Boyd plans to challenge Perriello in 2010
The lone Republican on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors announced Monday that he is running for the GOP nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy.
Kenneth C. Boyd, who has represented the Rivanna District since 2004, sent an e-mail to supporters Monday that confirmed his candidacy.
Boyd is the latest of several Republicans who are aiming to win the GOP’s backing in next year’s mid-term race against Perriello, a freshman Democrat who defeated six-term incumbent Virgil H. Goode Jr. in the nation’s closest congressional race of 2008.
Previously announced candidates in the GOP nominating contest include Feda Kidd Morton, a Fluvanna County biology teacher and longtime Republican activist; Laurence Verga, an Ivy resident and real estate investor; and Bradley Rees, an assembly line worker and tax reform advocate from Bedford County.
Cordel Faulk of Charlottesville, who had also been considering a possible bid, said Monday that he has decided not to enter the race. Yet another possible candidate, Sen. Robert Hurt of Chatham, did not return a call Monday, but an aide said he has not yet decided if he will run.
In the e-mail, Boyd touted his experience as owner of a small business called Boyd Financial Services and as a 10-year veteran of local government who served a four-year term on Albemarle’s School Board and six years on Albemarle’s county board, including two years as chairman.
“We need to stop the pattern of people who go to Washington with little life experiences and become ‘inside the beltway’ politicians out of touch with their constituents,” Boyd wrote. “My 40 years of controlling budgets, as well as my ability to stick to these principles in a Democratic leaning county, have prepared me well for both the coming campaign and hard battle that must be fought to protect your tax money and stop plunging our children into debt. As George Allen used to say, ‘If you work for a living and pay taxes, then you should be on our side.’”
Boyd goes on to describe himself in the e-mail as “conservative on social and foreign affairs.”
“In moving up to Congress, make no mistake, I … would bring strong conservative values to social and foreign affairs issues as well,” he wrote. “I am pro-life, and believe we must defend traditional marriage. I am a gun-owner, hunt, and will protect the 2nd Amendment.
Keeping your guard up
“Now that it has been seven years since the terrorists attacks on our soil, too many politicians are again letting their guard down,” he continued. “We need a strong military — now more than ever — and we simply cannot allow terrorists into our homeland whether they try to take a plane or come over our border.”
Albemarle GOP Chairman Chris Schoenewald said the 5th District Republican Committee is likely to select its nominee in a convention, rather than an open primary. Schoene-wald said he cannot comment about Boyd or any other candidates because of his position in the party.
Boyd said he has the best shot at unseating Perriello because he can speak with authority on fiscal matters, shares the conservative values of the district’s southern part, is a proven campaigner who managed to raise $61,000 in a Board of Supervisors race, and can appeal to voters in Perriello’s base of Albemarle County.
“When asked why I am the best Republican to beat Congressman Perriello, I need to borrow a quip from President Reagan and promise to ‘exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,’” Boyd wrote.
“Seriously though, the unbelievable deficits being run up in Washington are the result of a combination of a liberal ideology and complete inexperience of those in power at managing a budget,” he continued. “We can blame Democrats for MOST of this, but how many ‘conservative’ Republicans have disappointed us with out-of-control spending? Our next Congressman must both have a conservative philosophy AS WELL AS have experience managing money and knowing how to go into complicated budgets built by liberal bureaucrats and get rid of the massive wasteful spending that does little to no good.”
Good luck, a little
Democrat David Slutzky, who is chairman of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, wished his colleague luck, but not too much.
“Ken’s a nice guy. I wish him well,” Slutzky said. “But I’m supporting Perriello.”
Boyd was re-elected to Albemarle’s county board in 2007, beating Democrat Marcia Joseph by a margin of 149 votes. His seat is not up for re-election until 2011.
Valerie L’Herrou, chairwoman of the Albemarle County Democratic Committee, said Boyd is unlikely to unseat Perriello, who has proven himself a tough campaigner and an excellent congressman.
“There have been a lot of candidates who have announced, but I don’t think any of them are up to the caliber of Congressman Perriello,” she said.
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Reader Reactions
jcarney have you seen the polls lately. Those columns are building again.
By March there will be an increase in jobs. People will be hiring heavy again. By then, your words will be drowned out by the joy of Happy Days are here again.
The realization that the Democrats ARE the party of hope and change, will happen on Nov.3 2009.
So you’re saying Obama/Perriello/Deeds is the new way? Give me back Jimmy Carter, please! At least he told the truth as painful as it was. It was about a year ago that everyone was building massive Roman columns for Obama and he was packing stadiums in foreign countries. Jimmy Carter is starting to look like an economic genius compared to these clowns in the white house. Spending money that just isn’t there and then raising everyone’s taxes in recessionary cycle, and yes, that includes the middle class no matter what flowery prose he reads off of a teleprompter a middle class tax increase is inevitable. “You lie!” sounds pretty much on the mark.
