restraining the very sort of unchecked sprawl that spawns new subdivisions such as theirs.
Tate, vice mayor of the Loudoun County town of Middleburg, boasts of having never supported a tax increase in 11 years on town council, and promises not to change if sent to Richmond.
"I took a pledge not to raise taxes, and I take my pledge very seriously," Tate told voters.
At the heart of Tate's campaign is his claim that Potts has supported tax increases, betraying promises he made when he was first elected in 1991 not to raise taxes and to limit his tenure to three terms. He accuses Potts of voting 34 times for higher taxes or fees, though many of the votes were either procedural or for referendums allowing voters to decide whether to raise tax rates.
Potts supported a referendum last fall in which northern Virginia voters overwhelmingly rejected a one-half-cent sales tax increase to ease the region's severe traffic congestion. He says he voted at least 50 times to cut taxes and never backed an outright tax increase.
"About three weeks ago, Russ Potts started calling me an extremist, and my response was that if an extremist is someone who wants to cut taxes, then I'm an extremist," Tate said.
Nothing about Tate's manner, however, suggests extremism. He's single but expects to be engaged soon. In an open-collar oxford shirt and scuffed cowboy boots with worn-down heels, he meets people comfortably outside their homes in the district's eastern suburbs. And for good measure, he grins and reminds them that Potts is from Winchester, "on the other side of the district."
Tate's message finds a bit of traction with homeowners like Rhonda Butland of Warrenton. She said she and her husband, a former Marine, moved there from Maryland in search of lower taxes and more conservative government.
"I'd describe him as a liberal Republican and me as a conservative Democrat," she said.
When the state does spend, she added, it should focus on education and easing the perpetual traffic gridlock that besets suburbs such as hers. That, Potts believes, is his opening.
Potts is chairman of the Senate Education and Health Committee. He has the endorsement of the Virginia Education Association, and his wife, Emily, is a retired teacher who still does substitute teaching. His advocacy of increased public school funding, however, has roots in his own fierce loyalty to the Winchester schools he attended, particularly the city's revered John Handley High School.
Tate, Potts contends, is a protege of Farris and thus bent on aiding private schools and home schooling to the detriment of public education.
"I challenge you: tell me just one time where he (Farris) has praised one public school or any aspect of public education," Potts said. If re-elected, Potts said, he will push legislation requiring home-schooled children to pass the Standards of Learning exams that public school children must pass for high school graduation.
Tate and Farris dismiss Potts' claims as not only wrong but bizarre.
"I am a product of a public education," said Tate, who teamed with his brother to buy Middleburg's Coach Stop cafe.
Farris concedes that he supports Tate and wants Potts defeated, but denies Potts' claim that Farris orchestrated GOP opposition to the senator's re-election.
"It's irrational that I'm even an issue. What about taxes? What about education? Russ Potts' issue is vengeance," said Farris, who founded and operates Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, which caters to home-school graduates.
"He's making a real strategic error. I guess he's doing this to jazz up the teachers' union, but there are a whole lot of home-schoolers in this district," Farris said.
Despite his reputation for fiery, often conservative oratory, Potts maintains friendships with Democrats in the clubby Senate. Now, he's inviting conservative Democratic voters to cross over and help him hold his own party's right wing in check in next week's open primary.
"People are sick and tired this in-your-face stuff, and they're saying, 'We want our Republican Party back,"' he said.
___=
On the Net:
Russ Potts' campaign: Click HERE
Mark Tate's campaign: Click HERE
Of course the test will be followed by an immediate investigation of massive cheating by homeschoolers. How else could everyone of them ace the test?
A desperate move indeed.
Tate recognizes that a vote FOR a referendum on taxes is the same as a vote FOR taxes.
If you wanted to vote "No" on taxes, you vote against the referendum.
All too often, a local vote on school taxes is held on a saturday, and the only people who show up are the school district employees whose jobs are at risk.
At least that's how they ram those things through here in Texas.
