Former Virginia Govs. Mark Warner and James Gilmore III called for greater regulation of Wall Street’s excesses in a rare moment of agreement during an acrimonious debate Thursday.
After weeks of national financial turmoil, the issued dominated the debate as both candidates urged regulatory reform and proposed that chief executive officers of failed firms not be allowed to walk away with millions of dollars in compensation.
“This is the result of too many people asleep at the switch, in Washington, on Wall Street, where everyone was looking at simply next quarter profits and nobody had a long-term financial plan,” Warner said.
The debate, held at the Capital One offices in McLean, was the second in the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. John Warner.
Gilmore, the GOP nominee, was governor from 1998 to 2002. Warner followed him into the office.
Gilmore sought to brand his opponent as a lock-step ally of Sen. Barack Obama who broke a promise not to raise taxes, and whose record of bipartisanship is “no substitute for honesty.”
Warner, who leads his opponent by wide margins in both fundraising and polls, fired back that Gilmore had handed off what became the “largest budget shortfall in Virginia history” that was disguised by a flawed budget.
State revenues failed to meet estimates in fiscal 2002, 2003 and 2004 to create a shortfall that totaled $6 billion, which Mark Warner and the GOP-controlled state legislature helped close partly through a $1.4 billion tax increase.
Besides Wall Street, there were other points of reluctant agreement.
Each seemed to reach roughly the same conclusion on offshore oil drilling, though Gilmore said his successor had reversed his opposition to it to suit public opinion.
And each expressed support for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that struck down D.C.’s handgun ban.
On the Iraq War, both opposed “arbitrary” troop withdrawal dates, but they diverged on Pakistan, which Warner called “the most dangerous nation in the world at this point, in terms of potential threat.”
