Replies

NoVa Freepers need to work hard for Cuccinelli. There is no underestimating the damage that Til Hazel, Ed Wilbourne & their buddies will do.

I'd like Ken better if he hadn't been a buddy of Dave Albo, who is anti-2nd amendment and mostly a RINO, but I think Ken is more conservative then Albo, including on guns. Ken certainly would be a huge improvement over Barry, who is not worthy of respect.

Email from the Cuccinelli campaign:

For more information about the Cuccinelli for VA Senate campaign please go to http://www.cuccinelli.com

All,

Please make to time this Saturday morning to attend a CRUCIAL volunteer meeting. We will be discussing our planfor the next four weeks.

Thank you all for your tireless efforts during the primary -- your work pushed us over the top to victory !!! Let's do it again for the general!

Please respond to this email notifying me of the meeting that you plan to attend.

NOTE: All district chairs ... please notify your volunteers of these meetings.

SATURDAY MORNING, July 13
Where: Fairfax County Government Center
12000 Government Center Parkway
Fairfax, VA 22035
Conference Rooms 6 and 7
When: 10am - NOON

--- Cuccinelli for VA Senate
Authorized by Cuccinelli for Senate

My apologies, Peter Ferrara, president of the Virginia Club for Growth is the author of this piece.

Welcome to the Old Dominion! Hopefully, this thread will help answer some of your Cuccinelli questions. I don't know him and was very surprised by his primary victory. His opponent appeared to have all the big names lined up behind him. Cuccinelli's win is a tribute to the power of the grassroots conservatives in his district.

Special election pits liberal against conservative
By BILL WHEATON

There is a special election Tuesday, Aug. 6, to fill the 37th District state Senate seat vacated by Republican Warren Barry. The candidates are Democrat Catherine Belter and Republican Ken Cuccinelli (pronounced ``cooch-a-nellie").

The lines between the two candidates are clearly drawn. Belter is a fiscal and moral liberal, and Cuccinelli is a fiscal and moral conservative.

Cathy Belter is the School Board member from Springfield. Her voting record during her term indicates that she is a typical tax-and-spend Democrat, voting along with the other Democrat- and teacher union-endorsed members who are in the majority on the board.

During Belter's brief term, the school administration staff has increased 14 percent, although pupil enrollment increased only 3 1/2 percent. She also voted for a $25,000 bonus for schools Superintendent Daniel Domenech, even as test scores fell.

The Fairfax County School Board is considering whether to add ``sexual orientation" to its nondiscrimination policy and had been scheduled to vote on the measure Thursday night, but postponed it. Public opinion is running 10-to-1 against the change.

The School Board has also been advised that it does not have the authority to make the change, since ``sexual orientation" is not recognized as a category of discrimination by the commonwealth of Virginia. Arlington County sought to recognize relationships that violate Virginia's public policy and are not recognized by the commonwealth, and the state Supreme Court struck it down.

Last year, Belter voted to include ``sexual orientation" in the student resource handbook, thus supporting the homosexual agenda.

Cuccinelli is a patent and technology attorney, and also holds an engineering degree. He has been involved in Republican politics for more than 10 years and ran a very aggressive primary campaign to win the Republican nomination.

The 37th Senate District is Republican-leaning, but Cuccinelli has to be considered the underdog for two big reasons:

First, the Fairfax County Republican Party has not yet rebuilt itself after six years of membership decline under former Chairman Joe Underwood.

This past spring, I attended the Fairfax County Republican convention, which had an attendance of fewer than 200. The last county convention I had attended, six years ago, had about 1,200 in attendance.

So what are the Fairfax County Republicans doing on the Saturday before this important special election? They should be mounting a massive literature distribution and phone bank effort for Cuccinelli. Instead, they are having a picnic (which was scheduled before the special election).

The question is: What would have been the prudent course of action? Cancel the picnic, take a small financial loss, and turn out the troops in force for the election, or hold the picnic anyway and invite the candidate to leave the campaign trail to speak briefly?

Because political parties exist to debate issues and elect candidates, the prudent decision would have been the former, but the party leadership chose the latter.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are much better organized to support Belter. You won't find them at any picnic on Saturday, unless it is to promote their candidate.

