Story by Chris Graham

You’ve heard this story before - a former Virginia governor known on the national scene is making a run at the White House.

It’s Mark Warner, right?

No.

That’s right - he dropped out.

George Allen?

Oh, yeah - he lost his Senate re-election bid last fall.

Don’t tell me - Jim Gilmore?

“As 2006 wore on, it became more and more obvious that the people that the press were giving attention to were moderates. And as they began to sort of try to put on a disguise a little bit and say that they were conservatives, it troubled me,” says Gilmore, who entered the 2008 Republican Party presidential-nomination race in April.

“I have a long tradition and track record of working as a conservative on behalf of people - regular people. As a former governor, former chairman of the (Republican National Committee), former chairman of the terrorism commission, I had the prestige to become a candidate and to be the president. And I have the track record to be the president. So I decided to enter the race,” Gilmore tells The New Dominion.

The Gilmore campaign has not yet reached juggernaut status - the one-term governor is registering in the area of 1 to 2 percent in most of the national polls at this still-early stage of the ‘08 race.

“Where does Jim Gilmore fit into the field? The longest of longshots, without a doubt,” says Mark Rozell, a political-science professor at George Mason University.

“He’s raised an insignificant amount of money to this point for a presidential-level campaign. I think for him to break into the first tier will need something pretty close to a miracle at this point - a total collapse of the rest of the field or something that generates an interest in Gilmore’s campaign that just hasn’t been there to begin with,” Rozell says.

Gilmore concedes the point that “it is true that we have to raise our profile nationally.” What he might be surprised to learn is that he might also have to mend some fences back home in the Commonwealth among what he might consider his base among Virginia conservatives.

“No” is the one-word answer that conservative stalwart Pat McSweeney offers to the question about whether he considers Gilmore to be a serious contender for the ‘08 GOP nomination.

“He hasn’t raised any money - and that’s an indication of seriousness. People look at that. And two, there are people with stronger records that are supportable on the theme that he’s running on that displace him,” says McSweeney, a former Virginia Republican Party chair and current chair of the Virginia Conservative Alliance.

Gilmore swept his way to victory in the 1997 gubernatorial race on the strength of three words - “No Car Tax!” - that some see as coming back to haunt him and his political future, given how his campaign promise to eliminate the local tax on automobiles has played out in the last 10 years.

“The legislation to implement it was a halfway measure,” McSweeney says. “He ran on the theme that we were going to cut a tax. But the legislation introduced increased spending to offset a tax increase - it simply shifted the burden to the state taxpayer. And it didn’t put a cap on it - it instead created an awful push upward in spending that was nonsustainable. Every year, we had to come up with more money to fund what local governments said they had to forego in these local taxes. And it technically eliminated a local tax, but it created the burden that led to tax increases, in my opinion, in later years.

“The idea of reducing local taxes made sense - but then we went on a spending binge in his administration, rather than offset the increase in payments to localities for foregoing the personal-property tax on automobiles. We increased spending at an unprecedented rate,” McSweeney says.

How Gilmore deals with this criticism on the campaign trail could go a long way toward telling us how far he can go in the Republican caucuses and primaries next year.

“That’s the problem. When he first announced his intention to run for the presidency, I was quite surprised - because he did not leave the governorship with a very strong reputation for having had a successful term,” Mark Rozell says.

“We’ve had one-term governors in the past - Jimmy Carter, for example - who’ve shocked the presidential field and won the nomination and the election. But in those cases, the candidate was able to make a case that there was an impressive record of accomplishment during their tenure in office,” Rozell says.

“Gilmore had a rocky relationship within his own political party when he was governor of Virginia. He managed to anger a lot of people within the GOP - particularly in Northern Virginia. He was not able to fulfill his one major campaign promise by the end of his term. And a lot of people feel that he had a personally contentious style that made governing very difficult in Richmond during his tenure,” Rozell says.
“He doesn’t carry a lot of material on his resume that says, Look at how this guy governed his state, wouldn’t you love to have that nationwide?” Rozell says.

Gilmore, for his part, views his record as governor - on taxes and spending, on management and administration - as his strong suit.

“I have a long track record - as governor and as attorney general and even before - and part of that is that conservatism is the controlling of government spending, and having it match revenue, and that that’s fiscal responsibility. And that in fact to build up an economy and create more jobs so that you can create even more revenue - and that you create an opportunity for there to be tax cuts for regular people,” Gilmore says.

“What I did with my tax cut is I did a major tax cut that actually reached down to regular people - and I think that’s valuable,” Gilmore says. “I know that cutting capital-gains taxes is a good tool, it builds up the economy, creates jobs and has created the prosperity that we’ve seen over the past several years - however, it opens the Republicans up to a charge that somehow they’re only really cutting taxes for rich people who have stocks. My goal has been to always reach tax cuts down into the homes of regular people - so that they can make their lives better and be more independent.”
Gilmore does have his supporters among fiscal conservatives in Virginia - among them Phil Rodokanakis, the president of the Virginia Club for Growth, who thinks the issue over Gilmore’s car-tax legacy has been overblown by the former governor’s critics.

“He’s got some detractors, there’s no doubt about it - people like John Chichester and some of the others in the Senate had a cow over his tax cuts, and if it wasn’t for them, maybe he would have eliminated the car tax altogether,” Rodokanakis says.

“They were deadset and determined to make sure that didn’t happen. So I’m not sure what happens when his record comes under scrutiny. I think most people have a favorable impression of him,” Rodokanakis says.

Rodokanakis is himself of the impression that Gilmore’s mighty-underdog status is not necessarily an anchor around his presidential candidacy.
“You never know with these primaries - anything can happen. Nobody gave Bill Clinton any chance early on in 1992 - and then out of nowhere, he started winning. So it’s kind of hard to tell what will happen between now and the primaries,” Rodokanakis says.

Gilmore insists that he is in the race for the presidential nomination to win it - but that hasn’t dampened the speculation that he is using his campaign for the White House to make himself more attractive as a potential candidate for the United States Senate should incumbent John Warner decide to retire in 2008 or to build up support for another run at governor in 2009.

“I’ve wondered that myself - whether Jim Gilmore is using this as an opportunity to position himself for another state-level run for office in Virginia,” Mark Rozell says. “He’ll have the moniker of former Republican presidential candidate - and if he doesn’t completely embarrass himself in whatever primaries he enters, maybe he feels that he will increase his stature, his visibility.

“And here we are in Virginia all talking about Jim Gilmore - which hasn’t happened for a while. Right? I think that’s greatly important to him - to keep some name recognition out there and build a network of support within Virginia, if indeed he has some aspirations to run for state office again,” Rozell says.
“It’s not unusual for someone to run for something to keep his name out there, to raise money, to be able to generate a sense of presence for another race. And he would be a contender. I don’t know what legitimate means in this case. He’d be a contender - having held statewide office before,” Pat McSweeney says.

George Allen and Mark Warner have also held statewide office - and both are rumored to be considering their own runs at John Warner’s Senate seat in ‘08 and the governor’s mansion in ‘09.

Which is to say, nothing is certain right now in Virginia politics, except for this - Jim Gilmore is running for president.

For further reading

Jim Gilmore for President - www.gilmoreforpresident.com

Virginia Club for Growth - www.virginiaclubforgrowth.org

Filed under: 6-July 2007 Issue