Boyd: Poll gives candidate early lead
Staff Report
News Tips: freepress2@ntelos.net
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors member Ken Boyd is claiming the early lead in the race for the Fifth District Republican congressional nomination.
An e-mail sent out by the Boyd campaign on Monday reports that a poll commissioned by the campaign has Boyd ahead of State Sen. Robert Hurt by a 21 percent-to-10 percent margin in an undefined low-turnout primary, though Hurt leads Boyd 23 percent-to-10 percent in a likewise-undefined high-turnout race.
The poll gives Boyd the lead when voters are informed of Hurt’s vote in 2004 in favor of the tax-reform plan championed by former Gov. Mark Warner and a bipartisan coalition in the General Assembly that effectively raised state revenues by $1.5 billion and Boyd’s own efforts on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to cut spending in county government. Read more
To conserve and protect
Biscuit Run grant pushes state past Kaine’s 400K-acre conservation goal
Staff Report
News Tips: freepress2@ntelos.net
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine today announced that more than 400,000 acres has been conserved since the first fiscal year of his administration in 2006. Several major acquisitions in Albemarle, King and Queen and Rockbridge counties, along with end-of-the-year easement recordings, helped the Commonwealth meet one of Gov. Kaine’s signature goals. The final total is 424,103 acres.
“This land conservation goal is one that strongly resonated with me personally, and it obviously resonated with other Virginians as well,” Gov. Kaine said. “It was truly a team effort among state agencies, land trusts and private landowners to make this a reality.” Read more
Biscuit Run to become state park
Former largest planned development in Albemarle history to be preserved as open space
Staff Report
News Tips: freepress2@ntelos.net
Gov. Tim Kaine on Wednesday announced the purchase of approximately 1,200 acres in Albemarle County known as “Biscuit Run” to be held by the state as a site for a future state park.
“When developed as a state park, this extraordinary piece of land will benefit the citizens of Albemarle, Charlottesville and the Commonwealth for recreation, natural resource protection and the preservation of open space in a fast growing area,” Gov. Kaine said. “This property is a real jewel and I am very pleased to add it to the long list of properties preserved during my Administration.”
This purchase will add to the goal of 400,000 acres of open space preserved during Governor Kaine’s Administration.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the state to acquire such a valuable property which offers spectacular mountain views, abundant flora and fauna and is in the viewshed of Mr. Jefferson’s Monticello estate and farms,” said Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr. Read more
Focus | Verga makes case for GOP nomination in Fifth
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
What’s wrong with America, if you ask Laurence Verga, isn’t just with the direction that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress is taking, but what their Republican predecessors did, or rather didn’t do, ahead of them.
“One of the reasons our country is in the challenged position it is in is because when we had Republican power in Congress and in the White House, it wasn’t the right type of conservatism,” said Verga, who is running for the Republican Party nomination in the Fifth District, which represents a wide swath of Central Virginia and Southside extending from the Charlottesville area to the North Carolina border. Read more
Focus | Perriello ’10: A safe bet? Hardly
Story by Chris Graham
We’re about a year away from the November 2010 elections, though you wouldn’t know that by watching local TV and seeing the wall-to-wall commercials telling you about what Fifth District Congressman Tom Perriello has been doing up in Washington.
First it was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with an ad in heavy rotation that has come under fire for the tagline at the end saying that the freshman congressman is “Wrong on Health Care, Wrong for Virginia” in apparent violation of federal campaign-finance laws. The new ad in heavy rotation has come from Americans United for Change, which is encouraging Fifth District voters who support health-care reform to call Perriello’s Washington office to thank him for his vote earlier this month on the House reform package. Read more
AFP Focus | Perriello still ‘undecided’ on health-care reform
Fifth District Congressman Tom Perriello has moved from “no” to “undecided” on the proposed health-care reform making its way around Capitol Hill.
“I think we’re moving in the right direction, but I’m not committed yet,” the Democrat told reporters on a conference call Friday morning in which he discussed the 1,900-page bill that is expected to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives next week.
Perriello is among a group of freshmen Democrats in the House who have pushed House leaders to bring down the costs of the reform package and to insert Republican-backed provisions on interstate competition and medical-malpractice reform into the final legislation. Read more
Tom Perriello | Fifth District Report
Recently, a group of more than a dozen superintendents and school officials from around the Fifth District had the opportunity to sit down with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to talk about the challenges and opportunities in our education system. I convened this roundtable to give school districts the opportunity to communicate directly with the Secretary about what’s working and what’s not in Virginia schools. Read more
