Mark Cole to receive challenge in the 88th District

Resources are limited. So what do the Democrats do? They run someone against the one candidate who won with the highest margin of victory in 2001.

Charles A. Feldbush, a police detective in Prince William County, is seeking the Democratic nomination to run against Cole in November’s election.

Feldbush lives in North Stafford. He ran, and lost, a 1999 race for sheriff to Charles Jett. Feldbush ran as an independent in that race but said his “philosophies have changed” since then, pushing him toward the Democratic Party.

Great – another Bill Jones. Read on. . .

“I have seen nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of trying to halt, stop, help the continuing sprawl,” Feldbush said. “There appears to be no control by the state. The state doesn’t give the locality the tools to handle this all I’ve seen is a lot of lip service, a lot of talk. I have not seen a lot of action being taken. So my question would be, when does it start? As an elected official, I would certainly make that a priority.”

Feldbush said he supports the use of impact fees and proffers to make developers pay for the infrastructure their development creates.

If memory serves me correctly, wasn’t one of the first bills that Cole offered in the General Assembly concerning the use of impact fees?

Cole introduced a bill during this past General Assembly session that would have allowed localities to suspend water and sewer connections during a drought, but it failed. Another bill, which would have extended for another year Stafford County’s ability to assess road impact fees, also died.

Feldbush said he doesn’t feel Cole has done enough to help local governments restrict growth.

Now Feldbush isn’t a dummy. But it sounds like someone asked the poor guy to run without really informing him of what was going on. I’m not trying to say Feldbush is just looking for political office – it’s admirable that he is running at all – but someone in the Stafford Democratic Party needs to sit this guy down and give Feldbush a survey of the land. How could you run against Mark Cole on growth issues? It’s been his focus for crying out loud!