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Gilmore stops in Hill City

By Ray Reed

Published: July 30, 2008

Republican Jim Gilmore brought his Senate campaign to Lynchburg on Wednesday for the third time this summer, telling a small gathering in a Wards Road restaurant he’s confident of victory in November against Democrat Mark Warner.

“Energy is the issue in this campaign and we’re going to respond to it in the Senate,” Gilmore said to about 15 local supporters. A second issue is trust, he said, accusing Warner of breaking his word on taxes.

Crowds were larger at many of the other stops on Gilmore’s three-day, 14-city tour, his staffers said, with about 75 attending a midmorning gathering in Rocky Mount on Wednesday.

Mark Peake, Lynchburg’s Republican Party chairman, told the gathering that “none of these races are won in July. They are won in October, and that’s when you are going to get them.

“Governor Gilmore will not be outworked by anybody,” Peake said. “He will cover more territory and meet more people.

“Mark Warner goes around saying ‘I’m a business guy, I’m a sportsman,’ and when he’s in Virginia he runs around with guys like Mudcat listening to bluegrass music and eating barbecue,” Peake said, referring to Mudcat Saunders, a Democratic party operative in Roanoke.

But in Washington, Warner “will be hanging out with (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (Senate majority leader),” Peake said.

Gilmore in Washington would hang out with Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, and Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Rocky Mount, Peake said.

That means Warner would be part of a Democratic caucus opposed to the Republican Party’s drill-here, drill-now strategy to lower oil prices, Gilmore said.

“That’s not forward-looking,” Gilmore said. “You have got to do something to be able to use our resources, not write them off the table.”

The resources he cited were oil reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and offshore on America’s continental shelf.

“It’s time to drill for oil in America,” Gilmore said to applause.

“When President Bush took the executive moratorium off oil drilling” offshore two weeks ago, “the price of oil dropped $20 a barrel immediately and it’s still down,” Gilmore said.

A similar result would occur if Congress approved more oil drilling, Gilmore said.

Bob Wood, a retired Lynchburg homebuilder who attended the meeting at the Golden Corral restaurant, said Gilmore’s presentation sounded good.

“The points you made, I think, are extremely important,” Wood said.

Later, Wood said he’s concerned about the country because so much U.S. money is being spent in other countries for oil and consumer products. Those countries are using American money to gain ownership of U.S. assets, Wood said.

In response to a question from the audience, Gilmore said he will bring his campaign back to Lynchburg. “This area is very important to us,” he said.

Gilmore said he could be trusted to act on his promises because of his record as governor from 1998 through 2002.

“I said we were going to reduce the car tax and we reduced the car tax,” he said. Gilmore’s bumper-sticker pledge at the time said “No car tax,” and the General Assembly reduced the tax by 70 percent.

Gilmore blamed Warner, his successor, for stopping the car tax cut at 70 percent. When Warner was campaigning for governor, he had promised to continue the car-tax phase-out, Gilmore said.

“Then he became the implacable enemy of the car tax cut as soon as he got into office,” Gilmore said.

With state revenues declining in 2003, Warner has said, the state’s budget couldn’t support cutting the tax any further.

Gilmore said his largest state budget was $50 billion, and the first budget under Warner’s administration came in at $51 billion.

“If I’d had a second term there would have been no car tax, and if Mark Warner had kept his word there would have been no car tax,” Gilmore said.

He also accused Warner of hiding reports from the state secretary of finance in 2004 that said the state’s revenues had begun to increase substantially. During that time, Warner was urging the General Assembly to adopt a $1.4 billion tax increase, while saying publicly that the state’s revenue picture hadn’t improved, Gilmore said.

Gilmore’s campaign staff sent excerpts of the finance secretary’s letters to news media to back up his assertions.

Reader Reactions

Posted by ( John S. Thulin ) on August 02, 2008 at 7:48 pm

Liberal democrats have discovered they love power more than they love being socialists- nobody trusts socialists. They acquired office by pretense. Now previous Governor Warner is campaigning that “...a do nothing Congress...is standing in the way of alt. energy & more oil production...” (as if Republicans are holding up the high cost of fuel- yet he is unwavering in support for Obama- to keep oil prod. down). Warner vrs. Gilmore- The diff is that Gilmore on the news looks like he is casually talking about weather as he comments on gas prices, while Warner’s add makes him look like some kind of crusader! The ultimate political farce has taken root and nobody expects a public backlash to re-inform the dems that they are out of line again?

