E.W. Jackson held a press conference yesterday to clear the air and set the record straight. The Washington Examiner chose to focus on his past financial problems and youthful rebellions. That makes for the best copy, and is certain to take the largest role in the developing Jackson narrative.
As for the event itself? Good on Jackson for getting out in front on these matters and putting them into context. And even better? He has shown not only that he is fallible, like the rest of us, but has been able to overcome his setbacks and failings. That makes for even better copy…if the press will admit it.
A policy question did manage to wriggle its way into the discussion, and the Washington Post tried to explore it in a bit more detail:
During the press conference, Jackson said he wanted to “revisit the transportation bill and find a way to solve our transportation problems without raising taxes” by “getting the economy growing.”
He told The Washington Post on Tuesday evening that he would try to find a fix without a tax increase because “that’s what people want.”
And that was about it.
The word has been for some time that the Cuccinelli campaign is working on a transportation plan of its own. Jackson may simply be deferring to that plan’s eventual unveiling — all the better, as it will keep the focus on a single idea and avoids creating an opportunity for the opposition to drive wedges between the GOP candidates. If Jackson gets this, he’s already more disciplined than the Democrats.
So what is the plan? As Cuccinelli noted in our Score radio interview with him on the transportation topic in February:
I also think you’re going to see, whether you see it in this bill or whether you see it from my campaign, there’s going to be some effort at decentralization. We have this problem with transportation that is fairly simple, and that is that we control it all from the center. We’re one of only four states to do that. And that’s not a particularly conservative approach…
So I think we’re going to need to see some spin-off authority, and whether that happens in this bill or not I don’t know. But we will certainly be coming forward with some discussion of that in the governor’s race.
Not many specifics, but more is to come. The early read is that Cuccinelli will not seek to re-fight the 2013 transportation bill. There simply aren’t the votes in either the House or Senate for him to win such battle. Jackson can talk about being “taxed enough already,” which plays to the base. But he also needs to understand the legislative math.
