Anti-tax faction aims to reclaim Virginia GOP

Anti-tax champions say Virginia Republicans can get their party back on track by replacing “tax-and-spend” incumbents with true conservatives in tomorrow’s primary election.

“This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” said R. Scott Sayre, who is challenging three-term state Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr., Augusta County Republican.

The outcome of the nine Senate primaries and seven House primaries will set the lineups for the November general election, when all 140 seats in the General Assembly are up for grabs.

Conventional wisdom and internal polling suggests that the deep-pocketed incumbents will win re-election. But anti-tax activists hope voters will sweep new blood into office, replacing what they call “two-faced” Republicans who have dismissed the fundamental party tenets of lower taxes and smaller government.

“Republicans both nationally and on the statewide level have campaigned on those principles but have abandoned them to some extent when they govern,” said Joseph E. Blackburn, a lawyer challenging Senate Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch, Henrico Republican.

“If I can win this race, I think it will send a message to the rest of the senators that tend to vote with the Democrats on tax issues that maybe they better re-evaluate their positions and find ways to meet the core functions of government without looking back to the people for their hard-earned money,” Mr. Blackburn said.

For months, incumbent senators — including Mr. Stosch, Mr. Hanger, J. Brandon Bell of Roanoke and Marty E. Williams of Newport News — have been derided with the title “RINO,” or “Republican in name only.” The criticism stems from their support for either former Gov. Mark Warner’s $1.38 billion tax increase in 2004 or Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s failed attempt to raise additional statewide taxes for transportation.

“It’s time to end the tax-and-spend cycle Virginia families have been subjected to because of RINOs who campaign as fiscal conservatives but govern as Ted Kennedy liberals,” said Phil Rodokanakis, president of the anti-tax Virginia Club for Growth. Mr. Rodokanakis endorsed Mr. Bell’s opponent, former Roanoke Mayor Ralph Smith.

In television ads aired by Mr. Blackburn, the narrator asks, “Remember Walter Stosch promising not to raise taxes? Well as senator, he voted to raise over $3 billion in new taxes.”

Not true, Mr. Stosch says.

He has spent nearly $1 million reminding voters that while the 2004 tax revenue reform plan raised the sales tax a half-cent, increased real-estate transaction taxes and boosted the cigarette tax, it also cut the food tax, ended the marriage penalty and changed the income-tax filing threshold so thousands of the state’s poorest residents no longer had to pay taxes.

“They are telling half the story,” Mr. Stosch said of Mr. Blackburn and his supporters. “These various fringe groups … have a mile-wide opinion and a quarter-inch deep analysis.”

Mr. Blackburn, who was endorsed by former Gov. James S. Gilmore III, responded by saying, “If you put a dime in my left pocket and take a dollar out of my right pocket, that is a tax increase.”

By most accounts, Mr. Hanger is in the most competitive race. Seven county and city Republican committee chairmen in the district — including the chairman in Mr. Hanger’s home county — are supporting his opponent, Mr. Sayre.

In addition to reminding voters of Mr. Hanger’s support of the 2004 tax increase, Mr. Sayre has criticized Mr. Hanger for supporting a measure that would have barred most illegal aliens from getting in-state college tuition but left a loophole open for illegals who met certain criteria.

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