The RINO-hunting in VA is really fine this year...we just might bag a couple fine trophy's to hang on our FReeper walls! ;-)
Incumbent Del. Jeanne-Marie Devolites is being challenged, too in her bid for an open state senate seat I'm guessing due to her support of the sales tax increase. Her challenger is Lou Zone, a longtime GOP activist in Fairfax County. Also on the Republican primary ballots are candidates for sheriff, chairman of the board of supervisors, and the race between Dave Hunt and Howie Lind to take on extreme lefty, Janet Howell.Apr 20, 2003
Incumbents in cross hairs
BY TYLER WHITLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
A larger-than-usual number of General Assembly [state senate] incumbents are going to find out this year whether they are ready for primary time.
Anti-tax sentiment has fueled several challenges to Republican incumbents, although not as many as had been expected last year when five moderate incumbents who bucked then-Gov. Jim Gilmore in 2001 anticipated opposition.
The moderates formed a political committee, "Virginians for Responsible Government," to raise money to help scare off intraparty opposition. The PAC raised about $175,000.
Three of the so-called "Gang of Five" have escaped opposition in the June 10 primary. Sens. Walter A. Stosch, R-Henrico, Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, and William C. Wampler Jr., R-Bristol, will go unchallenged, at least until the general election.
"I think the people realize that in these stressful economic times, their understanding of the budget has been a benefit to the commonwealth," said Ken Hutcheson, who helped organize the PAC.
Meanwhile, Patrick M. McSweeney, a former state Republican Party chairman, helped organize another PAC, Virginia Conservative Alliance, to find more conservative candidates to run.
McSweeney said the alliance PAC never had a punitive intent, nor did it seek to recruit candidates to run against the Gang of Five.
Absent pressure from the Republican Right, the Senate moderates would continue to pursue a tax-raising, big-spending agenda, he said.
Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, may have gotten the message. He was the chief sponsor of a bill in the recent General Assembly that would have repealed the estate tax.
Nevertheless, he faces vigorous opposition from Paul C. Jost, a wealthy Williamsburg developer who can self-finance his primary campaign. A third potential candidate, Linda Wall of Yorktown, did not qualify, election officials said.
In the 28th Senatorial District, Sen. John H. Chichester, R-Stafford, the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is being opposed by Mike Rothfeld, a conservative from Stafford County.
Announcing his candidacy last week, Rothfeld said he will make taxes a key issue.
Chichester in 2001 led the Senate's successful charge against Gilmore's proposal to further reduction of the car tax. The impasse with Gilmore resulted in a budget deadlock and damaged Republican chances to retain the governor's office in the general election.
Jost, too, has promised to make taxes an issue. Jost is a longtime ally of Gilmore. His campaign is being managed by G. Bryan Slater, who was secretary of administration under Gilmore and helped manage his successful campaign for governor in 1997.
Norment, who is the Senate Republican floor leader, opposed the car-tax repeal and also led a charge against several Gilmore appointees to state boards and commissions.
Slater said last week Gilmore did not recruit Jost to run. If Gilmore had been seeking to take out the "Gang of Five," he would have found five candidates to run, Slater said.
The anti-tax sentiment also elicited a primary challenge to three-term Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr., R-Winchester. And in the House of Delegates' 52nd District, Del. John A. Rollison III, R-Prince William, is being opposed because he favored a transportation-tax increase that was rejected by voters.
One of the rewards of incumbency is that the incumbent gets to choose the method of nomination. Most choose a primary, where their name identification gained from service in the legislature gives them an advantage.
Several incumbents selected a primary and then chose to retire. Primaries are being held to nominate candidates to fill those vacant seats.
Fifteen contested primaries are being held this year, compared with just four four years ago, the last time all 140 seats in the General Assembly were up for election.
Larry J. Sabato, professor of government at the University of Virginia, said revenge is not the only motive driving the primaries. Because of redistricting, seats have been so safely drawn that it is almost impossible to knock off an incumbent in a general election, he said.
"There are so few competitive elections, that the only place where the action is is within the party," he said. "This is not necessarily a good thing. Democracy has unfortunately taken a holiday in Virginia."
The deadline for selecting a primary passed last week. Other methods of nomination can be chosen until June 10.
The general election is Nov. 4.
Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or twhitley@timesdispatch.com
RTD
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