Gordie, prepare yourself, the dems are in for some painful elections ’09,’10,’12. You can’t make this many mistakes, policy blunders and not pay for it in the voting booth.
jcarney you and the rest of your GOP buddies always bring up Clinton cutting the defense budget. As usual none of you acknowledge just what that did besides helping to balance the budget.
When Clinton cut the defense budget it made the defense department come up with better ways to improve the military. It was the old fear of change or comfortable in their poor excuses of needing more money for old ways of doing the job.
That became evident in Iraq in 2003. The military became so efficient they ran across Iraq. Having to slow down because reinforements/supplies could not keep up with the advance unit.
Pick and choose all you want for your propaganda, but most of the public knows the truth. You just embarrass your selves with the distortions.
When will you all ever learn that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Your politics are old ways and they need to change. Simply because when the GOP crumbles it will be bad for the balance, the GOP had in building America.
D-inaccuracy: “there you goes again”-Bertha Lewis of Acorn using poor grammar to misquote Reagan. You’ve really got to take some history or political science courses, it would keep you from embarrassing yourself like this in public. Clinton cut the military during peacetime by almost 1/3 allowing him to artificially balance the budget (coincidentally not long before 9/11), leaving our military dangerously thin. He also had the Greenspan easy money and easy mortgages environment and refi’s for those without income! This was propagated by the CRA, which was pushed heavily on banks. I could have a decade of artificial prosperity if I cut welfare or social security from the federal budget but that’s not wise policy. He also artificially lowered energy prices by tapping the SPR for non-emergency purposes.
So I guess D-inaccuracy, you’re pretty happy with our quadrupling to $2 TRILLION deficits and debt as long as these asinine and ineffective big gov’t programs get Rahmed through. Deficits of $2 TRILLION and $17.6 TRILLION in debt by 2010, one year! This is based on Obama’s own WH estimates. Longer-term deficits are forecasted to reach $8.4 TRILLION or 17 TIMES that of Bush by 2017, according to the CBO.
I am really beginning to think Obama, a junior senator from Illinois is in way over his head, particularly in foreign policy. He has alienated Israel a stable democracy in the Middle East in favor of Iran and Russia, broken agreements for missile protection with the Czechs, Poles, Georgia and others. Russia is ready to walk all over this kid. Backing down in Afghanistan… He does have a lot on his plate but that is no excuse with all of his advisors and Czars (j.k. his czars are worse than useless). He certainly hasn’t had to deal with anything as traumatic and difficult as 9/11.
Obama is a one-termer, Perriello loses by 10-15%, and Dirty Deeds narrows the gap with his dirty campaigning but ultimately loses by 5-10% with his non-existant campaign platform. Centering your campaign on a paper written 20 years ago isn’t really campaigning to do much for the people of Va. He’s another one who needs Carville yelling in his ear every morning, “it’s the economy stupid!” Dirty Deeds has nothing to offer for Va. except serving as a yes-man to Obama. Even Doug Wilder won’t endorse him!!
Gordie: Come on now, you keep taking a tenet of basic economics that is in any Econ 101, CFA Level I econ, Undergrad or MBA first year macroecon book and trying to distort it somehow. It is a basic economic principle that when you raise the minimum wage you create unemployment. Obviously there are other contributors to the overall unemployment rate but taken in a vacuum, which is the only way to do a scientific experiment testing for specific, core causes and results this is what happens.
You then started giving all of these different examples that were way off and not even related to what I said. Please do not attribute examples to me that I haven’t come close to mentioning. I do agree with you that for more higher paying jobs there will likely be job creation in the minimum wage level, but isn’t that obvious.
It seems you agree with Reagan and trickle down economics rather than Obama’s trickle down taxes. Taxes are ultimately passed down, at a higher proportion to the poor and middle class, the consumer or customer base so think about that the next time you vote for a tax and spender, like Perriello, Obama, or Dirty Deeds. Your not only destroying jobs and opportunities for everyone you are penalizing those least able to cover necessities in a rising price environment. I do like your feistiness and your insults. You are learning from Scottie & D-inaccuracy, who never can win an argument so they resort to personal insults, it’s kind of funny, some good entertainment.
Also D-inaccuracy I agree, get a transcript, O’Reilly is not for the public option, you clearly took him out of context but that’s one of your many techniques to promote your inaccuracies.
“Oh, and even Bill O’Reilly acknowledged the need for a public option as part of viable health care reform. Hmmm.“
Bill O’Reily was misquoted as usual…..you really should not get your news facts from Jon Stewart…..he misquotes quite frequently for humor. Ken Boyd has my vote…..Democrats haven’t shown me anything recently. Republicans aren’t perfect, but they are definitely better and on the whole, quite a bit more moral, than the Democrats.
jcarney…..“WAKE UP.“
To continue to belittle the Clinton era economic gains is to deny reality. And I repeat here….Clinton did balance the budget (has ANY Republican president ever done that??) and he did start to pay done the national debt. And, Clinton took the deficit problem seriously….he paid attention to what Greenspan said about big deficits (strangely, Greenspan later reneged on his deficit advice when W took office and said big surpluses posed problems….go figure).
