Bill,
You may not remember me, but we have met several times – initially, at a few meetings of the Spotsylvania Republican Committee over 2004 and 2005. You were just a State Senator then, and I was one of your northernmost constituents. As you noted in your recent Times-Dispatch column, you were running for Lieutenant Governor, and I was one of your earliest supporters. By 2007, I was a blogger, and on Blogger’s Day that year, I was the fellow who insisted on getting an answer from you about the tax increase known as HB3202. Perhaps you would have preferred not to remember me after all. I do remember you, especially from 2009, when we shared spaces on the Republican ticket (you, for re-election as LG; me, for Lee Hill District Supervisor in Spotsy): you were my highest-profile supporter, promising me whatever help I needed in that folksy style of yours, “I’ll say whatever you want me to say for you…or against you.” I still smile thinking of it.
Today, I am one your more vocal critics, and I’ve hinted at why in various posts and comments on this space, but I’ve never spelled it out explicitly, which is unfortunate. I will freely admit that in my case, it is more personal than with others. I say that because unlike most of your critics, I remain convinced you would have been a decent Governor of the state – but you made that impossible with two glaring and fatal mistakes.
First, you left the 2013 race for Governor before 2012 was even over. To this day, that decision made no sense to me. Granted, I remain convinced that a convention would have actually been better for you than a primary. Many of us in the party were not happy that Ken Squishinelli bypassed a second term as Attorney General (I all but begged him to stay where he was). Moreover, in the aftermath of President Obama’s re-election, the party and its members were still sorting out who would be the better type of candidate in the 2013 general election, and I was ready to explain why it would almost certainly be you.
I never got that chance. You allowed yourself to be convinced that a convention was your death knell, and left the race. Still, that was November 2012, and you had plenty of time to reconsider as Squishinelli spilled himself all over the political map on the McDonnell Tax Increase (or as I call it, Plan ’13 From Outer Space).
That, however, leads me to your second, and most critical, error.
You backed Plan ’13 From Outer Space. With that one decision, you turned Squishinelli from the weaker Republican on taxes to the stronger Republican, and practically removed any chance of a voice at the top of the ticket for those of us who opposed the largest tax increase on Virginians in 40 years. Do you realize what you turned away in that action? The convention delegates were desperate to sound off against the tax increase, and to make a clean break from the McDonnell Administration in general. The top two LG candidates were the first candidate to oppose the tax hikes (Pete Snyder) and the only one who promised to try repealing them (E.W. Jackson, who of course won the nomination). I remain convinced that had you loudly and forcefully opposed the McDonnell tax increase, those convention delegates would have carried you to the nomination.
From there, the general election would have been far smoother sledding than what we actually had. How could T-Mac have tied the party to McDonnell when the nominee to replace him opposed his tax increase? Even the supposed “beneficiaries” of the tax hike (Nothern Virginia, which with Hampton Roads suffered the brunt of the tax hikes also) rewarded tax-hike-opponent Barbara Comstock with re-election in 2013 itself, and election to Congress a year later. I find it hard to believe you would have failed while she succeeded.
This is why your continuing complaints about the events of 2012 and 2013 are so grating to me (I can’t speak for anyone else). Contrary to your assertion in the aforementioned T-D column, you did change. The man who took down Elmo Cross chose to stand down against Ken Squishinelli. The man who stood up to Mark Warner and John Chichester in 2004 backed down for a tax increase in 2013. The man who could have been elected Governor as a defender of the taxpayer three years ago…
Well, I’ll let you finish that sentence. Odds are I’ve already done enough to make you want to forget me all over again.
Yours Truly,
DJ
