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Gilmore stumps in the region Date published: 8/21/2008
BY CHELYEN DAVIS
For Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Gilmore, a campaign stop at the Petro truck stop off Interstate 95 in Caroline County was the ideal place to illustrate his campaign's focus on gas prices. Employees wasted no time telling him how the spike in gas prices has affected the station's business. Roger Cole, CEO of the company that owns the station, said in the first six months of this year, 4 percent of the trucking industry filed bankruptcy, taking 88,000 trucks off the road. For a station at what Cole said is the I-95 intersection that sells the most diesel fuel from Maine to Florida, that makes a difference. High prices also mean fewer trucks stopping for repairs or maintenance in the station's lube shop. Tony Barringer, the station's lube shop manager, said they've seen an increase in truckers who choose to pay for fuel instead of fixing mechanical problems, until the problems cause a breakdown. "They're running it on a wing and a prayer that they're going to make it home," Barringer told Gilmore. Gilmore stopped at the Petro station as part of his "working families tour," and spent an hour going around the sprawling station, greeting waitresses and other employees, telling them he's running to lower gas prices. He has been dividing his campaign trips into such tours, targeting different parts of the state. Yesterday, he campaigned from Petersburg up to Fredericksburg, and today he'll be on the Northern Neck. Gilmore, a former governor, is running against another former governor, Democrat Mark Warner. Warner will be making campaign stops in the Fredericksburg area today. Gilmore has made gas prices the top issue of his campaign, arguing that the government needs to immediately authorize drilling offshore and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to bolster domestic oil supplies, reduce prices and lessen dependence on foreign oil. "Drill here, drill now and that's going to help retailers like Roger," Gilmore told a group of Petro employees. Warner is less adamant about offshore drilling and opposes drilling in Alaska. Gilmore said the recent drop in gas prices hasn't changed his belief that they're the top issue of the campaign.
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