'Hitting it hard': GOP primary Hurt's to lose?

With just two weeks to go in the 5th District GOP primary race, state Sen. Robert Hurt, R-Chatham, says he is “hitting it hard” to win his party’s nomination against U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy.

Hurt is one of seven Republicans running for the chance to take on Perriello, a freshman Democrat, in this fall’s mid-term congressional election.

Hurt is widely viewed as the candidate most likely to win the June 8 primary.

He has served in the General Assembly for the past decade, winning each re-election bid by a margin of no less than 61 percent. He has proven to be the primary’s most prodigious fundraiser. And he has the backing of other popular Republican lawmakers in the district, such as Sen. Frank M. Ruff and Dels. Watkins M. Abbitt Jr. and Tommy C. Wright.

“People recognize that we need someone who will speak up for the 5th District,” Hurt said during a recent visit to Charlottesville. “Someone who will listen to them and represent their interests in Washington.”

Hurt’s campaign released an internal poll conducted on May 10 and 11 indicating he has opened up a 25-point lead over the GOP primary race’s six other candidates.

Isaac Wood, a House race analyst with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, thinks a 25-point lead for Hurt is a distinct possibility.

“Do I believe it? In a word, yes,” Wood said.

In Wood’s view, three GOP candidates have a chance of gaining ground on Hurt: Kenneth C. Boyd, a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors; Michael McPadden, an airline pilot from North Garden; and Jim McKelvey, a real estate developer from Moneta.

While Hurt might be the race’s frontrunner, Wood added, the poll also indicates that Hurt’s lead is built on name recognition and that many of those who know him do not view him favorably.

“If you read between the lines, among those voters who know who he is, only about half actually like him,” Wood said. “That might be OK for a general election, but in a primary that is a very low percentage, especially when his opponents have yet to air a single negative TV ad against him. Also, fully one-third of voters are still undecided. A 25-point lead looks nice, but it can quickly erode when 34 percent of voters have yet to pick sides.”

Foes: Hurt too moderate

Hurt’s opponents portray him as too moderate. Hurt voted, they continue to point out, in favor of then-Gov. Mark R. Warner’s 2004 package that raised taxes by $1.4 billion.

Laurence Verga, a real estate investor from Ivy and one of Hurt’s rivals for the GOP nomination, has been running ads on radio stations in the district attacking Hurt’s record.

“A good way to figure out if a politician will vote to raise your taxes is the duck rule. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck,” the ad says. “Take career politician Robert Hurt. He’s voted to raise Virginia taxes by $1.4 billion — the largest tax increase in our state’s history. He even voted for Tim Kaine’s unconstitutional transportation bill that would have raised taxes on every Virginian.”

Hurt’s campaign, for its part, points out that Hurt has a long record in the General Assembly of opposing tax increases, curtailing government spending and supporting conservative legislation, and that he routinely wins top ratings from conservative advocacy groups.

“A few of my votes have been taken out. A few have been distorted,” Hurt said. “This election is not about the past, it’s about the future.”

Jeff Clark, a conservative from Danville, is planning to run as an independent candidate if Hurt wins the GOP nomination. Hurt, he has said, is not conservative enough and is too much of an “establishment Republican.”

Lynchburg Tea Party Chairman Mark Lloyd said many conservatives in the district are dissatisfied with both the Democratic and the Republican parties. Clark’s candidacy, he said, could capitalize on that anger and pick up a few percentage points of support in the general election.

“I suspect that would give Tom Perriello another two years in office,” Lloyd said.

Perriello defeated six-term incumbent Virgil H. Goode Jr. in 2008 by a margin of only 727 votes.

“There’s a misconception out there in that the Republicans all think, ‘Oh, we’ll get through the primary and we’ll all fall into each others’ arms and kiss and make up,’” Lloyd said. “That’s just not going to happen this year.”

Lloyd has endorsed McKelvey in the primary race. McKelvey caught the attention of many Republicans after he lent his campaign $500,000 of his own money.

McKelvey is also the first of the seven GOP candidates to run TV ads on cable channels across the district.

Lloyd thinks the race is more competitive than Hurt’s poll seems to suggest. “[McKelvey’s] gaining some traction,” he said. “He’s got enough money to get started. He’s going to need a heck of a lot more to see this all the way through to the end though.”

Economy tops agenda

During Hurt’s recent visit to Charlottesville, the veteran lawmaker emphasized the economy and fiscal issues as the top issues of the campaign.

If elected, he said, his first priority would be to reduce the federal debt.

“We’re on a collision course that’s completely unsustainable,” he said. “That’s what this election is all about. I’m going to Washington to fight against this reckless spending and reckless debt … Look at what’s happening in Greece. Their spending was totally out of control. That could happen here.”

As a member of the General Assembly, he pointed out, he had to vote to balance Virginia’s budget. “We need to take that discipline to Washington, D.C.,” he said. “If not now, when?”

The federal government can drastically cut its spending, Hurt said. If elected, he said, one cut he supports would be to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.

“There may be some good reasons for it to exist, but I have not seen them,” he said.

Furthermore, Hurt said, he would support slashing corporate taxes.

“I would like to see us get away from a tax policy that punishes businesses, that punishes success,” he said. “That’s what would generate jobs. That’s what would generate prosperity.”

Stimulus ‘didn’t help’

Hurt said that the federal stimulus package — which Perriello supported — added to the national debt and failed to improve the 5th District’s unemployment rate, which was as high as 22 percent in Martinsville in March.

“Spending $1 trillion in the stimulus package certainly didn’t help,” Hurt said.

Perriello’s office, however, disputes that criticism. The recovery act, said Perriello press secretary Jessica Barba, helped keep the district’s teachers and sheriff’s deputies on the job, extended unemployment and COBRA benefits, provided first-time homebuyers with tax credits, invested in broadband Internet for schools, residents and businesses, replaced the Robertson Bridge in Danville and supported clean energy projects across the district.

It created or saved an estimated 66,000 jobs in Virginia, according to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, Barba added.

“Southside Virginia has been suffering devastating job losses for over a decade,” Barba wrote in an e-mail. “The current recession compounded the obstacles we already faced as a region. When Tom was sworn in, the economy was losing an average of 750,000 [jobs] a month.

“In the first few months of this year, the economy has created nearly 500,000 new private sector jobs and GDP has grown for three quarters straight,” she continued. “We still have a long way to go towards complete economic recovery and the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high, but we believe we have turned a corner and are heading in the right direction.”