The second issue that makes Cuccinelli an underdog is the massive financial support Belter is receiving from the supporters of the Northern Virginia sales tax referendum, including funds from Gov. Mark Warner, who, according to a July 4 Washington Post article, has promised to hold a fund-raiser to give her $200,000 budget a boost. He also is pictured with Belter in her campaign literature.

It appears many are seeing this election as a referendum on the referendum.

Belter, who at this writing had not responded to Cuccinelli's call to debate publicly, supports the sales tax increase, which almost everyone agrees will not solve our transportation woes.

Cuccinelli opposes the sales tax increase and has vowed to work to solve our transportation woes the right way, by fighting for Northern Virginia's fair share of revenues for transportation and education.

He believes it's unfair that Northern Virginia gets back less than half of what it send to Richmond in taxes in the form of state benefits. Fairfax County gets only 19 percent back, whereas some jurisdictions get back 250 percent.

Belter, on the other hand, appears to have no problem with this tax revenue distribution inequity.

This is a seat that the Republicans desperately need to hold. There are now 21 Republicans and 18 Democrats in the Virginia Senate. A Republican loss would put the Democrats within one seat of control, since Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine is a Democrat.

A vote for Cuccinelli is a vote for fiscal sanity and a vote against increased taxes.

Bill Wheaton lives in Falls Church. His column appears every other Friday. His e-mail address is bwheaton@cavtel.net.

Tuesday's special election is a showdown on taxes
By PETER FERRARA

ON Tuesday, a special election will be held in the 37th Senate District, which is in the Springfield/Centreville area, to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Warren Barry. That bellwether vote will have a huge impact on what happens to taxes throughout Northern Virginia.

On the issue of taxes, the lines could not be more clearly drawn in that race. The Republican nominee, Ken Cuccinelli, has proposed a statewide cap on runaway property tax increases.

Under the plan, counties could not increase property taxes by more than 5 percent each year. That makes sense, because taxpayer incomes generally do not grow by more than 5 percent a year.

Yet throughout Northern Virginia, property taxes have been soaring at more than twice that rate. Just this past year, property taxes increased in Fairfax County a whopping 14 percent on average, after a runaway 13 percent increase last year.

Indeed, since Kate Hanley was re-elected as the chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in 1999, saying she saw ``no need" to raise taxes, the annual property tax bill for the average family in the county is up almost $1,000.

In Loudoun County, property taxes soared 63 percent between 1999 and 2002. In Arlington, property taxes increased by 34 percent over the past three years.

Such tax increases are especially burdensome to seniors on fixed incomes and young people with families struggling to make ends meet. Because of these wild increases, property taxes are taking a bigger and bigger share of taxpayer incomes each year, leaving them with less and less to support their families.

Cuccinelli's plan would stop that, through state legislation prohibiting property taxes in any county from increasing faster than 5 percent per year. That would reasonably allow property taxes to grow along with average incomes each year, but no faster.

However, the Democrat nominee, Cathy Belter, opposes that plan. She insists that counties need more revenue so they can increase their spending faster.

Indeed, at a meeting of the Northern Virginia Roundtable which I attended on July 25, Belter said that if elected, she wants to consider income tax increases. She told the gathering that she is from New York, where people are used to paying a lot higher taxes than in Virginia.

Cuccinelli, by contrast, thinks that raising income taxes would be nuts. Virginians already pay more than enough in taxes, and an income tax hike would be quite harmful to the economy, which is struggling to get off the floor.

Cuccinelli also opposes the proposed 11 percent increase in the sales tax that is on the ballot this November. Belter naturally favors that tax increase as well.

Cuccinelli has taken the Americans for Tax Reform pledge not to raise taxes. That pledge has been taken by thousands of federal, state and local pro-taxpayer candidates across the country in recent years, including President Bush.

Belter, of course, has refused to take that pledge. She gets a point for honesty for that, because she favors increasing sales taxes, income taxes and property taxes.

This race will be closely watched all across Northern Virginia as a bellwether test of voter sentiment on taxes.

