Gerarda Culipher may be the only legislative candidate in Northern Virginia history who decided to run for office while pregnant and stuck in traffic on Interstate 66. “I’m not even kidding,” she recently told The Examiner. “This time last summer, I was 8 ? months pregnant, my third pregnancy in three years, the air conditioning was not working on the Metro and the escalator at the station was not working either.
“‘This is ridiculous,’ I told myself as I huffed up the frozen escalator. My husband, Bryan, suggested I start driving to work. Then I had to worry about what I would do if I went into labor on I 66.”
That was when Culipher — a Tulane Law grad who clerked for Judge Loren Smith on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, taught law at American University, and founded the Northern Virginia Women’s Caucus to encourage conservative Republican women like her to run for public office — decided to run for the Virginia Senate herself.
Ordinarily, political neophytes have little chance of ousting incumbents like Sen. Chap Petersen, D-34th. But the Oakton resident has two unlikely advantages, both courtesy of the Democratic Party.
The first is a bill Petersen sponsored this past session to raise the state gas tax every year. Opposed by Gov. Bob McDonnell and a majority of Virginia voters and legislators, the bill died, but not before exposing Petersen’s belief that commuters forced to crawl along in Northern Virginia’s unbearable traffic on $4 gasoline, are undertaxed.
The facts prove otherwise. Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation calculated that Virginians get back only 89.5 cents for every federal gas tax dollar they pay into the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which is then returned to the states. Richmond takes another big bite out of the 17.5 cents per gallon state gas tax Northern Virginians pay, ultimately leaving the region with far less highway money than its residents have paid.
Culipher supports proposals by Del. Jim LeMunyon, R-Fairfax, that would prioritize road construction based on congestion and change the state funding formula to benefit Northern Virginians. Petersen would make local drivers continue to pay more for less.
The first redistricting by a divided legislature since Reconstruction gave Culipher’s candidacy a second big boost.
Republicans need to pick up just three seats in November to gain a majority in the state Senate, which Democrats have controlled since 2007. Currently, there are Democratic candidates in just 24 of the 40 senatorial districts, compared with 35 Republicans, and no challengers to GOP incumbents have stepped forward. To keep their majority, Democrats must defend the districts they currently control. However, the new lines they drew in March may have put the 34th — which includes parts of Fairfax Station, Fairfax City, Vienna, Oakton, Chantilly and Centreville — in play.
At least a third of the new district is also new to the one-term Petersen, so Culipher is not running against an incumbent in those precincts. Portions of the new district have also been represented in the past by Republicans Ken Cuccinelli and Jeannemarie Devolites, and could swing back to the GOP this year.
So Culipher is knocking on doors and using Facebook to provide real-time traffic updates to frazzled drivers as she delivers a compelling message to thousands of Northern Virginians who, she says, “share a special kinship that defies party lines: Chap Petersen is disconnected from commuters. He walks to work. The rest of us don’t.”
Commuter champion Culipher versus gas-taxer Petersen. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
