Now at the Podium: Bob Marshall vs. Jim Gilmore

Phil Chroniger gives his thoughts on the upcoming Marshall vs. Gilmore nomination contest.

In short, he’s torn… but for the right reasons:

(Marshall) is a tried and true fiscal conservative, and he’s fairly pragmatic about it. In the end, if you’re strong on fiscal prudence, you win with me. He’s been a voice of cost-cutting in a sea of seemingly-endless spending increases under Governors Gilmore, Warner, and Kaine.

His “no-confidence resolution” towards Republican leadership earlier this year brought him lots of attention and praise from the grassroots. He’s been an active opponent of the Abuser Fees, as well.

One must also think that, with Marshall/Newman being approved with 57% of the vote in a Democratic wave election, Marshall could get the attention of many swing voters.

Chroniger also goes over some of Gilmore’s weaknesses on spending. A very thoughtful post.

BVBL Comes aboard the Bob Marshall Cyberexpress

Black Velvet Bruce Li (a.k.a Greg L.), arguably the most influential blogger in the Commonwealth (and inarguably the most oft-quoted in my favorite paper: the Washington Examiner, but I digress), is now a Blogger 4 Bob.

Here’s his take on Marshall’s battle against the Northern Virginia Tax – errrrr, Transportation – Authority.  Some choice cuts:

Bob Marshall’s lawsuit objects to the establishment of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority as an agency with the power to impose and collect taxes on state constitutional grounds.  In Virginia, only elected officials can impose taxes, and none of the decision makers on the NVTA are directly elected, but are appointed by local governing bodies.  Some aren’t elected by anyone at all. 

. . .

A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for January 8th, and while Hampton Roads deferred collection of these new taxes until April — allowing the legal basis for these taxes to be settled before they start collecting them, the NVTA is plowing ahead anyways.  It’s an awfully risky move for the NVTA.  If they lose, it’s going to be a huge mess.

The other fallout here if the NVTA gets caught operating in an unconstitutional manner is that Delegate Bob Marshall, who is almost certain to make a bid for the United States Senate this year, is going to pull off another incredibly high-profile victory.  As author of the wildly popular Marshall-Newman Marriage Amendment, he’s got solid credentials on moral issues to take on the campaign trail.  If he manages a win on protecting the constitution from unlawful attempts to hike taxes, his credentials as a fiscal conservative will be stratospheric.  But the fallout of a victory here could easily be much larger than that.

. . .

The great transportation compromise of 2007 has turned out to be much less politically rewarding for it’s promoters than originally hoped for, and is now a convenient whipping boy employed by anyone challenging the political establishment with it’s strange mix of abusive driver fees, tax hikes, and bond issues.  In an attempt to make every legislator needed to support it marginally happy, it’s managed to include something for everyone to hate . . . While most were rushing towards getting the compromise done so they could trumpet that Republicans had managed to actually do something to solve the number one issue in the commonwealth at the time, a few, a very few, started calling foul.  Bob Marshall was the lead voice in that dissent, and very publicly put himself at odds with the House leadership in the process.

 . . .

If it turns out that they ignored an unconstitutional scheme within this compromise, the naysayers will get to demonstrate that they can be trusted to do the right thing, even when it’s not politically convenient.  When voter’s trust of their elected officials is clearly a scarce commodity (just look at Congressional approval ratings), having someone not only call out the popular majority for doing something wrong, but endlessly bull-dogging that issue to completion taps into a host of political lore that is positively massive.

It’s the underdog who fought for the right thing against all odds, and won.  It’s the outsider who refused to compromise his principles for political convenience.  It’s the legislator that got consistently punished by the leadership for doing the right thing and ultimately prevailed.  Americans love an iconoclast like this who chooses the hard moral right over the easy moral wrong, and not only do they love it, but they’re inclined to trust those who do it.  Bob Marshall was made for this role, as this isn’t some recent political conversion, but a consistent pattern of behavior he has demonstrated throughout his political career.  If there is anyone who consistently flies in the face of conventional political wisdom while defending a well known set of principles, Bob Marshall is the guy.  Winning this one would make sure that everyone in the Commonwealth found out about it.

