Virginia Senator George Allen is making plans for a rough and tumble re-election in ’06.

Taking no chances in girding for a re-election bid, Sen. George Allen picked as his campaign manager a veteran of three tough Senate races this year.

Jason Miller managed the campaign of Republican Jack Ryan of Illinois, who quit amid allegations of sex-club visits, and was a top consultant to the campaigns of Mel Martinez in Florida and Tom Coburn in Oklahoma.

Miller is “an experienced professional who knows how to mobilize supporters and reach out to new voters to create winning coalitions,” Allen, R-Va., said in an announcement yesterday.

Yet the person who really will run Allen’s re-election campaign, added analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, will be Dick Wadhams. He will join Allen’s Senate office next month as chief of staff.

Wadhams managed Republican John Thune’s campaign that unseated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota last month.

The hiring of Wadhams “was a double signal, to Warner and to [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist and other candidates for president, that Allen’s going to play hardball,” Sabato said. “You hire Wadhams when you’re going to tear your opponent’s guts out.”

Everybody wants to give run on tax breaks.

[Presumptive Republican candidate for governor Jerry] Kilgore met with his 31-member task force on regulatory reform and economic development, which recommended proposals that reflect such articles of faith within the GOP as lower taxes and less red tape.

The panel urged, among other things, repeal of the estate tax; tax breaks to jump-start the ailing rural economy; limits on sales and use taxes to promote film and television production, and tax credits to boost research at public colleges and universities.

…Kaine recently rolled out a plan to help small business cope with the escalating cost of employee health care. At the heart of the proposal: a tax credit of up to $500 per employee that would reduce state tax collections by more than $200 million.

The full cost of the Kilgore package, elements of which he will propose to the 2005 General Assembly, could not be immediately determined. However, estate-tax repeal alone – both gubernatorial candidates favor the idea – would cost at least $100 million.

In 2003, Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner, a multimillionaire, vetoed a rollback of the tax on estates of $1 million or more, saying that it would further weaken the state’s then-fragile finances.

But with the economy rebounding and Virginia amassing a surplus that could exceed $1 billion, the Republican-controlled legislature may face election-year pressure to finally erase the estate tax, which can reach 16 percent.

The Kilgore task force was created in July and is made up largely of business and professional leaders, many of whom have ties to the Republican Party.

The panel also recommended taking steps to ease regulations on small business; provide additional funds to help finance small business in economically distressed areas; extend tax relief for coal companies that mine small seams; and fund training in Internet commerce for mom-and-pop firms in impoverished regions of the state.

Kilgore said in a written statement, “97.7 percent of the businesses in Virginia are small businesses. These businesses employ Virginians and provide the services that give us such a great quality of life. But all too often they are buried under an avalanche of new regulations from Richmond.”

I’d love to know where the “97.7 percent of the businesses in Virginia are small” comes from.

The state GOP may be the losers, but that doesn’t necessarily make the Democrats financial winners in the eavesdropping scandal. But this shouldn’t surprise you.

A Washington law firm will receive almost half of the $750,000 settlement that the Republican Party of Virginia and four other defendants have agreed to pay in an eavesdropping lawsuit filed by Democrats.

That means that each of the 33 plaintiffs, mostly current and former legislators, will receive about $11,000 in the settlement, Democratic sources said.

Some of the recipients are unhappy about the large legal fee, Democrats said.

The law firm of Williams & Connolly represented the Democrats, who filed the suit in U.S. District Court here seeking civil damages from the Republican Party and others involved in the eavesdropping scandal.

From a news round-up in The Washington Post (Third item):

Dena Schlosser, 35, who admitted killing her baby daughter by severing the girl’s arms, was guided by Matthew 5:29-30, in which Jesus refers to cutting off body parts to cast away sin, Schlosser’s attorney said. David Haynes said Schlosser was mentally ill at the time.

Gee, if interpreting the bible literally is a sign of mental illness, we have a lot of Bush supporters who need to be institutionalized.

Meanwhile, Christians want everyone to be one.

In Terrebonne Parish, La., an organization is petitioning to add “Merry Christmas” to the red-lighted “Season’s Greetings” sign on the main government building and is selling yard signs that read, “We believe in God. Merry Christmas.” And a Raleigh, N.C., church recently paid $7,600 for a full-page newspaper ad urging Christians to spend their money only with merchants who include the greeting “Merry Christmas” in ads and displays.

…”Why not simply require stores owned by Jews to put a gold star in their ads and on their storefronts?” the Rev. Jim Melnyk, associate rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Raleigh, wrote in a letter to the editor.

It’s what we call the slippery slope.

Turnout was less than 23 percent but “[o]fficials had predicted a turnout of about 10 percent.” Miller, who replaces Thelma Drake, the conservative Republican who was elected to Congress last month, will need to run again next November. Ball, her opponent, said “supporters shouldn’t ‘throw their signs away yet.’” All six delegates representing Norfolk are now Democrats.

