Bolling lays out health-care plan

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham You don’t hear a lot of Republicans talking about health-care reform. “And I don’t know why that is, because one of the things that I believe in very strongly is that one of state government’s most important responsibilities is making sure that we have a system of health care in Virginia…

Tweaking NCLB: Republican delegation to ask feds to ‘back off’

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham When Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Mount Solon, brought up his concerns with respect to the No Child Left Behind education-accountability initiative during the news conference in 2003 in which he announced his candidacy for re-election to the Virginia General Assembly, it didn’t take long for fellow Republicans to paint a…

Don’t dump the Veep: Local Republicans advise president to stay the course

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham The talk that President Bush might want to look somewhere other than Number One Observatory Circle for a running mate for this fall’s election is just that, talk. “The streets of Washington’s political district are filled with rumors and scenarios where Cheney disappears from the GOP ticket. Yet if…

Pres. Bush 49, Sen. Kerry 46: Poll numbers show Virginia really is in play

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham Virginia wasn’t at all on Scott Rasmussen’s radar screen. The polling-firm head and Fox News Channel regular had been tracking several battleground states in the walkup to the 2004 presidential election. The Old Dominion, which has voted Republican in the past nine presidential-election cycles, wasn’t on that list at…

Was the governor ready for his closeup? Warner makes national debut with speech on big night at national convention

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham   Gov. Mark Warner was able to deliver one particularly good line in his brief speech to the Democratic National Convention Thursday night. Noting that the Old Dominion hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, Warner went Old Testament, invoking images of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to…

It’s the end of the no-car-tax as we know it: And not everybody feels fine

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham As House and Senate conferees struggle to work out the details of the state’s 2004-2006 budget, legislators outside of the spending maelstrom are focusing at least some of their attention on the revenue compromise that seemed to signal the end of the four-month-long budget impasse last week. One item…

Farmers for Hanger: Farm bureau endorses Republican’s re-election bid

Chris Graham

Column by Chris Graham  For Emmett Hanger, being conversant in agricultural issues isn’t an election-year strategy. It’s a way of life. “I think he’s more effective because he understands the realities that we face out here every day,” said Gerald Garber, a Weyers Cave farmer who remembers Hanger, a Mount Solon Republican, from their days…

Like the Maytag repairman: Unopposed candidates talk about running a one-person race

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Jean Shrewsbury could take it easy this election season. Given that Shrewsbury, the commissioner of the revenue in Augusta County, is unopposed for re-election this fall. But the Republican isn’t sitting on the sidelines lamenting the fate of her challenged colleagues.