Could you imagine a guy like this in the United States Senate?  They’d have to start wearing helmets at Senate Committee meetings, it would shake them up that much.

It is exactly for this reason (standing up for principle and refusing to bend with the political wind) that Bob Marshall has earned the respect and support of his constituents, including 2,500 voters who supported Democratic candidates for State Senate last year (Marshall performed 10 points better than his up-ballot ticket mates, and six points better than the Democratic State Senate candidates in his district).

Moreover, considering how, um “grateful” the people of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia were over this (of the four State Senate seats lost to the Democrats, two were in NoVa, and two in Hampton Roads, ditto on the four House seats the Democrats picked up), Marshall would become an instant hero for ending the regional monstrosities and saving the taxpayers from getting fleeced.

BVBL is one of those taxpayers, and we’re thrilled to join him (hey, he’s much bigger than we are in the blogosphere, so we join him) in supporting Bob Marshall.

Bob Marshall stands up for Northern Virginia taxpayers

By this time tomorrow, residents of northern Virginia will be paying higher taxes on “hotel rooms, car rentals, property sales and car repair” (DC Examiner), all part of the egregious transportation tax hike of 2007.  never mind that the mere existance of these taxes is being challenged in the courts, the greedy politicians want your money right now.

Well, almost all the greedy politicians.  One man is refusing to buckle, and told the Examiner so (emphasis added):

But Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, is challenging the plan in court, saying the transportation authority has no constitutional right to levy taxes.

“I think it is highly irresponsible to proceed ahead to collect these taxes,” Marshall said. “This is like gambling with other people’s money on a Supreme Court decision.”

Not to be rude, but I should note that the other Republican candidate for U.S. Senate has responded with deafening silence.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

How Bob Marshall will win (Part II)

Note: Part I can be found here. 

What with Christmas now receding from the rear-view mirror, and 2008 barrelling down the road, it is time to once again focus on our upcoming U.S. Senate race, and why Bob Marshall is the best choice.

 Almost none of the reaction I have encountered questions Marshall’s record; this does not surprise me, as the record is fantastic.  Instead, the main concern seems to be about electability, and its mainly coming from folks who are not in Northern Virginia.  I can understand that, too – if you haven’t followed Northern Virginia politics, you wouldn’t see how Marshall has repeatedly defied every effort by the lefties to get rid of him.  IN fact, as I mentioned earlier, Marshall ran ten points better than his up-ballot State Senate candidates last month.  He even beat the Democratic Senate candidates by six points (58% for Marshall, 52% for the Democratic Senate hopefuls – three of whom went on to win their seats, while the fourth held the Republican victor below 50%).

Also, as I must mention again, Marshall’s district at the top of the ballot (State Senate) was more Democratic than the rest of the state (the Dems only won 48% of the vote statewide).  Translated to a Presidential election, that means Marshall could pull out a win even if the GOP nominee loses Virginia 60-40, which is all but certain not to happen here.

Yes, I know, that’s a rough, swiss-cheese-like extrapolation, but my larger point still holds: Bob Marshall can win Democratic and independent votes; indeed he has for the last 16 years.

Two ancillary concerns spread from this, one of which was presented by outgoing Senator Brandon Bell, while the other has been unspoken so far.  Bell expressed his concern (see comment five here) thusly: “guys running in a generally homogeneous state house district have issues speaking to the concerns of broader constituency-in this case the entire state.”  The second one deals with whether Marshall - a Delegate since 1991 – can handle the shifting political sands that Virginia has witnessed in this decade.

Oddly enough, both concerns can be addressed in the same manner – by looking at Marshall’s district.  In the fall of 2001, Marshall represented 47,108 voters.  This was already larger than most districts despite the redistricting of the past spring, but it was nothing compared to what was coming.

