Focus | Morton: A ‘principled conservative’

Chris Graham

Fifth District GOP candidate builds support toward run for party nod Story by Chris Graham [email protected] The Fifth District is a living laboratory to Fluvanna County biology teacher Feda Morton, a veteran Republican Party activist seeking the GOP nomination to run for Congress in the Fifth. All Morton has to do over the course of…

Howell, Putney address concerns over health-care reform

Chris Graham

Pair cite state Medicaid-funding issue in letter to Webb, Warner Staff Report News Tips: [email protected] House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Lacey E. Putney, I-Bedford, today announced that they have written U.S. Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner to voice their “significant concern” about the impact that health-care reform bill making…

Focus | Democratic divide

Chris Graham

Battle brewing between progressives, centrists over direction of party Story by Chris Graham [email protected] The 2001 election that ushered in the Democratic Decade in Virginia gave power in Democratic Party circles to the centrists in the mold of Mark Warner and Tim Kaine who led the mini-revolution that fall. The model that they laid out…

Focus | Verga makes case for GOP nomination in Fifth

Chris Graham

   Story by Chris Graham [email protected] 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…

Focus | Does Virginia’s state-budget process make sense?

Chris Graham

House Speaker weighs in Story by Chris Graham [email protected] The Kaine administration is hard at work putting together a proposed two-year budget for state lawmakers to review in the upcoming 2010 General Assembly session. Anybody see what might be wrong with this picture? The big thing is that Tim Kaine won’t be governor next year,…

Focus | Perriello ’10: A safe bet? Hardly

Chris Graham

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…

So, what happened?

Chris Graham

Column by David Cox No question about it, Virginia Republicans had a field day. Congratulations rightly go to Mssrs. McDonnell, Bolling, Cuccinelli, and Cline and, in the nonpartisan local elections, to re-elected Supervisors Ford and Lewis. No question about it, too, they all face huge problems, both in Richmond and, as a result, locally. But…

Good Intentions + More Government Control ≠ Health-care Reform

Chris Graham

Column by Norman Leahy Primum non nocere, a Latin phrase meaning “First, do no harm,” is the first principle in the provision of health care. It should also be a first principle in health-care reform. Of course, this assumes the debate is truly about health care and not just another excuse to further expand the…

The Pulse | One reason Deeds lost

Chris Graham

And it’s a small thing, because Waynesboro isn’t going to turn an election one way or the other all by itself. But my experience as the Democratic Party chair in Waynesboro the past couple of election seasons can be instructive nonetheless. It strikes me that I hadn’t even bothered to look at how Creigh Deeds…