The why and how of Republican unity

Virginia Republicans coming off an impressive reelection effort last month for President Bush are now looking ahead to next year’s elections, when the Old Dominion will be picking a new governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. There also will be elections for all 100 seats in the House of Delegates.

With these big events in mind, state GOP activists gathered this past weekend at The Homestead for its 21st annual “Advance.” By all accounts, it was a time to show continued support for Bush and pump up the party for ’05 elections.

It especially was a time to rally around the Republicans’ all-but-certain nominee for governor, Jerry Kilgore, who hails from Scott County. He served as a local and federal prosecutor and was then-Gov. George Allen’s public safety secretary. He now is the state’s attorney general.

Kilgore has assembled a good campaign team and for several years has been gathering support from conservatives and moderates all over Virginia. (Liberals, understandably, don’t much like him.) In his winning the attorney general’s office in 2001, Kilgore was the state’s top vote-getter, garnering just over 1.1 million votes, which was nearly 123,000 more than Gov. Mark Warner received and about 180,000 more than went to Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine. Warner and Kaine, both victorious in their own races, are Democrats.

Next year, Kilgore merely needs to have the same Virginians who voted for him in ’01 do so again. In addition to those 1.1 million voters, Kilgore also stands to attract a good many of the additional 600,000 voters who supported Bush this year. (Bush received 1.7 million votes in Virginia to John Kerry’s 1.5 million.)

That’s a whale of a lot of votes – or, more to the point, that’s a whale of a lot of voters who must be inspired to turn out for Republicans in 10 short months from now.

One way to make harder the GOP’s job of turning out a million to a million-and-a-half votes for Kilgore is to fail now to unify in a way that not only ensures GOP victories in statewide races, but also in nearly two-thirds (or more?) of the House seats on the ballot.

Inspiring more than a million voters means two things: formulating a message to which they’ll generally agree is good for government and having a political organization in place that’ll pull the campaign wagon in heave-ho unison.

Every campaign must first formulate a message – and it must be at least equal parts philosophical and practical. Republicans generally stand for free enterprise, justice, individual responsibility, fair and responsible public budgeting, and strong defenses to protect our hard-earned liberties. It’s a creed that’s good and wholesome and relevant, and which invites little disagreement.

In keeping with this general philosophy comes the need to formulate practical policies that address government’s everyday operational challenges. These would be the same challenges that every major business faces: efficiently managing personnel, improving infrastructure assets, and delivering to customers what they need to be happy and productive in their own lives and businesses.

The Virginia GOP’s strength lies in the state’s rural areas and suburbs. Appealing to largely laissez-faire rural voters as well as suburbanites who demand better – that is, more costly – parks, roads, and schools is easier said than done. It requires a carefully crafted, well balanced message.

But that which can undo all the careful crafting and tightly controlled political messages is a team where one half is pushing while the other is pulling.

In the ’05 General Assembly session, a fair degree of unity can be achieved if the legislature’s dominant Republicans put forth a responsible budget message that returns some of the expected $700 million to $1 billion state surplus to taxpayers while preserving some of it for mutually agreed upon infrastructure needs – transportation certainly comes to mind – that currently hampers our otherwise growing economy.

Stafford Sen. John Chichester, his chamber’s top Republican as well as head of its budget-writing committee, has called for speeding up the planned three-year phase-out of the remaining 1.5 percent of the state sales tax on groceries that ends up in Richmond’s coffers. Instead of cutting a half-cent in each of the next several years, let’s eliminate it now and be done with it. Additionally, House Speaker Bill Howell, also a Stafford Republican, and Fairfax GOP Del. Vince Callahan, chair of the House budget-writing panel, have suggested moving now to completely rid ourselves of the food tax.

It also will be necessary for assembly Republicans to get rid of the last vestige of budget trickery. For several years, the state has required certain large retailers to estimate their July sales-tax collections and send the sum to Richmond a month early. Doing so has allowed the state to appear better off on its June 30 fiscal year-end ledger that it actually is. Fixing this little gimmick should represent its own form of tax relief to many of the state’s biggest businesses.

If Republican delegates and senators agree on cutting the food tax and eliminating budget sleights of hand, and then plow some of the surplus into transportation and other one-time capital needs, then they’ll have done Jerry Kilgore and other GOP candidates running next year a great deal of good.

And they’ll also have shown that it is possible to craft a Republican message that’s equal parts philosophical and practical.