Paula Miller appears to have eked out a victory in the special election in the 87th district that includes Norfolk. The Virginian-Pilot is reporting tonight the former TV newcaster defeated the right-wing Republican Michael Ball by 92 votes, handing the Dems — and moderate Republicans who backed her — an important victory. Turnout was about 23%.

As Jeb Bartlet would say, “What’s next?” [Editor’s Note: Thanks to the reader “ReadMyLipstick” for catching my earlier typo on our mythical president’s first name.]

This has discouraged more than one candidate.

Sharon Pandak was all for running for the Democratic attorney-general nomination, all for talking about the issues facing Virginia’s next top prosecutor. What she wasn’t all for was spending so much time on fund raising. “I had miscalculated the amount of time that I would need to spend raising the funds necessary to be able to wage a viable campaign,” the former Prince William county attorney told The Augusta Free Press Monday afternoon. Pandak had announced earlier in the day that she was withdrawing her candidacy for the party nod.

Now here’s a pandering idea.

The state’s GOP leadership has apparently peaked into the Democrats playbook and decided to commit fratricide. Bitterness and recriminations are threatening to extend the controversy even further. Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine must be giddy. A former GOP state treasurer, Richard F. Neel Jr., has filed a conflict of interest complaint, alleging that the prosecutor, a Republican, tried to minimize the political damage to Atty. Gen. Jerry Kilgore. In so doing, he’s entrapped Virginia U.S. Sen. George Allen into the feud.

The complaint asserts no wrongdoing by Allen, but it is the first document to draw such explicit connections between [Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who prosecuted the case], prominent figures in the eavesdropping case and the popular first-term senator and former governor.

Allen was surprised at the claims and said he has never communicated with McNulty throughout the 2 1/2-year investigation.

“Let him exercise his prosecutorial discretion. I will note there have been several convictions in the prosecution of the wrongdoers,” Allen said after addressing Monday’s gathering of Virginia’s electoral college at the state Capitol.

The complaint also exposes conflicting personal allegiences (sic) within the leadership of the state GOP that have been forever ripped apart by the eavesdropping scandal. Neel is a close friend of Matricardi’s and contends that Matricardi became a scapegoat so that the role of others within the party _ and their punishment _ might be minimized or avoided.

After Thomson resigned as party chairman, Neel sought the position to which Kate Obenshain Griffin, an ally of Allen and Kilgore, was eventually appointed. Neel was the state party’s treasurer until this year.

If you’re a Democrat, you’ve got to love the irony of the GOP’s self-flagellation. I don’t know the politics of Neel but wonder if this has anything to do with the ideological split among Republicans. Any thoughts or insights are appreciated.

With the last of town hall meetings on the proposal allowing the top three Virginia universities to gain more autonomy now behind us, Gov. Mark Warner doesn’t seem anymore enthralled with the idea than in the past.

Gov. Mark R. Warner on Thursday again voiced reservations about a proposal to grant “charter status” to three leading Virginia universities. But he vowed to resolve the issue next year.

Warner, echoing earlier words of caution, said the plan should not be considered in isolation. “Rather than look at special status for one, two or three, we’re saying, ‘Let’s look at what the whole state needs,'” he said.

“What the whole state needs” doesn’t sound like, to his credit, he’s ready to jettison the other schools to second class citizen. Still, details are missing.

Warner warned that the plan could raise tuition at the universities, though the three presidents have promised to avoid big increases. The governor also questioned why William and Mary should have more freedom in construction than larger campuses such as James Madison and Old Dominion universities.

The governor said his goals include increasing the number of people attending and graduating from college while maintaining affordability, expanding faculty research and filling shortages in nursing, teaching and engineering.

Filling teacher slots is all about one thing: the lack of pay they get. As for engineers, there seems to be a lot of engineers still looking for work after the tech meltdown in 2000. Few kids are majoring in technology for that reason.

Barnie Day wants to put the charter idea to a vote – in November 2006.

The thing not to do is to let past neglect, past funding cuts, somehow become the rationale for doing something foolish now.

There has been no debate of this proposal. There has been no real scrutiny of it. Two points here – if the “charter” idea is as good as it is being portrayed to be, then it will withstand withering examination; and if it is as good as it is being portrayed to be, there should be no rush, no hurry. If it is all that good, it won’t be weakened by the wait of a year or two.

At minimum, the legislature should hold public hearings in each of the counties of Virginia before they put any more distance between these universities and the people who own them. That might seem like a lot, but a lot is at stake here. What’s given away by charter can never, ever be taken back. In the matter of a charter, what is done by one legislature cannot be undone solely by another.

What would guarantee the debate, the scrutiny this proposal deserves, would be to give this matter some time and then put it to referendum. (2026 would be soon enough for me.) Let the people of Virginia who built and own these universities decide this matter directly.