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.