I had the opportunity to attend Keith Fimian’s event yesterday to kickoff his Fairfax County campaign. Fimian is running in a primary against Fairfax Supervisor Pat Herrity for the GOP nomination in the 11th Congressional district. The winner of that will face Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly in November.
Close to 200 people squeezed into the back room at Brion’s grille, which is a stones throw away from George Mason University. Mr. Fimian is a business owner who lost to Connolly in the last election. He outlined his job-oriented platform and took questions from those in attendance.
“I’ve lived the American dream and I know what it takes to create jobs,” Mr. Fimian explained. “And what does it take to create jobs? Folks, it takes a whole new kind of leader. It takes a completely different kind of leader than we got in Congress. These people do not how to create a job, they’ve never created a job. They don’t know how to fix what’s broke, they’ve broke what’s broke. We’re here because of them and they don’t know what to do literally, they’re paralyzed.”
He then directed the crowd to his website to see his 6-point jobs plan.
Fimian gave a pretty good speech and the crowd was receptive. He also once again championed a poll that shows him up on Connolly by 5 points.
Fimian spent a portion of his time railing against the abuses of government and career politicians. “Folks, your money is your money and it’s better off in your hands than someone else, especially career politicians who use it to pay off special interest groups,” he said.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of his remarks came when he made tongue-in-cheek references to Pat Herrity. The race has been tense since Herrity jumped in mid-January. Although Fimian never mentioned his opponent by name he did say some things that echoed past statements.
After making lengthy case for why Washington is broken Fimian said, “The crowd of which I speak, the insiders, the status quo, the good ol’ boy network – they live off their political connections, they trade off their names, they’re opportunistically ambitious and all they care about is moving up on the next rung of the political ladder and that is not what we need now. They will tell you they’ve got experience…Your experience means nothing, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have experience.”
On January 13th Fimian put Herrity in his crosshairs by saying, “His opportunistic ambition to run for Congress is another sign that Gerry Connolly is vulnerable due to his reckless tax-and-spend policies. Sadly Pat Herrity misreads what Virginians’ want from their leaders. They do not want a career politician more concerned with power than results…I offer a break from politics as usual. I am not a politician and that is a problem to the insiders who cut deals and want to anoint their friends.”
The race is really heating up as the June 8th primary date rapidly approaches.
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