Bob McDonnell’s campaign stepped up efforts to turn the Virginia governor’s race into a referendum on taxes, hoping to capitalize on Democrat Creigh Deeds’ increasingly unambiguous support for higher taxes to boost evaporating road funding.
“Creigh Deeds is now the first major candidate for governor of Virginia to run on an outright platform of raising taxes,” said Ed Gillespie, Republican nominee McDonnell’s campaign chairman. “And he’s running on that platform in a time of recession and a time when people are concerned about jobs and concerned about their ability to make ends meet.”
Deeds wrote an op-ed published in The Washington Post in which he referenced his prior support of raising the gas tax. He offered that “all options are on the table” for raising revenue, short of raiding funds for education or other core services. While Deeds’ op-ed didn’t tie him to a specific plan, it was widely seen as the clearest signal to date that he would pursue higher taxes if elected.
Some newspaper editorials lauded Deeds for his candor. “We’ve been getting a tremendous amount of positive response to it from voters, from political watchers, from editorial boards, who say that he’s got the right approach to dealing with our transportation crisis,” said Deeds senior adviser Mo Elleithee on a conference call. “It is a crisis.”
The op-ed also caused Republicans to shift to a new line of attack. Where the McDonnell campaign had gone after Deeds for stumbling on the tax issue — first saying he would not raise them at a debate before quickly contradicting himself — the GOP instead began to paint Deed’s as an unashamed tax increaser.
McDonnell himself has checkered anti-tax credentials, however.
As state attorney general, McDonnell was an outspoken supporter of the infamous omnibus transportation package passed in 2007 that empowered regional authorities in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to raise regional taxes and imposed enormous new fees on bad and dangerous drivers.
When the bill passed, McDonnell called it “the most extensive and far-reaching transportation reform and investment legislation in a generation.” The regional taxes were later thrown out by the Virginia Supreme Court.
The “abuser fees” were scrapped by lawmakers after widespread citizen outrage.
