A Republican state legislator who helped shepherd car tax relief plan through the General Assembly is set to cross party lines and endorse Mark Warner for Senate:
RICHMOND, June 8 — Fairfax County Republican Vincent F. Callahan Jr., former chairman of the Virginia House Appropriations Committee and onetime ally of James S. Gilmore III, said he would announce Monday that he is supporting Democrat Mark R. Warner in the state’s U.S. Senate race.
Callahan said Gilmore, Warner’s GOP opponent, misled legislators and the public about the state’s finances and the cost of his signature effort to eliminate the car tax when he was governor from 1998 to 2002.
“The figures Gilmore used were so utterly erroneous and far-fetched that they were mind-boggling,” said Callahan, who helped Gilmore push his car tax proposal through the House of Delegates in the late 1990s.
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Callahan will join former Senate president John H. Chichester Jr., also a Republican, on a conference call with reporters Monday to announce their support for Warner.
Chichester already is featured in a Warner TV commercial. But Callahan’s decision to back Warner is somewhat of surprise because he has long ties to the Republican Party.
Callahan was the lead House sponsor of Gilmore’s proposal to eliminate the car tax, also know as the personal property tax, in 1998. Gilmore ran for governor on a promise to get rid of the unpopular tax.
Gilmore and legislative leaders agreed to phase out the tax over five years. To make sure the state could afford it, they agreed to suspend the plan if revenue growth fell below 5 percent. In 2001, Chichester and Senate Republicans said the economy had slowed enough that they could not enact the fourth phase of the tax cut. But Callahan sided with Gilmore to keep it on track.
Callahan, who represented McLean from 1968 until this year, said he made a mistake because the Gilmore administration gave him bad information about state finances.
So, it seems that Callahan’s decision is as much personal as it is political, which is how politics works sometimes.
I doubt that this will have that much impact on the race, though. If anything, it will merely serve to solidify the seemingly insurmountable lead that Warner presently has over Gilmore. Because of their own history, though, it seems doubtful that Callahan and Chichester will be brining many of their fellow Republicans with them into Warner’s camp.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Can we please see Mr Callahan’s campaign literature he ran on to get into office? I wonder if he ran on a platform of limited govt. and lower taxation to free the economic power of the people.
If he didn’t run on that platform, especially during the time of George Allen running for Governor… What Republicans would have listened to him?
What is in these legislators craw is that they…THEY, are the ones who got handed a MAJORITY in the House and Senate by Governor Gilmore’s Car Tax Cut. As DJ put up in a post, not long ago, spending went up $9 Billion dollars during Warner’s reign… (along with raising tuition like 70% on average), and these people moan and groan about a $950 Million dollar annual tax cut to the people?
As I said before, you can bet they ran on a low tax platform, and if they simply would have kept THEIR word, we’d all be a little happier now with a MAJORITY in the Senate.
These people feel we have to serve/work for the government, and not the other way around. God forbid that government has to restrain it’s growth. God forbid that fat cat politicians can’t dispense their favors to the highest bidder in their office.
I think it is high time that the VA General Assembly goes back to only meeting every other year. Seriously, look at what happened to the Federal Government since they starting meeting year around? Citizen legislature, limited government, lower taxation… if you can’t be true to it, don’t lie to people by running on it…
I want to see their historical campaign literature….
July 9th, 2008 at 11:15 am
The lie that I dislike is the one that says I’ll cut your taxes and there will be no pain. Nobody ever significantly cuts taxes and tells the truth about the impact that lower revenue will have on spending. Nobody ever says:”Vote for me, I’ll cut your taxes, give you substandard education, bad roads, close your parks, give you slow and ineffecient state offices, and poor health care.” Nevertheless, these poor stiffs get taken in every time and keep voting for these jerks that wave a dollar bill in front of their faces. Then they give that same dollar bill to their fat-cat croneys!
In all of my 35 years of working, no tax cut by any politition has had any significant impact on my take-home pay…not Mr. Reagan’s and not Mr. Bush’s. And I make a decent salary–at least 50% above national average. Bush’s tax cuts of 2003 amounted to about one meal at a fast food joint per week. I believe that if most middle class people are honest, they would have to say the same.
What angers me is that back in the ’70’s, the United States was the largest creditor nation in the world, and now we are the largest debtor nation because while some politicions talk about tax cuts and balancing the budget, they will not be honest about what would be required in order to accomplish that goal. You want to know why we have such a mess today with sky-rocketing gas prices that are driving up the cost of every commodity that we buy ? You have to look no further than the weak US Dollar! And why do we have a weak US Dollar? We have a weak Dollar because of the deficit! This economy could unravel in a heart beat if any of our creditors decided to pull their money out of the Dollar. We must recognize that if the value of the dollar tanks much further, there will be very little incentive for our creditors to hold onto dollars and absorb the loss. They aren’t taking the hit because they love us. We’re not exactly liked in most parts of the world due to our arrogance and ignorance. America’s days of throwing our weight around seem to be coming to an inglorious end. Do you know how to say Kow-Tow?