by Tom McLaughlin in The News & Record

It’s a little more than a week before Labor Day, the traditional kickoff of the fall campaign season, and the two major party candidates for Congress, incumbent Democrat Tom Perriello and Republican Robert Hurt, are on the air already with TV commercials. No rest for the weary, it seems, in politics and in war.

The optics of this race are plain enough: Perriello, doing his James Brown-routine as the hardest working man in politics, is running around the district making the case for investments in education, clean energy and infrastructure, and defending the better parts of the stimulus bill passed by Congress in response to the worst economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression. A sitting member of Congress during the Big Slide but in no way culpable for it, Perriello has the daunting, but not impossible, task of selling the public on the need for Washington to do more to set this awful economy straight.

August 24, 2010—Ivy, VA—The Robert Hurt of 2010 is once again contradicting the Robert Hurt of 2007 in his first television ad. The Robert Hurt of 2010 says in the ad, “I’ve pledged to fight any tax increase and make Washington stop spending money it doesn’t have and start creating jobs.” But the Robert Hurt of 2007 co-sponsored and voted twice in favor of a transportation plan that raised taxes, created unconstitutional taxing authorities, and ended up forcing the state of Virginia into debt to pay for it.

“We all know typical politicians say one thing and do another, but Robert Hurt has taken the about-face to a whole new level,” said Jessica Barba, spokeswoman for the Perriello campaign. “Senator Hurt’s record as a serial tax raiser won’t go away just because he now claims he’s against tax increases. The truth is: he voted twice for a transportation plan that not only raised taxes, but also created unconstitutional taxing authorities and forced Virginia further into debt. The more voters know about the chasm between Senator Hurt's record and his rhetoric on taxes, the more they realize he can't be trusted on this issue.”

The legislation that Hurt co-sponsored and voted for, HB 3202, among other things:

• Raised the taxation rate from 16.5 cents to 17.5 cents on diesel fuel,

• Imposed “abuser fees” for certain traffic offenses, otherwise known as the $3,000 speeding ticket,

• Required the Department of Motor Vehicles to impose an additional fee upon drivers whose record shows greater than eight demerit points of $100 plus $75 per point in excess of eight points, and

• Authorized local governments to declare their areas “regional transportation tax districts” and to raise commercial real estate property taxes at 0.25% of the “fair market value.”

August 23, 2010--Martinsville, VA--Standing in the city that has suffered some of the worst job losses from free-trade agreements, Sen. Robert Hurt made clear that one of the key principles of his campaign is to continue supporting plans that outsource Southside Virginia jobs. The 5th district of Virginia, and Martinsville in particular, has been devastated by free trade agreements like NAFTA but Sen. Hurt has refused to oppose expanding NAFTA-style agreements to cover South Korea and other countries. Hurt also opposed a bill that would close the tax loophole that rewards corporations for shipping jobs overseas. Between 2001 and 2008, Virginia's 5th District lost an estimated 5,900 jobs due to the trade deficit with China. 

"Robert Hurt is a typical politician who remains so out of touch with the experience of working families that he doesn't even realize the devastating effects free-trade agreements have had on the 5th district. Now he's even pledging to continue supporting these bad trade deals and protecting corporations that ship good American jobs overseas," said Jessica Barba, spokeswoman for the Perriello campaign. "If Senator Hurt weren't so busy standing up for companies that outsource jobs, maybe he'd realize free-trade agreements are bad for Southside Virginia."  

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By The Roanoke Times on August 19, 2010

Del. Bob Marshall took a jab last week at Gov. Bob McDonnell for accepting Virginia's share of a federal aid package to help recession-battered states and localities.

Because the commonwealth's Republican congressmen voted against the money bill, along with just about every other Republican, Marshall argued, "To spend this money is to tacitly accept that Reps. Cantor, Forbes, Goodlatte, Wittman and Wolf voted against Virginia's better public interest and that [Democrats] cast the better vote for Virginians."

Yes. Yes, they did.