But the Bushies disregarded the deficit advice….their economic ideology??...reward the “investor” class (the rich) with big tax cuts, throw money at the military-industrial complex (a rather inefficient way to promote economic growth), and when big deficits occur, cut government programs.
As to the minimum wage…..small incremental increases have not caused job losses…..greed, narrow-focused corporate strategy, and stupid government policies are much bigger culprits.
jcarney, your implicit and myopic faith in “free” markets needs a wholesale retooling.
jcarney has opinions and now antiboyd claims to have opinions about economics, yet does not offer, just insults.
There are jobs which need to be done. Either the normal way or innovation and imagination.
J claims a dollar rise in cost causes jobs to disappear. Wrong. They are accomplished in a differant manner.
Take the employer with 20 employees. Wages go from $9 to $10 an hour. Those Costs start to hurt his business so he changes.
Of those 20 employees 5 are self starters etc. and he does not want to loose them. He offers them a raise to stay and changes their work assignments.
Fifteen are left go. Some retire. Some find other jobs. While some go back to school.
The employer still needs that work done, so he contracts it out. Remember at $10 there are hidden costs of around $3. So he can pay the contractor the $10 and increase his profits.
One of those who went to school decides to open a business doing the work he did at that company. To under cut the contractor he uses temp workers and can pay them less then minumim wage.
No jobs have really disappeared they are done differently.
One of the employees who went to school discovers he can write. So he writes a book about how raising wages costs jobs. All he writes in that book is that 20 or 15 people lost their jobs because of rising wages. Thereby miss leading the people who read the book into believing higher wages cost jobs.
What has really happened was change. Changing how work is accomplished. Deep in some peoples mind is a fear of change, so they will resist it as long as possible.
Take the textile business. People write those jobs are gone forever. No they aren’t. They are there, just done in a different country.
Tell me how many import jobs were created, trucking jobs created, office jobs created, etc. to handle the work of importing from another country?
Now here is something no one stops to think about.
Because of those low skilled jobs, many students dropped out of school to take those jobs. Now that those jobs are gone, more students have to get a better education to get the available jobs.
Yes in the short term many may be hurt, but in the long term this country could get better educated citizens.
Yes, this is a simple look at economics. The T’s are not crossed and the I’s are not dotted. But if you have an imagination, You might even get a picture of the big picture.
Gee, as long as we are spouting opinions, I’ll add mine: none of you folks have shown even the slightest understanding of basic economics. But then not many folks—especially among the ruling class—do. The proof of that is the very mess we are in. End of story.
I am absolutely fascinated about the perceptions of what it takes to run, and win, in the 5th District. Which, by the way, is a completely different question—for me, anyway—as to what we need in a Representative.
I am fairly certain that the trend for both Charlottesville and Albemarle County has been toward the left—decidedly less conservative over time. That trend, I believe, is the result of demographics—a growing University, more “outsiders”, and a local Republican Party that is insular and incapable of encouraging any participation beyond a lock-step adherence to some peculiar sense of orthodoxy.
In fewer words: a local “Joe the Plumber” could not attend a local caucus that selects the candidate who will run with an (R) behind their name. It is a CLOSED party. Has been since I moved here in 1980.
I disgaree that this is the GOP’s district to lose. They tethered themselves to a cronically out-of-touch, petty, smug rube—and finally the sands of time passed through the hourglass. Life passed ‘ol Virgil by. It’s passing what passes for the VA GOP by, too.
The last election was not a miracle. It could have been a wake-up call. But by all accounts, I doubt that this party of regression has learned much over the past quarter century. It will be interesting. Pseudo-Conservatives feel as though they have the upper hand. But the reality is that the local GOP is as incestuous as any of the hollows, and the people who vote really don’t cotton to snake oil salesman.
jcarney again I differ with you.
Are you trying to convince me that as higher paying jobs are created, lower paid service jobs are less? That is hog wash.
I do not know what books you read for your information, but what you are told in those books is completely against the laws of economics.
For every 3 jobs created with wages in the 60K+ range, at least one low wage service job is created. And sometimes those higher paying jobs create 1 for 1, depending on the amount of pay. The minumum wage does not determine those jobs. It is the supply and demand and the willingness of people to spend extra money for services.
As I said before you are in a time warp. That time warp seems to be others feeding you garbage. You also seem to be stuck in the past comparing automation with wage increases and less employees. It is true that in a given plant as wages go up the plant manager looks to automate to bring down costs in his plant. BUT as that manager brings down cost in his plant he has created jobs in the automation section that supplied the plant manager with his equipment. Yes, if one wants to be small minded and not look at the big picture, one can make the case you are making.
jcarney I have a completely differant opinion then yours. I believe you are looking at it totally from your conservative point of view.
You are upset because Tom voted for Cap and Trade. There are plenty of people out there who are upset that he did not vote for the Stimulus. Even when it is pointed out his vote was not needed to pass the Stimulus, they are still upset.
Perriello is only in trouble if he DOES NOT vote for change, including the Public Option.
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