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Dems: Cuccinelli hiding intent with rhetoric on roads, jobs

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cuccinelli-header2Virginia Democrats are bringing attention to an essay published by Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli that they say backs up a 2008 comment from the sitting attorney general in which he said that “if you want to fight abortion, you have to fill potholes.”

“Cuccinelli’s 900-word essay to his far-right supporters confirms what we already knew: He is only pretending to care about issues like transportation so that he can impose his extreme social agenda on Virginia families,” said Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe.

“Cuccinelli admitted to supporters that he intentionally misled voters and the media, and this campaign he is doing it again,” Schwerin said.

The Cuccinelli essay is below:

Dear Friends & Fellow Virginians,

During our debate a week and a half ago, Terry McAuliffe lied, made up non-existing quotes for me, ducked questions and just plain old got some basic things wrong.

For at least one of the quotes though, he was close to what I’d said, but he badly mischaracterized what it meant. I’m sure you’re shocked by that… but I think it’s about a point with broad application, so I thought I’d touch on it with you.

The comment Terry was talking about was ‘if you want to be there to fight on issues like abortion, you’ve got to fill potholes.’ Or words to that effect…

Terry basically said that everything else I’ve worked on has just been part of a big, sneaky scheme to fight for life and marriage. If I remember correctly, he actually used an analogy of a Trojan horse.

This all suggests to me that they are pretty desperate. Terry is badly overplaying his hand with this mischaracterization. Why doesn’t he just say he disagrees with me on protecting life and marriage, and articulate his own positions? Oh that’s right, he’s scared to tell people his actual positions on some of these issues (which, by the way, have changed since 2009… not coincidentally matching the shift in polling…).

When I made the remark in question, I was talking to folks who share my support for life and the most vulnerable in Virginia. So protecting life was a principle that was important to them.

So, if you want the opportunity to ‘be there’, i.e., in government, to address issues of principle: life, property rights, 2nd Amendment rights, limited government/lower taxes/less regulation, etc., you have to work diligently on everything else, like filling potholes.

My willingness to work hard for my constituents is well known. It was an important part of how I got re-elected twice in Fairfax County. To be there to work on the small number of issues of principle that arise, requires working hard to perform well on other issues that don’t have as obvious a tie to first principles, but that do relate to how we make Virginia a great place to live and raise a family.

Terry singled out transportation for his attack; in fact, it was the subject of his one candidate-to-candidate question to me. He basically implied that I didn’t care about transportation in 2003 after I got elected.

So, what was I doing on transportation in 2003, while he was traveling the country as DNC Chairman demonizing Republicans?

Probably the most critical aspect of transportation that I began addressing was arguing to open up more financing options by building High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes. I believe that I was the first elected official to advance this concept in Virginia.

Part of how I pushed this idea into the public discussion was by putting together a transportation forum to consider a number of future-looking transportation ideas.

I brought together folks from both sides of the Dulles Rail debate, and provided a forum for public discussion of that subject. Additionally, we heard from other presenters about the HOT lanes concept as a public-private partnership.

About 200 people participated in the forum, including both Republicans and Democrats. As I recall, the local public television network aired it later on.

As I said, in 2003, I was the first elected official in Virginia to come out for HOT lanes. Naturally, I was attacked immediately by some Democrats, including some who – years later – acted like they had been champions of the idea all along.

Also in 2003, I ran for re-election. And I talked extensively about the HOT lanes concept as a way to reduce congestion and expand mass transit in a cost-effective manner without raising taxes.

In fact, I put together a video on the subject that I mailed out to over 10,000 households in my district.  At that time, it was mailed out as a CD, but I still have a few. So, if you’d like to watch what I was working on in transportation in 2003, you can just click here.

What entertainment! Can I just say how awkward it is to see myself on video from 10 years ago?

Of course, less than ten years later, at the end of 2012, the HOT lanes opened on the Beltway! And today we are building a second HOT lanes project in the middle of I-95 from inside the Beltway all the way down to Fredericksburg!

Now don’t get me wrong, unlike my opponent, I’m not taking personal credit for the HOT lanes on 495 and 95; however, I did play a lead role in pushing NoVa in that direction.

And true to my word, when I got re-elected, I returned to the General Assembly and began advancing bills designed to make HOT lanes more achievable and advance public acceptance of the concept.

Along the way, while I was working hard to help improve transportation in Virginia (i.e., ‘to fill potholes’), I was also there to vote on those issues more directly related to first principles. But I was only there because I earned the trust and confidence of my Fairfax County constituents.

As Paul Harvey might have said, ‘… and now you know the rest of the story.’

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