On the campaign trail with Bill Bolling

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Bill Bolling has learned to live life on the go. “I will not leave here tonight without my Polish-sausage sandwich and my candy apple,” said Bolling, the Republican Party lieutenant-governor nominee, standing at the front gate of the Rockbridge County Fair in Lexington Wednesday night. So he has eating on the…

Abortion and votes: How will issue affect ’05 governor’s race?

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Tim Kaine and Jerry Kilgore are still feeling their way around the abortion-rights issue. They both might be well advised to find a path and stick to it – because the pending political battle involving John Roberts’ nomination to the United States Supreme Court promises to keep the issue in the…

The Valley media market

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Another attempt by another publisher to add to the Central Shenandoah Valley media-market offerings has breathed its last breath. “Our board of directors has examined all of the aspects of our operation since we began in mid-March and has determined that the costs of delivery, news gathering and printing far exceed…

Kaine ties donations to silence on investigation

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham   A mailer sent out by Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Tim Kaine last month implies that Republican Party rival Jerry Kilgore held off on launching a state investigation into a pharmaceutical company’s actions regarding its alleged overbilling of the federal Medicaid system during his term as Virginia’s attorney general because the…

A beautiful game

Chris Graham

Golf Things Considered column by John Rogers [email protected]   Gene and I started playing golf, or some bastardized slash-and-burn version of the game, when we were about 15 or 16 years old. I don’t remember why we started playing. Gene was a baseball player; they called him Hoover, like the vacuum cleaner, because his long,…

Kilgore fleshes out tax-relief plan

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Backdoor tax increases resulting from increases in local property-value reassessments are “unfair,” Republican Party gubernatorial-nomination frontrunner Jerry Kilgore said on Wednesday. “I don’t know about you, but the only number that I care about as a taxpayer goes in that little box on the right-hand side of each check that I…

Kaine talks regional growth, I-81

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Tim Kaine spent a good part of his day on Wednesday talking about how he wants to take steps to strengthen regional economies in Virginia. So … what would the presumptive Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee do to improve the lifeblood of Western Virginia’s regional economy that is Interstate 81?