5th hopeful from GOP runs for 5th
A fifth Republican has launched a bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy, in next year’s mid-term congressional election.
North Garden resident Michael McPadden, a former Navy aviator and longtime captain with Northwest Airlines, announced his candidacy Monday morning on conservative radio host Joe Thomas’ show on WCHV.
McPadden said he wants to be part of the “cadre that leads the Republican Party out of the wilderness.”
“I challenge the leaders of the Republican Party to look around and ask, do you like what you see?” McPadden said. “My message is, we need to send a different kind of guy to Washington if we want a different kind of result.”
McPadden said he believes that the GOP has diverted from its core principles of limited government and low taxation. If elected, McPadden said, he would work toward balancing the federal budget and toward implementing tax reform. He supports the idea of a “FairTax” that would eliminate federal income taxes and replace them with a national retail sales tax.
McPadden is the latest candidate to announce his goal of winning the GOP nomination to challenge Perriello. Also in the running are Feda Kidd Morton, a Fluvanna County biology teacher and GOP activist; Laurence Verga, a real-estate investor from Ivy; Bradley Rees, a factory worker from Bedford County and advocate of the FairTax; and Kenneth C. Boyd, a member of Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and owner of a financial services company.
Albemarle County GOP Chairman Chris Schoenewald said he expects the nominee will be chosen at a convention, rather than an open primary election. More candidates, he said, are likely to announce their intention to take on Perriello in the next two months.
“We’re developing what looks to be a field of good conservative candidates who all have strong philosophical differences from Perriello,” he said.
Perriello narrowly defeated six-term incumbent Virgil H. Goode Jr., a Republican from Rocky Mount, in last year’s election. Perriello is expected to be among the national Republican Party’s top targets in the 2010 elections.
Fred Hudson, chairman of the 5th District Democratic Committee, said he Perriello has shown himself to be capable and confident, as evidenced by what he called Perriello’s willingness to listen to critics and hold more town hall meetings on health care reform than any other congressman.
“I’m not concerned about the number of … candidates they’re putting up to run against Tom Perriello,” Hudson said. “Tom’s done a fabulous job and people recognize that.”
McPadden said he decided to jump into the race because he is worried about what he sees as the federal government’s increasing desire to infringe on individuals’ liberty.
Taxes, he said, are an “assault on your private property” and therefore an infringement upon liberty. As an example, McPadden cited the idea of taxing fatty foods or sugary sodas.
“It was never intended by our founders for our government to have that kind of power,” he said.
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Reader Reactions
It is a liberal idea to tax people to dictate behavior. There are people that live to 100 smoking, drinking and eating big macs. It makes no sense to set up all of these random political policies to tax people that are not based on proven science. So if you think that eating poorly causes these diseases then should the people who are not susceptible to these problems be exempt. I eat an excessive amount of candy, cookies (6-10 Oreos/Chips Ahoy a night), ice cream, Doritos, regular Coke 2 liters or more in a weekend, eat at Taco Bell/Wendy’s regularly. I go to the gym sometimes and I have perfect cholesterol and am in good shape with a stable weight. I am old and I still played summer league lax with a bunch of college all-americans this year. I adamantly disagree with being taxed by some fat (although I see nothing wrong with choosing to be fat), idiot, hypocrite lawmaker like Barney Frank who wants to tax us so Pelosi and Perriello can waste $30MM on the habitat of the salt marsh harvest mouse and $789 billions of other wasted money. What ever happened to that “timely, targeted and temporary” stimulus, less than 17% spent as of about a month ago?