Last month, the number of active voters in Marshall’s district totalled a whopping 81,709.  That’s an increase of over 34,600 voters over six years.  To give the reader an idea of how dramatic that is, the following is the list of Delegates who had fewer than 34,000 total voters in 2007: Matt Lohr (R-26th; 32,630), Adam Ebbin (D-49th; 28,981), Jackson Miller (R-50th; 32,214), Franklin Hall (D-69th; 31,041), Dwight C. Jones (D-70th; 33,528), Jennifer McLellan (D-71st; 32,076), Paula Miller (D-87th; 28,179), Kenneth Cooper Alexander (D-89th; 32,765), Angie Howell (D-90th; 30,468), and Lynwood Lewis, Jr. (D-100th; 30,629).  That’s a count of ten Delegate who have fewer total voters than Bob Marshall has in post-2001 voters alone.

For Mr. Bell (who I’m guessing is more familiar with Matt Lohr’s District than any other on the list), think of it this way - take Matt Lohr’s entire district and move into Marshall’s; you’d still be almost 2,000 voters short of what actually happened there.  In other words, Marshall has felt the demographic wave in northern Virginia as much as any other elected official (yes, I’m answering second concern first), but as Prince William and Loudoun County shifted to the Democrats (Kaine and Webb carried both), Marshall has remained strong.

Hopefully, this by itself will allso show Brandon and others that Marshall’s district is hardly “homogenous.”  Still, just in case, I have one more interesting tidbit to mention.  With over 81,700 active voters, Marshall represents more voters than Yvonne Miller, Ralph Northam, and Henry L. Marsh, III.  Here’s the significance: the aforementioned three are State Senators (Marshall easily has the most populous district in the House; his closest competition on that are Loudoun delegates Bill May and David Poisson – neither of which are within 20,000 voters of him).

For what it’s worth, Marshall also won more votes (14,826) than five Senators, although only two (Harry Blevins, R-18, and Marsh) had opponents; the other three were Miller, Maime Locke (D-2), and Ken Stolle (R-8).  Of course, the next time Stolle opens his mouth to justify tax hikes, runaway spending, or some other nonsense, feel free to remind him that Bob Marshall won over 1,500 more votes than he did.

To conclude (I know, waaay too late), Bob Marshall is no ordinary Delegate, and his district is no ordinary district.  He has stayed true to his convictions, and because of that, he has succeeded in a dramatically changing environment that sunk many Republicans of weaker stomachs.  For these reasons, he is the ideal candidate, and will be a terrific Senator.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Welcome all!

This is the blog by (and for) supporters of Bob Marshall’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

As for why we (or, at least for now I) have chosen Bob Marshall, here are a few points that , well, I mentioned earlier:

Bob Marshall is now the dean of northern Virginia Republicans (Vince Callahan has retired), and as the party was getting pasted on November 6, he increased his percentage over 2005 (from 55% to 58%). He was also one of the very few Republicans who outpolled his Democratic opponent in Loudoun County (where the GOP was hit especially hard). Not only is he untainted by the stain of HB 3202 (a.k.a. the transportation tax hike of 2007), he was one of the brave few who led the fight against it.

Moreover, FWIW, Delegate Marshall does not have any ordinary district. District 13 is easily the most heavily populated in the state, with over 81,700 registered voters (the nearest one to this is the 33rd, which has 20,000 fewer voters). As such, Marshall has had to campaign almost as hard as any State Senator (their districts average about 110,000).

But don’t take my word for it – here are some other folks who agree, the members of Delegate Marshall’s exploratory committee:

Honorable Ken Cuccinelli (Fairfax), Walter Curt (Harrisonburg), Patrick McSweeney, (past Republican party chair), Tony Kostelecky (Manassas chair), Shaun Kenney (past RPV press director), Russ Moulton (past chair, 1st Congressional District), Kay Gunter (10th district state central committee), Mark Tate (past vice-mayor, Middleburg) Rick Boyer (Campbell County), Mike Meredith (Rockingham chair, past chair, 6th Congressional District).

We expect many more to join us (as supporters, not necessarily ex-comm members) as we take the cause across the state to elect our next U.S. Senator: Bob Marshall!