Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie wrote in his 2006 memoir in support of a federal healthcare mandate, and worked as a lobbyist for a firm that was advocating market-based reforms of the nation’s healthcare system.
And then this week, the Gillespie campaign sent out a fundraising email stating that he was “a vocal opponent” of the Affordable Care Act “sounding the alarm about its mandates” even before it came into law.
Oops.
“As a career partisan and Washington lobbyist, Ed may be comfortable abandoning his previous positions, but he’s going have a hard time explaining his hypocrisy on the individual mandate to Virginians. Gillespie cannot dodge questions about his purported beliefs forever,” said Democratic Party of Virginia spokeswoman Ashley Bauman.
Gillespie had repeatedly denied having supported a healthcare mandate concept. The issue was raised in media stories on his involvement in the Mitt Romney presidential campaign in 2012, and was raised again late last year when reports surfaced that he was considering a run at the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Mark Warner.
What he will have a hard time running from is a line in his 2006 book, “Winning Right,” in which he laid out five principles to “ensure that efficiency, affordability, and availability would prevail in the health care sector.” The fifth principle was “all adults participate,” and Gillespie proposed as a means of guaranteeing that all adults participate steps to ensure “that every emancipated adult capable of providing for his or her health care do so.”
“One way to accomplish this is to use the tax code to gain compliance,” Gillespie wrote.
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Chris Graham
