Candidates play coy with records
As Virginia turns into a presidential battleground, Congressional candidates are clamming up about their political stances.
A recent survey found that 64 percent of Virginia congressional candidates refused to take a test that provides voters with an inclusive record of each candidate’s stance on important issues.
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| Democrat Mark Warner is leading in the polls in his battle for a U.S. Senate seat. He has not taken the Politlcal Courage Test. Neither has his Republican opponent, Jim Gilmore. (AP Photo) |
The “Political Courage Test” is run by Project Vote Smart, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that collects and disseminates information about almost 40,000 officials running for public office in the United States. The test covers a comprehensive list of issues, from abortion to international affairs.
Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro and current Republican Presidential nominee John McCain are among the politicians who founded the group in 1992.
But of the 29 candidates for public office in Rockbridge County, only 11 have fully completed the Political Courage Test. That’s a response rate of about 38 percent.
Only one of the four candidates in Virginia’s Senate race – Libertarian William Redpath – has taken the test. Republican Jim Gilmore, Independent Green Glenda Parker, and Democrat Mark Warner have not. Recent polls have placed Warner as many as 30 points ahead of Gilmore in the race for the seat that will be vacated by John Warner.
Local voters say they don’t need organizations like Project Vote Smart to make informed decisions on Nov. 4. Kathleen Nowacki-Correia, 54, cites talk radio, satellite radio and cable news as sources of information on candidates.
“I feel very well-informed,” she said.
Fifth-grade teacher Richard Hasey, 50, said he’s never heard of Project Vote Smart.
“I don’t know what it is,” Hasey said, but “I like the idea.”
Hasey said he teaches his 9- and 10-year-old students about the importance of voting by taking them to local polling places to let them see how the process works.
Though few citizens have heard of Project Vote Smart, state and local officials consider the survey an important tool for research and information gathering. The Lexington voter registrar and the Virginia Standards of Learning test preparation Web sites both list Project Vote Smart as a voter resource.
Consultants say that taking the test makes it difficult for congressional and other leaders to control their campaign messages. Nationally, fewer than 50 percent of candidates took the test in 2006, down from 72 percent in 1996. In 2006, only 26 percent of incumbents took the test.
Republican Bob Goodlatte has not. Goodlatte won Virginia’s 6th Congressional District with 75 percent of the vote in 2006 and has been in office since 1993. His two competitors – Democrat Sam Rasoul and Independent Janice Allen – have both taken the test.
The incumbent leads his opponents in the polls by a wide margin – 59 percent to 30 percent, according to a joint poll by WDBJ in Roanoke and SurveyUSA– and he might feel that airing his views on issues could cost him votes.
“Fear of opposition research is the primary reason candidates won't fill out the survey,” Brandon Horton, a spokesman for Project Vote Smart, told the Dallas Morning News in September.
Other strategists say that some of the questions are too simplistic and could be misrepresented by an opposing candidate. For example, the 2008 Political Courage Test asks questions like, “Should the federal government continue affirmative action programs?” and “Should the United States maintain its troop levels in Iraq?”
Virginia congressional candidates’ current response rate of 36 percent is an improvement over August, when only 20 percent of candidates had agreed to take the test.
Neither Sen. Barack Obama nor Sen. John McCain, the major parties’ candidates for president, has taken the 2008 Political Courage Test.
Obama last took a Project Vote Smart test in 1998, when he completed the Illinois State Legislative Election National Political Awareness Test. In those test results, Obama indicated all abortions should be legally available in accordance with the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade case. Obama also supported banning the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
Though McCain is a founding member of Project Vote Smart, it has been four years since he took a test through the organization. On his Congressional Election 2004 National Political Awareness Test, McCain said he supports greatly decreasing income taxes for households taking in less than $150,000 a year and relaxing restrictions barring legal immigrants from using social programs like public housing and food stamps.
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