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Although
Gov. Mark R. Warner probably never intended so, his
recent statements on transportation and public
education have subtly undercut Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine,
his preferred candidate in the 2005 gubernatorial
election.
Warner
has said that the Six-Year Transportation
Improvement Program is now financially viable, and
he has suggested that he has achieved substantially
full funding of the Standards of Quality for public
schools.
Warner
has an obvious interest in defining his legacy in
superlatives as he finishes the last few months in
office. Sometimes, as when he made his comments
about transportation and education, that interest
conflicts with his interest in assuring the election
of a Democrat to succeed him.
Kaine
has argued that much more remains to be done in both
programs. He wants the General Assembly to authorize
substantially more spending in each.
The
political problem for Kaine is that Warner has made
it more difficult to persuade voters that either
education or transportation desperately needs
massive infusions of funds.
That
is especially so when a permanent tax increase of
$1.4 billion per biennium was enacted in 2004 and
another $850 million was added for transportation
projects at the 2005 legislative session.
Kaine
also made his own case for increased spending even
more difficult to sell by opening his campaign with
a proposal to limit local property taxes -- a
proposal he justified on the grounds that the 2004
state tax increase had relieved the pressure on
local governments to fund public schools.
Lawyer
that he is, Kaine can insist that he didn’t mean
for his local tax relief proposal to suggest that
public schools are receiving adequate funding. In
fact, he wants the state to pay hundreds of millions
of dollars more each year for schools.
Regardless
of such nice distinctions, Kaine ultimately will
realize that his campaign proposal to limit local
taxes and his proposal to increase state spending
will work against each other.
Four
years ago, Warner campaigned on a relatively clean
slate because he had never held public office and
had run for office only once before—in 1996
against U.S. Sen. John Warner. Kaine, however, has a
record as Richmond mayor and as lieutenant governor
to defend.
It
will be difficult for Kaine to occupy the political
center during the 2005 campaign, as Warner succeeded
in doing in 2001. His past votes and public
statements on guns, Southern heritage, the death
penalty and tax increases have stamped him decidedly
to the left of Warner.
The
more Kaine emphasizes the difference between Warner
and himself on the need for more transportation and
education funding, the more he will leave himself
open to Kilgore’s charge that he is a traditional
liberal.
Kaine
must be wishing that Warner’s most significant
political victory — winning General Assembly
approval of a tax increase in 2004 — had never
occurred. That tax increase, coupled with strong
state economic activity and Warner’s claim that
spending can be cut by an additional $1 billion a
year through efficiency and cuts in unnecessary
programs, takes the urgency out of any appeal for
further revenue enhancements through tax increases.
From
Kaine’s perspective, he even might have been
better off with a Republican in the Governor’s
Office instead of Warner these past few years. The
irony is that Warner’s accomplishments have made
Kaine’s gubernatorial race more difficult
precisely because Warner achieved much that Kaine
proposes to do.
--
June 6, 2005
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