Parties scramble to win House seat

By Alane Callander
For the Stafford County Sun
Published: August 27, 2008

The presidential nominating conventions and the buzz over VP picks have overshadowed another campaign that is also important to area residents: Election for House of Representatives in the First Congressional District, a district that includes Stafford County. A lot has happened since incumbent Republican Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis died last fall.

In December 2007, Republican Rob Wittman won the special election to replace Davis with 61 percent of the vote, disappointing Democrats who thought they had a chance at capturing the seat in that short month-long campaign.

The First Congressional District is one of Virginia’s most conservative, with boundaries drawn by Republicans to ensure Republican victories, and the national Democrats weren’t willing to invest money in the special election , even though sentiment was rising against the Bush administration and the Republican Party.
Wittman, a former Mayor of Montross, bested a whole slew of Republican candidates in the Republican caucuses to emerge as the GOP nominee.

He then faced Phil Forgit of James City County, who had captured the Democratic nomination by only eight votes against Stafford’s own Ted Hontz.
Hontz, active in local politics and community affairs, would make a fabulous congressman, with impressive military and business credentials, but after losing the nomination last year, he chose not to seek it in this fall’s regular House of Representatives race.

The only official candidate to emerge on the Democratic Party side during the 2008 nominating process - for a while - was Dr. Keith Hummel of Montross, Wittman’s neighbor.

Hummel gave a rousing speech at the Democrats’ First District convention in Williamsburg and convinced the delegates (also there to support Clinton or Obama) that he should represent them on the ballot in November. He mentioned that he’d had some financial troubles but framed them in such a way that the delegates weren’t particularly concerned, and they gave him overwhelming support at the convention hall.

Though he’s a very likeable guy, articulate about important issues and an enthusiastic campaigner, questions about Hummel’s previous bankruptcies were dogging his campaign. Figuring that his financial troubles were too distracting, Hummel stepped aside, allowing the First District Democrats to nominate a new candidate should they choose to do so.

Not running a candidate was not at all appealing to the Democrats. This is supposed to be a good Democratic year; even a solidly Republican district in Mississippi went Democratic in a special election, but you don’t win anything if you don’t put up a candidate, no matter how long the odds.

Having already been through an involved convention in May, Democrats weren’t keen on organizing another convention on short notice, so they were glad to discover a precedent for nominating a replacement. They learned it could be done in a First Congressional District committee meeting.

The committee, composed of representatives from counties and cities throughout the elongated district, convened a telephone conference call. Bill Day, Jr., a businessman from Fauquier County and an active Democrat, emerged as the nominated candidate.

Day had just run a respectable campaign in 2007 for Virginia House of Delegates in the conservative 31st District, where he got 44 per cent of the vote and raised more than half a million dollars. It was the best showing for a Democrat in the district since Republicans redrew the boundaries in 2001.

So the First District Committee, with little fanfare, properly provided a new choice on the ballot. Since then, Day has hit the ground running as the “change” candidate. (“Change Starts Today.”) He’s got quite a sprint to go to catch Wittman, a nice guy who arranges regular telephone town halls with constituents, but it’s not difficult to tie the incumbent to George Bush when it comes to voting record. In the first months of his term, Wittman has established himself as a rubber stamp for Bush and the far right.

Wittman, though, has the advantage of being able to use his Congressional account to send out mailers and newsletters to citizens that double as campaign literature. That clearly puts the incumbent at a huge financial advantage, furthers his name recognition and boosts his stature.

Voters will need to want a lot of change to boot him.

Alane Callander is a south Stafford resident active in many local causes. Reach her at .