A Belter win will be taken as showing voter support for even higher increases in taxes and government spending. It will open the door to more rapid property tax increases, give a huge boost to the effort to increase sales taxes, and lead the General Assembly to consider further tax increases next year.

But if Cuccinelli wins, the Northern Virginia tax increase express will be derailed. His win will be taken as a warning from voters that they want to keep Virginia's tradition of fiscal conservatism, with restrained tax and spending burdens.

Cuccinelli and Belter disagree on just about every other issue as well, in a classic liberal/conservative matchup.

Cuccinelli favors maintaining the state's right to work tradition. Belter's campaign is based on the support of unions that would repeal right to work in the state and deliver workers to union control, regardless of their preferences.

Cuccinelli favors devoting more resources to transportation needs by restraining state spending on lesser priorities, not by raising taxes. Belter favors increasing government spending on just about everything else as well as roads, and raising taxes to do it.

Belter favors adding homosexuality to the anti-discrimination policy of Fairfax County Public Schools. Cuccinelli opposes special preferences for homosexuals, and says they have the same rights as everyone else under current law.

Cuccinelli is pro-life; Belter is pro-abortion.

So the stakes are clearly drawn. If you favor across-the-board liberalism, higher taxes and more rapidly increasing government spending, you should be supporting Belter.

If you favor a mainstream conservative candidate who wants to hold the line on taxes and spending and maintain Virginia's traditional fiscal conservatism, you should be supporting Cuccinelli.

Peter Ferrara is president of the Virginia Club for Growth and director of the International Center for Law and Economics in Washington, D.C.

http://cold.jrnl.com/cfdocs/new/ffx/story.cfm?paper=ffx&section=fp&snumber=23

After the fact but for the record.

Hopefuls get word out on election
Mary Shaffrey
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published 8/5/2002

The two candidates vying to replace Virginia state Sen. Warren Barry, who resigned in July to take a job in Gov. Mark R. Warner's administration, found out yesterday that few voters in District 37 seem to know a special election is being held tomorrow.

Democrat Cathy Belter and Republican Ken Cuccinelli, both Catholics, spent much of the day meeting with church congregations in the district, which stretches from Burke to Bull Run.

Mr. Cuccinelli emphasized his pro-life stance for church members.

"I am the pro-life candidate in this election and with two more votes in the state Senate, we can override Governor Warner's veto of partial-birth abortion and make sure that procedure never takes place in Virginia again," Mr. Cuccinelli told parishioners at St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church in Fairfax, which was similar to a message he delivered earlier at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Fairfax.

At St. Mark's, Mr. Cuccinelli was introduced by parishioner Michael Meunier, a Cuccinelli volunteer and president of the U.S. Copts Association, which represents 750,000 Coptic Christians throughout the country.

"He is supporting good issues and he is family- and religion-friendly," said Aida Habashy of Vienna, Va.

Mrs. Belter spent the morning at the First Baptist Church of Vienna and later the Korean Central Presbyterian Church in Vienna. In the afternoon's sweltering heat, Mrs. Belter walked around the Fairfax County 4-H Festival in Herndon.

Mrs. Belter, who is pro-choice, highlighted roads as the biggest differences she sees between herself and her opponent.

"I support the transportation referendum," said Mrs. Belter, referring to the Nov. 5 ballot question asking voters in nine Northern Virginia jurisdictions to raise the sales tax by one-half of 1 percent to fund transportation initiatives in the region.

Mr. Cuccinelli is opposed to the referendum.

"We need to have better access to getting to work, and [the funds] are not coming out of Richmond, so it's up to us to get it done," Mrs. Belter said.

"We need the referendum to pass," said Dan Lohmann, an undecided voter from Franklin Farms, after meeting Mrs. Belter at the festival.

Republicans hold a 21-18 advantage in the state Senate. Both sides are watching this race closely. The district leans Republican — Mr. Barry was a Fairfax Republican — but Democrats have poured thousands into the campaign.

Many observers also view this election as a preview for the fall transportation referendum.

The polls in District 37 are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Unlike the special firehouse primaries in which voters were limited in the locations they could vote, all precincts will be open.

http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20020805-98672736.htm