Even Rush Limbaugh warned that dems would pretend to be conservatives & that is how they have succeeded big in VA. If Obama had half the brain or savvy of Web & Caine he would not be forthright at all in his liberal pronouncements. VA dems leaders have convinced people they can better manage the gov. handouts. Margaret Thatcher said it was ‘not a conservative’s burden to prove that they can manage liberal programs better than liberals can!’

Real problem is there is no sense in VA that Republicans have any better Vision instead of that old claim by dems that “Democrats care about people, Republicans care only about businesses and profits for the rich”. Republican candidates cannot take on this LIE directly because they cannot articulate passionately why it is wrong. Republicans have no vision because they don’t believe, & have no plan to defeat liberalistic jargon, which is no more than flattery toward those who seek self interests over & above the rights of their neighbors. Favoritism is the only game in town now. Will Joe Public will vote for reps. as dems cannot relieve gas prices? Will they forget what is at the heart of liberalism: VAIN PROMISES? (They only have to deliver a carrot on a string on the end of a stick instead of real answers). They will blame, delay, promise, debate, scream bloody murder, and enact ineffective laws with loopholes for their real intent. If that were not so why would they fight the basic objective of more oil production tooth and nail- We are going to burn more oil pumped from somewhere; it should be our own!

Now campaigns turn into simple Personality Contests with the liberals promising some of the right words while vilifying everyone else as unfit for public trust- AKA: macaka name calling. Most Republican leaders are content to out-spend & out-care the dems in almost everything. They really do not know what the answers are, so they gave us McCane to convert the rest of us to unite under their new image of tax and spend republicanism.

Liberal agendas in VA are mixed with “moderation” to satisfy both sides of a debate going on, to assure dems re-elections. But incremental change in key areas are as deadly to economic safety as is accelerated confiscation, because it dissolves public unity and resolve to resist Seduction By Government Incentive (divided we fall).

How can the dems fail to overtake America? What do dems leaders, chameleons, and deadly viruses have in common? All seek to hide their true identity by mimicking their surroundings to escape detection & anti-bodies that destroy their purpose for being. In politics their best shield is-- “We are the party of real caring, we feel your pain, we will free you from the oppression of the rich or anybody who has more than you!”. If we buy that line does it matter how they deliver? Consider, when Communism took over whole countries it was the deluded peasant class who became pawns for the Committee that took away personal property ownership by force from the farmers and the rest of the self employed. Saying property belonged to everybody only meant it belonged to nobody (except the Committee who alone enjoyed those rights).

One law of thermodynamics is that everything in the universe decreases, slows down, degrades and disintegrates. The equivalent law of human nature & self government is: Republican Democracies always degrade and transform into dictatorships, which in turn are overthrown by Despots. Liberalism is the embodiment of the elitist ruling class dictatorship with the added virtue of minimal checks and balances- not for freedom exactly, but designed only to assure their continued popularity as social elites & rulers. Problem is that to re-attain lost freedom is not remotely a possibility because familial tribalism or special interest factions take us over. There remains only room for War Lords after that. But don’t worry, in America we can afford it what ever the cost!? [one who is wandering in the wilderness of dissent of the new political correctness].

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Posted by ( farmchic ) on July 31, 2008 at 11:05 pm

I’m with Gilmore.
Why are so many environmentalists opposed to drilling in Alaska? I love birds and nature to a fault, but America was all a wildlife ‘refuge’ before people lived here. The indians lived off the land--not a grocery store! And they didnt disrupt the harmony man had with animals and the earth.
We don’t need to save one area (like Alaska) we need to save the country! For some reason now both partners in marriage feel the need to work, taking 2 cars to work, (extra gasoline) buying convenience foods (=excess trash)because both are too tired to make dinner--only so they can go to places like walmart to buy more stuff to feed their consumerism. Few families garden anymore, which means less birds and insects, less flowers, less oxygen. Where there once were family gardens there are now supermarkets becasue we are a consumer-driven people and we want to make money and we want to spend it and thats the real reason America has lost its beautiful country sides and wildlife. Not because of oil drills.

No one stays home to take care of their house anymore, or to work in their yard, or feed the birds, or garden and help the environment that way. The only solution some environmentalists see is saving the thing we have left. I say take back what we’ve lost. And start working y’all.

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