Can someone tell me what the editorial page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch is saying with this brief editorial?

Fairfax Delegate Chapman Petersen will seek the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor. The 36-year-old Petersen is known as a proven vote-getter in (or in at least a few precincts in) Northern Virginia. But how will he compete against a Republican in other regions where the GOP generally runs up large margins? George Mason professor Toni-Michelle Travis says, “He’s going to have to find a way of balancing his Northern Virginia agenda with an agenda that answers questions from downstate areas, which are depressed and downtrodden.” If the Democrat follows that brilliant advice from the urbane about the provinces, he’ll be sure to pick up, oh, about three votes.

Here’s who footed the bill for the GOP eavesdropping.
RNC — $200,000
Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore — $125,000
U.S. Sen. John W. Warner. — $125,000
U.S. Sen. George Allen — $100,000
Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford — $50,000
Reps. Frank R. Wolf, R-10th — $30,000
Thomas M. Davis III, R-11th — $30,000
Robert W. Goodlatte, R-6th — $30,000
Eric I. Cantor, R-7th — $30,000
Rep.-elect Thelma Drake R-2nd — $25,000.
Former GOP chairman Gary R. Thomson — $50,000
Former Speaker of the House S. Vance Wilkins Jr. of Amherst & Wilkins former chief aide, Claudia D. Tucker of Amherst — $35,000.

That’s more than the $750,000 total fine. The excess will help pay legal fees that amount to more than $160,000. Keep in mind that the Dems lawyers got more than $300,000, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Speaking of the scandal, Mike Shear of The Washington Post seems to want the Dems to stop pestering Jerry Kilgore about his involvement.

For months, Democrats have been pushing to discover what Kilgore knew and when he knew it. They hinted that Kilgore might have known more about the eavesdropping than he was letting on.

It now appears that Kilgore knew less. In a sworn deposition in the lawsuit, Kilgore said he stopped Anne Petera, his top aide, before she could even spill the slightest detail about the eavesdropping. He said he directed Petera to talk to his chief legal counsel about whatever it was she was about to tell him.

Democrats, including Kaine, quickly shifted their argument. They are now accusing Kilgore of burying his head in the sand.

Can you imagine what Kilgore would have done if Petera came to him with evidence that the Dems had eavesdropped on a GOP conference call? I’m betting it would not have been the Sgt. Schultz reaction: “I know nutting.” And I wonder if Shear would have thought the GOP was overreacting. Just wondering.

Or just for Dem?

Gun nuts are trying to overturn a ban on bringing guns into the Capitol.

Gun-rights advocates want to change a new state regulation approved by senior Virginia lawmakers without fanfare that bars anyone without a concealed-weapons permit from openly carrying weapons into the state Capitol in Richmond.

The restriction, approved by the Joint Rules Committee earlier this spring, went unnoticed by many for months because the measure was not subject to a vote by the full legislature.

Advocates such as the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) yesterday called the committee’s action a “stealth” change that could lead to a restriction of Second Amendment rights in local jurisdictions such as Fairfax County.

“It’s wrongheaded,” said Philip Van Cleave, president of VCDL, http://www.vcdl.org/static/index.html
which began a lobbying campaign to reverse the ban. “It’s one more thing that doesn’t need to be done against a right we have. They are needlessly impeding that and it’s wrong. This new ban needs to be rescinded as soon as possible.”

Mr. Van Cleave said people who are forced to leave their guns in their cars when visiting the Capitol will not be safe in Richmond, which has a high crime rate.

What are they going to do? Shoot somebody who looks crosswise at them?

In Virginia, a permit is required to conceal a handgun on one’s person, not to own a handgun or carry it openly. More than 20 states, including West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Delaware, have similar open-carry laws. It is illegal to carry handguns openly in Maryland and the District.

Statistics show that permit holders rarely commit violent crimes.

Yeah. And I’m sure statistics show that people who don’t carry guns rarely commit crimes. So?

Some Republican lawmakers have told VCDL they will consider reversing the ban in the upcoming legislative session, which begins Jan. 12.

Who wants to bet that one of those lawmakers is Del. Dick Black (R) of Loudoun County?

Various politicians are talking about “different ways” to fund transportation. Among them, Speaker Bill Howell, who says it will take awhile.

“There’s no way to fix all this in one legislative session,” Howell said, indicating it may require a multiyear strategy from legislators.

Howell, who is drafting his own proposals to address transportation, said the legislature must restore the Transportation Trust Fund before anything else can really be done.

Although money from the trust fund is supposed to be spent only on transportation, the legislature in recent years has had to raid the fund to balance spending in the rest of the budget.

Reviving a buzz word from the 2000 presidential race, Howell said the legislature needs to create a “lock box” to “assure people that the money that goes into the trust fund is going to transportation.”

The question I have is was Howell one of those lawmakers who voted for budgets that raided the transportation trust fund? Anyone know?

This little story is worth mentioning.

Tammy and Steven Pyle’s daughter decided to be born at rush hour. And that brought the Round Hill couple face to face with the harsh reality of Loudoun County traffic.

Due to some complications with the birth, Tammy had to be taken to Loudoun Hospital Center in Lansdowne via ambulance. Luckily, the sea of vehicles on Route 7 parted just enough to let her through.

The father-to-be, who tried to follow the ambulance in his car, wasn’t so lucky. “He was absolutely frantic … he almost missed the birth,” said Tammy.

Steve Pyle made the 20-mile trip in about an hour.

Increasingly, folks in places like Loudoun County, where growth is exploding are using the public safety argument to make the case for transportation investment, i.e., higher taxes to build roads and transit systems that will ease traffic congestion. The story above is actually one of the more benign. Loudoun officials have told some residents there that they fear if traffic isn’t addressed soon, there will increasing incidents of ambulances unable to get critical patients to the hospital. That will likely make young couples who are streaming into the fastest growing county in the country afraid that their children or aging parents will not be able to get treated in a timely manner. And if you’ve ever sat on Route 7 almost any time of day, you can imagine the unimaginable.

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.