Good week for Virginia GOP

The Republican National Convention in New York City was a smashing success, and resulted in an immediate double-digit lead for the President in national polls.

As the Republican convention delegates were headed home, energized and excited, John Kerry was reduced to holding a midnight rally in Ohio to bleary-eyed union members. On Friday, Bush got a further boost from impressive job creation figures. It is safe to say that the President had a good week.

But with so much attention paid to the national party last week, an important political process in the Virginia Republican Party went almost unnoticed. It started when U.S. Rep. Ed Schrock (R-Va.), who represents Virginia’s 2nd District, suddenly announced his retirement, leaving the District Republican Committee members with only days to select a replacement.

The two contenders were state Sen. Kenneth Stolle of Virginia Beach and Del. Thelma Drake from Norfolk. While the offices of these two legislators are only about 20 miles apart, the two are light years apart in their commitment to Republican principles.

Senator Stolle not only voted for Gov. Mark Warner’s $1.4 billion tax increase, he strongly supported the Virginia Senate version of the tax increase, which was almost $4 billion. Put differently, a supposed Republican was willing to rob the taxpayers of nearly three times more money than a Democratic Governor. Stolle, and the other willing accomplices of Senate tax-raiser-in-chief John Chichester, were indispensable to the tax increase that went into effect last week.

By demanding an even larger hit on the taxpayers, they made Warner’s tax increase, itself the largest in Virginia history, seem moderate by comparison. (And let us not lose sight of the fact that both plans were based on fraudulent revenue figures.) Delegate Drake, for her part, opposed any tax increase throughout the General Assembly session.

The stakes of the intra-party contest were high. The 2nd Congressional District is heavily Republican, which means that this year’s winner will probably remain in the seat as long as he or she wishes to do so. In a contest with Senator Stolle, who has served longer, has represented a larger percentage of the Second District, and who has already run (unsuccessfully) for state-wide office, Thelma Drake was at a disadvantage.

Fortunately, however, she was not alone. The Virginia Club for Growth, a private organization that works on behalf of anti-tax candidates, stepped into the fray, according to an account in the National Review. Club President Steve Moore, who has referred to himself as the Republican Party’s "tax cut enforcer," told the committee members that if they chose Ken Stolle, the club would support the Democratic candidate, David B. Ashe.

Peter Ferrara, who worked strenuously and courageously on behalf of the taxpayers this past year, leads the club’s Virginia chapter. Ferrara also contacted the committee members, and reminded them of an oft-forgotten fact: conservatives do not spend their money and their time to elect Republican so that they can go to Richmond, or to Washington, and act like Democrats. Ferrara also warned that choosing Stolle would alienate grass-roots Republicans, perhaps pacing a Republican win in jeopardy.

The warnings evidently had an impact. Last Tuesday, the District Committee met and chose Thelma Drake to replace Ed Schrock as the candidate in this fall’s election. Ferrara made the message of the vote clear, telling the National Review, "This shows that if you [betray] us at the state level and raise taxes, when you run for Congress we’ll get you…. If Stolle had stood up against the tax increase, he would be on his way to being a member of Congress today. But now, Thelma Drake is on her way."

Drake, while solid in opposing the tax increase, has some weaknesses on the social issues. In 2003, she opposed license plates saying "Choose Life," and also voted against a proposal to compel state health workers to inform parents when their minor child receives medical attention. These are important matters, but Drake is likely to receive plenty of conservative reinforcement in the U.S. House Republican caucus, which should prevent any repetition of these relatively minor lapses (minor when compared to a $4 billion tax grab proposal, anyway).

Ferrara and the Club for Growth were right in what he did. Conservatives provide most of the money, most of the legwork, most of the energy, and all of the ideas in the Republican Party, at the national and state levels.

Virginia Republicans owe their majority in the House of Delegates, their Senate majority and their dominance of the state’s Congressional delegation to the party’s conservative wing, especially to religious conservatives. Yet having worked and saved and prayed and sacrificed for those majorities, conservatives have seen leadership positions in the Virginia Senate go to moderate Republicans, who do not conceal their contempt for the people who got them the majority.

The success of the Virginia Club for Growth shows that conservatives will not tolerate this imbalance indefinitely.