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Why should I care about Phil Hamilton?

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Phil Hamilton represents the 93rd House District in the Virginia General Assembly. (He’s also a Facebook friend. Sort of a friend of a friend, but if you were me, and you checked things out to the nth degree, you’d find that out, and wonder why I didn’t say something if I didn’t say something. For the record, we talked once a couple of years ago for a story I was working on, and he was very helpful, but that’s the extent of it.)

Where Hamilton matters to us today is not necessarily in the fact that he’s running for re-election again, or that he has a Democratic opponent, Robin Abbott, an attorney who presciently made ethics reform a top campaign theme. The reason Hamilton matters to us is because of the news that he last week resigned a post at Old Dominion University that was created with money that he had secured for ODU as a state legislator while at the time he was working in the General Assembly to get the money approved he was also asking the school for a job for himself.

And actually, that’s not even why he matters to those of us outside the 93rd. I’m not one who likes to go around gleefully pointing figures at partisans on the other side of the political fence involved in scandal and say, See, they’re all crooks over there, because unfortunately there are ethics lapses on both sides. I don’t even want to say that I think Hamilton is a bad guy, not knowing him outside the phone call and sharing a tenuous link through Facebook, and not liking to judge people near or afar.

No, what matters is that for the second time in the past couple of weeks Republican leaders have had to publicly distance themselves from a House of Delegates candidate, Hamilton this week and two weeks ago 99th House District GOP nominee Catherine Crabill, infamous in Virginia politics circles for her suggestion that the federal government might have played a role in the Oklahoma City bombing and her incitement to supporters to take armed action against the government if they don’t get their way at the polls.

Republican Party of Virginia chair Pat Mullins and statewide-office nominees Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli all backed away from Crabill after it became apparent that Democrats were going to make Crabill the unofficial fourth member of the state GOP ticket. All but Cuccinelli have taken the same tack with regard to Hamilton.

“It appears that Del. Hamilton has violated the public trust. Based on this public information it would be in the best interests of his constituents for him to step down, but if he believes that the due process of a full inquiry by the House Ethics Advisory Panel will clear his name, he should have a full opportunity to present his case. Any such inquiry should be commenced immediately and conducted expeditiously,” said McDonnell, the gubernatorial nominee.

“I’m afraid the erosion of public trust as a result of his actions will make it impossible for him to effectively represent the citizens of the 93rd District. Phil is a good man and a good friend, but under these circumstances, I believe it is in the best interest of the Commonwealth for him to resign,” said Bolling, the sitting lieutenant governor running for a second term in the #2 job in the executive branch.

“I feel that Phil Hamilton should resign from the House of Delegates effective immediately. Failing that, Phil has the right to pursue all of his avenues under due process, which he may well choose to do. That is his right,” Mullins said.

Just as in the case of Crabill, Hamilton is not stepping down or stepping aside, and is in fact preparing to fight and fight hard. “Their comments, which most of these individuals have readily acknowledged are primarily based on news accounts, do not coincide with the response I am receiving as I campaign door-to-door in the 93rd District. I might note that unlike the aforementioned individuals, I am campaigning door-to-door in the 93rd District, hearing directly from the constituents I serve and represent,” Hamilton said.

As I said in the case of Crabill, the citizen in me likes that the GOP brass stepped up to the plate in making it clear that they don’t endorse candidates with the kind of personal ethics challenges that Hamilton seemed to have in his dealings with the ODU matter, but the political consultant in me says, Eh, the other side is going to nail you to him anyway, so what’s the difference?

The difference between the Crabill and Hamilton situations is that I’m not sure that the distance between the brass and Hamilton risks offending the Republican base at all, while the Crabill situation I think still has the potential to have some serious blowback for the likes of McDonnell and Bollling and Cuccinelli, because what she got in trouble for saying is, unfortunately for the GOP brass, what a lot of their voter base is thinking.

Swing voters in the statewide elections could be impacted, to a degree, by both, even accounting for the Yeah, sure, another crooked politician and Ho, hum, another politician saying something stupid factors, just because the latest crooked politician and the latest politician saying something stupid are on the GOP side, and voters in general tend to have short memories.

The longer-lasting effect of the Hamilton situation in particular is that you have to think he’s a goner politically, which is the pragmatic thing to asking him to step down, to preserve what you’d have to think is a safe Republican seat, considering Hamilton has held it for 21 years now.

I know the polls in the Deeds-McDonnell race suggest otherwise right now, but it’s going to be close in November, and what happens in the 93rd could be key for Democrats in their battle for the majority in the House of Delegates.

Chances are you hadn’t heard Phil Hamilton’s name before today, and you might not think about it after today. But a point or two in the governor’s race and one safe Republican seat going to the Dems in the House, and it could be that Phil Hamilton turns a tide that seems now to running against Democrats in the opposite direction in November.

 

– Column by Chris Graham

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