At gatherings of Democrats, I have often seen people proudly declare themselves to be “yellow dog Democrats.” This is a term that dates back to the 1920s, and is part of the larger phrase “I’d vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket.” I cringe every time that I hear somebody label themselves a “yellow dog Democrat,” because it tells me that they vote not based on a judgement of a candidate’s qualifications, but based on the label that they adopt. By this logic, I should have supported Congressman Virgil Goode who, while he was still pretending to be a Democrat, voted to impeach then-President Clinton.
I’ve decided to cast my votes this November 4th based primarily on whether or not the candidate intends to vote to raise taxes, voting in favor of candidates that are willing to do so. Since former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore eliminated the car tax (killing with $1B in annual state funding to localities; he made no attempt to compensate for this loss in revenue and, in fact, covered it up), the Republican majority in the legislature has refused to deal with the resulting revenue shortfall. They promise voters more services, and they continue to promise less taxes. What their proposal lacks, of course, is any sort of math as to how they intend to accomplish this. In researching candidates in my new precinct (having moved from Charlottesville to Blacksburg), I am spending most of my time looking into incumbents’ voting records on taxes and challengers’ public statements on the topic.
Though I haven’t found enough information to make a call yet, I have been following the races in Central Virginia quite closely. There is one Democrat that I have found, much to my alarm, is opposed to tax increases, and that is Steve Sisson. I’m not a big fan of how he has run his campaign against Republican incumbent Emmett Hanger, but it is his statements regarding taxes that bother me. Why is he unwilling to raise taxes?
“I will not hang the Democratic Party out to dry by making us the party that raises taxes $1 billion so that the GOP gets to take credit for cutting the car tax by another billion dollars.”
Oh. Because it would make our party look bad. That doesn’t seem like a very responsible line of thinking. For a guy that claims to be motivated by party solidarity, attacking Governor Warner (a fellow Democrat) for looking at a tax increase seems like odd behavior. In response to this, the governor’s office issued a statement that these were just “uninformed charges in the context of a political campaign”.
On the flip side of the coin, he has ceaselessly attacked his opponent on the topic of taxes, accusing him of “planning to raise taxes on senior citizens.” Sisson never provides the full picture here: Hanger is just looking at closing a loophole that drastically reduces the taxes paid by the wealthiest senior citizens. The idea behind a tax cut for senior citizens is that they ought not have to work, and the fixed income that accompanies retirement should be cut into as little as possible. For the John Kluges of his district, such a line of thinking is obviously not logical.
What bothers me the most is Sisson’s unwillingness to take the tough (but honest) route and admit that taxes must be raised, but unfairly attacking the governor and incumbent Emmett Hanger is just too much for me. Fortunately, I’m not in Sisson’s district, so I’m not faced with having to seriously consider voting for a Republican. But I will be applying the same logic to my options here in the 12th House of Delegate district and the 21st Senate district. I hope that I will find myself voting for Democrats.