As the dust settles after the Tuesday primaries, the national conservatives are taking stock of the results:
American elections have become so rigged in favor of incumbents that it can require a crow bar to wrench them out of office. So it’s worth noting those occasions when entrenched officeholders do find a way to lose.
In Virginia’s primary races Tuesday, several Republicans who voted for the biggest tax increase in the commonwealth’s history in 2004 faced single-issue anti-tax challengers. The most vocal of those pro-tax incumbents was so embattled that he withdrew from the race. Another was trounced, two-to-one, by a twentysomething political neophyte. Two others barely won, and in the statewide contests to select the GOP’s Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General nominees, the tax hike defenders were upset by anti-tax challengers. Several other tax-raising Republicans beat back challenges more comfortably, but we suspect they also got the voter message.
GOP taxpayers had reason to be upset because they now know the $1.4 billion tax increase was sold under false pretenses. Democratic Governor Mark Warner — who had won in 2001 on a no-new-taxes-pledge — argued that it was necessary to balance the state budget even as the reviving economy was creating a new revenue surge. This year Virginia is sitting on a $1.5 billion surplus thanks to a 14% rise in tax revenues.
Will this surplus now be returned to taxpayers? Will it be used to kill the state’s hated car tax, as Republicans once promised? Guess again. Mr. Warner and the legislators are spending the new money as fast as it comes in. Taxes are bound to be an issue in the general election this November, and it will be revealing to see if voters are up for imposing another round of accountability.
In short, the message was sent and it is resonating.