Cap & tax is the biggest example of a fraud on the taxpayer, increasing grandma’s heating & other bills by $1,700 annually according to Obama’s own Treasury estimates. I will be happy to give half a dozen concrete, scientific reasons why man-made global warming is a farce, if you would like otherwise we can leave it there and that can be a long discussion for another day. I am all for limiting pollution and conservation but the global warming scare is a farce and Al Gore has gone into hiding and won’t debate it b/c it is not supported by science. Margaret Thatcher devised the whole global warming scare in order to subvert the striking coal miners in England and push Nuclear Energy. The Environmental Movement has nothing to do with the Environment and everything to do with politics. The co-founder of Greenpeace said this and he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming either. It’s funny that in the 1970s there was a big scare on the that the world was going to freeze over. So I don’t think I should be paying a tax on something that doesn’t exist just b/c it is on the cover of Time, as was the global freezing panic in the ‘70s.
What if it is a genetic disposition to these diseases, maybe we should just tax people based on genetics? What’s next taxing someone based on their sexual orientation due to perceived or even proven risks associated with it? Where does it end? Taxes should only be used for necessary items, or those in temporary need not to support and subsidize those who are more than capable of paying their own bills. Our founding fathers and settlers came here to get rid of the burdens of excessive taxation and freedom to live and work and make something of yourself. Taxation just keeps people in their place in society and is a false panacea. They struggled and made it on their own and didn’t come crying to someone else.
I was almost for the legalization of herb until I saw how out of control it got in Calif. Who wants some guy selling marijuana out of an ice cream truck in front of a school to kids?
Also how can you have a happy populace if they can’t afford mint Oreos and a Coke?
Thanks for the two cents.
You are dead wrong that high fructose corn syrup, Big Macs, or little green apples for that matter, are the ‘cause’ of a problem. Unlike cigarettes, the smoking of which, are directly linked to various disease, individual foods are not. It would not be ‘easy’, but you could, in theory, live relatively healthily ingesting some ‘bad’ food if in moderation. Conversely, you can easily eat too much of many ‘haelthier’ foods and be obese, induce diabetes, be at risk for heart attacks.
There are three major problems that I see, at first blush, with this tax what you eat concept.
First, the rather obvious infringement on choice, and assault on individual freedom. Such may be at times necessary, for the common good—but there ought to be a very strong case to do so, and this just does not pass that test.
Something as simple and natural as orange or apple juice is chock full of calories and have high glycemic indicies—they well wreck havoc on an ‘adult diabetic’. Tax them, too?
Which is a second problem. Who decides what is good, what is bad, and how much is a ‘fair’ tax? Is this really the kind of task that the Federal Government is suited to? And, where does it begin and end? Food, then music and the arts? Video games?
I am waiting for the Obama Superhero movies series, associated video games, and action figures. “He’s everywhere, he’s everywhere” seems to fit.
Which hints at the last problem—the sheer lack of trust in, due to the total lack of accountability of—government—at any level—of any stripe. What makes more sense than adding power—by legislative fiat, through proliferate czarism, by the introduction of para-political organizations like Acorn and SEIU, not to mention lobbyist’s access—would be to end ag subsidies and other corporate welfare.
That last thought is a classic ‘crackpot’ idea.
So, Mr Mcfadden is asserting that taxing the consumption of high fructose corn syrup and Big Mac’s is an assault on American liberty? We have a population that is getting increasingly sicker and obese by the year, due in large part to the poor choice of foods we eat. This ‘food,‘ if you can call it that, is some of the unhealthiest stuff you can put into your body this side of dioxin. Now, if a person want’s to do that, that’s their right, but it’s only fair they help finance the increasing cost of medical care that eating that stuff on a regular basis will lead to (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, kidney disease). I don’t like to pay taxes either, and I have a very big problem with the deficits being run up by the Obama administration…just like it was run up during Bush’s. And if I am going to be taxed, I want the money spent wisely, to help provide and maintain the infrastructure of a just and decent society…not on reckless wars or bail outs of businesses that are ‘too big to fail.‘
My 2 cents; outlaw high fructose corn syrup and legalize (tax) marijuana. You would cut down on morbidity, generate large tax revenues and end up with a much happier populace.
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