Transportation Issue Dominates Campaign

By Jonathan Mummolo (Contact)

Thursday, November 1, 2007

In the race between Patricia B. Phillips and state Sen. Mark R. Herring, there's no dispute about the main issue.

"People will get tired of hearing me talk about roads," Phillips (R), a Sterling nutrition consultant, said of her campaign and her term of office if elected. "That's my commitment."

"When I knock on doors, and people engage in conversations, most of the time it's about transportation," said Herring (D), who was elected in District 33, which includes populous eastern Loudoun County and a sliver of Fairfax County, last year in a special election to fill a vacancy. "Usually it's a question about some traffic bottleneck or some problem they experience in their daily lives or commutes."

Phillips is perhaps best known as a social conservative who headed the Virginia chapter of the Christian group Concerned Women for America for 11 years. Her promise about roads is indicative of the overwhelming salience of the transportation issue in Northern Virginia.

Herring is a lawyer and former Loudoun County supervisor. He said he has done much in his brief stint in the Virginia Senate to ease local congestion, including securing funds to widen a bottleneck on Route 50 and complete overpasses on Route 28.

Herring also cited his support of the General Assembly's massive transportation bill in the spring, which he said will allocate crucial funds to the region. He noted that it included a clause allowing local governments to impose impact fees on developers to help offset the costs of developments.

"After years of bickering and being denied important transportation funding, the General Assembly passed a transportation plan, and while it wasn't perfect, it was a big step," he said.

Phillips said she thinks authority over transportation is too centralized and more of it should be given to localities. She has attacked Herring for supporting last session's bill, because it imposed taxes on Northern Virginians and included "abusive driver fees," penalties of $750 to $3,000 levied on Virginians for serious traffic offenses. She said the fees should be repealed.

"I believe we really need to keep our laws focused on their initial purpose," Phillips said. "If we need stricter fines to discourage abusive driving, I think we should increase fines for abusive driving and not mix in our need to fund roads with that same mechanism."

Herring said he never supported the fees and wants them repealed, but the need to pass the comprehensive funding bill took precedence.

Phillips signed a pledge in January not to raise taxes if elected, and she has said that prioritizing spending is the best way to fund transportation projects.

Phillips also has emphasized her stance on illegal immigration. She said that she thinks local law enforcement should be able to make "common sense" judgments on whether to check the residency status of people arrested in crimes but that authorities should take care not to harass legal immigrants. Whether someone can provide documentation and speak English could be factors in deciding whose status to check, she said.

Herring, who also highlighted his support for public schools and higher teacher pay, cited several pieces of anti illegal-immigration bills he has backed, including one that imposes penalties on employers for misrepresenting the residency status of workers. But he said localities should not try to usurp the federal government on the issue.

"I think there are things we can do," he said. "I don't think the state and local governments are in a position to take over enforcing all the immigration laws, which is primarily a federal responsibility."

Herring has far outpaced Phillips in fundraising, collecting $477,195 through Sept. 30 compared with Phillips's $147,781, according to the Virginia Board of Elections.

Phillips noted that she raised significantly less money than her primary opponent this year and prevailed.

"This is not an unfamiliar situation," she said.

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