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Sound bites fly as candidates square off for 88th House
88th District House of Delegates candidates debate
Date published: 10/4/2007
BY EMILY BATTLE Carlos Del Toro thinks Mark Cole has "not a whole lot of anything" to show for his six years in the General Assembly. Cole thinks Del Toro is trying out for "the John Kerry flip-flopping gymnastics team." Those are your TV-ready sound bites from last night's debate between Del Toro, who is running as a Democrat for the 88th District House of Delegates seat, and Cole, the Republican incumbent. But the hour-and-a-half debate, sponsored by the Legislative Affairs Committee of the University of Mary Washington's Student Government Association, covered a wide range of issues, from illegal immigration to whether school boards should be elected. Immigration was one of a few issues where the two candidates showed moderate to no differences in their positions. Del Toro said a lot of the immigration issues that get attention are only symptoms of the root cause: the search for higher-paying jobs. He said while the federal government should do more to enforce immigration laws, Virginia should go after employers that provide the jobs immigrants seek. Cole agreed, and said the federal government should work harder to build physical barriers along the borders. The two both opposed spending state money for colleges to distribute contraceptives, and both thought a bad precedent could be set if Virginia makes financial settlements with families of victims of last spring's massacre at Virginia Tech. The candidates locked horns the most in discussing transportation, although they're both against so-called "abusive driver" fees, and neither favors setting up a transportation authority to fund roads in this region. Cole made his "flip-flop" comment about Del Toro's position on the General Assembly's 2007 transportation bill. Cole has remarked that Del Toro first criticized him for voting against the bill, but then turned around and denounced the abuser fees that came with it. Del Toro said he would have first eliminated the fees from the bill, then worked with other legislators to pass a transportation law to bring road money to this area. "He's trying to have it both ways," Cole said. "He would not have had that option down in Richmond." Del Toro returned repeatedly to his theme that Cole has been just lacking in leadership, and, "It's time for people who are going to work collaboratively across both parties to get things done."
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 10/4/2007
Standards
(posted by
RahOoh
, Oct. 4, 2007 10:00 pm)
Government, schools, and taxes are almost one and the same, they are so closely interwoven and dependent on each other. SOL's were over due. How do you measure if the objective is met is you do not have a standard? And that's all SOL's are, a standard. They were long overdue! Anyone that has watched our government activly knows that Mark Cole has been very active watching our tax dollars and trying to get the most for the buck while representing all of his community!
Politations make strange bedfellows..
(posted by
RivaPops
, Oct. 4, 2007 8:44 am)
Both of these candidates have their own agenda and seldom does one do what they have promised. Schools are always a good argument but giving them taxing authority, I think not. For what is coming out of our schools today, the monies would be better spent in a now illegal procedure, sterilization! Before you criticize that comment, think about SOL and what, thanks to politics, that one item has done for us! Need I say more?
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