Take a look at political riddle

Presumptions that prevail tell us that when business calls, Democrats answer with boos and Republicans with coos. So along comes the Virginia Foundation for Research and Economic Education providing, in the form of legislative ratings, a distillation of myths — some of which, it turns out, won’t bust.

For those preferring governance tilting toward the private sector, still the country’s primary job provider, Republicans retain allure. On a General Assembly scorecard released recently by the foundation, GOP lawmakers are aces.

Atop the Senate leaderboard is local man Emmett Hanger, one of five Republicans with a record of voting 100 percent pro-business last year, according to Virginia FREE. Mr. Hangar represents the 24th District, which includes Greene County and part of Albemarle.

Twenty percentage points behind is another familiar name, that of R. Creigh Deeds, the Bath County Democrat who swatted aside Terry McAuliffe earlier this month to win the party nomination for governor. Mr. Deeds’ 25th District includes Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle, Buckingham and Nelson.

Mr. Deeds defies partisan impressions, but only slightly. Mr. Deeds is the only area lawmaker listed as a patron of a bill the group supported, last year seeking to form a bipartisan redistricting commission, a move aimed at removing politics from the process and one that Republicans, hoping to retain the politics, opposed to their discredit.

In addition, Mr. Deeds was the lone Democrat to initially vote against a fat Senate tax package but swayed in 2004 to support the largest tax increase in state history. Further inspection further clouds his record. He voted in April for a Senate bill defeated in the lower chamber to tap federal stimulus money to expand unemployment benefits. The measure carried appeal amid the economic downturn, but left businesses on the hook after the stimulus well ran dry.

Republican gubernatorial contender Bob McDonnell, who scored 100 percent on the Virginia FREE ratings in 2005 as a delegate in his final year in the Gen-eral Assembly, will spend the summer and fall depicting Mr. Deeds as a vintage tax-and-spender. Mr. Deeds, dutifully, has provided ammunition. Three times in recent years he has voted for gas tax increases, twice last summer while prices hovered at $4 a gallon. He repeatedly has backed increased cigarette taxes and opposed Mr. McDonnell’s move to eliminate the state death tax.

On two issues cited by Virginia FREE, energy and transportation, Mr. Deeds similarly follows the party drift. He proposes to spend $85 million on renewables, biofuels and mass transit, among other things. Until the cost of alternative energy is reduced and its capacity expanded, the juice will continue to flow from fossil fuels no matter how green blues like Mr. Deeds feel.

How Mr. McDonnell would produce money for transportation fixes is murkier. Here’s the riddle that needs solving: how to unclog traffic in bustling Northern Virginia without breaking taxpayers’ backs. Business purrs for Mr. McDonnell. But on hard questions about roads, while familiar drones hum in the Deeds camp, in Mr. McDonnell’s, only the crickets are talking.

adapted from the Waynesboro News Virginian