Panning Potts

This is almost too good to be true. Sen. Russell Potts (?, Winchester) bolted the Republican Party Friday to run for governor of Virginia as an independent. He will join Jerry Kilgore, a real Republican, and Tim Kaine, a real non-entity, in going before the voters this November.

What does this mean for the 2005 governor’s race? First, it means that pundits now have three candidates whose last names seem to have been sent by the god of bad puns. This is good news for pundits. Potts’ announcement is also very good news for Republicans.

The first column that I wrote for roanoke.com took note of Gov. Mark Warner’s fearful refusal to permit a statewide referendum on his tax increase. Potts’ entry into the race insures that Virginia will have such a referendum on taxes after all. The main issue that prompted Potts to desert the Republicans was the GOP’s commitment to lower taxes. This fact alone makes Potts’ defection good new for Republicans. In fact, Potts promised that he would raise taxes in Virginia by more than $2 billion, by re-imposing the car tax, all 100 percent of it.

Virginia voters will have two pro-tax candidates from which to choose in November, and only one, Kilgore, who is committed to lower taxes. (Kilgore should take advantage of this dynamic by immediately signing a No New Taxes pledge.) While Potts and Kaine argue about how much more money the government should have, Kilgore can present his plans for allowing working people to keep more of their money.

No less an authority than Warner himself knows that his party cannot win a referendum on higher taxes, which is why he shied away from one last year.

Not surprisingly, Kaine has attempted to spin Potts’ defection into a positive for the Democrats. Kaine said in a statement that Potts’ entry into the race demonstrates “a deep divide in the Republican Party” between moderate and conservative factions. This is a canard that I can put to rest very easily. Even Kaine should know that if there were a “deep divide” in the Republican Party, Potts would be challenging Jerry Kilgore for the Republican nomination. Instead of presenting his message to Republican primary voters, Potts has skipped the entire primary process, and decided to simply nominate himself.

In a party that was truly “deeply divided,” the moderate would have as good chance of winning the primary as the conservative. Potts knows that is not the case, which is why he dropped out. The plain fact of the matter is, the Republican Party is completely united behind Jerry Kilgore, and the majority of Republicans in Virginia are fiscal and social conservatives. The Senate Republican caucus is the last, crumbling bastion of moderate Republicanism in the state.

Even here, the moderate Republicans are losing power, although the tightness of their grip on what’s left obscures this fact. Since 2002, five new Republican Senators have joined the upper body. Four of them, Brandon Bell (Roanoke), Ken Cuccinelli (Fairfax), Mark Obenschain (Harrisonburg), and Jay O’Brien (Prince William) are much more conservative than the senators they replaced. The remaining moderates in the caucus (and, with Potts’ defection, there will be one fewer) are older and near the end of their careers.

The House of Delegates has been dominated by conservatives since before the Republicans took over the majority. Clearly, the rising tide in the Republican Party of Virginia is conservative. Again, no one need take my word for this; Potts himself acknowledged this essential truth when he bolted the party.

Having done so, should Potts be considered more of a Republican or more of a Democrat? The answer to this question could decide the impact he is likely to have on the race in November. (I’ll go out on a limb with a prediction here: Potts will not make a noticeable difference in November.) Three facts ought to be enough to link Potts firmly with the Democratic Party.

First, Potts is an unabashed tax raiser. This puts him in the company of Tom Kaine, Mark Warner and, for that matter, Walter Mondale.

Second, Potts, as chair of the notorious Senate Education and Health Committee, has strenuously fought to keep abortion profitable.

Third, in 1998, Potts supported the Gilmore car tax elimination, the very tax cut he now decries as a “budget buster” and wants to rescind. At the same time, Potts once promised to run for only three terms in the Virginia Senate. He is now in his fourth. Finally, while he is bashing Republicans, and splitting from Republicans, Potts is insisting that he still is a Republican.

Besides being pro-tax and pro-abortion, Potts is also a flip-flopper. That puts him in the company of John Kerry.