By Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 29, 2005

The candidate for the House of Delegates listened attentively as Fairfax County resident Tom Donegan expressed a few choice words for "tax-raising Republicans" in the state Capitol in Richmond.

"It's like a shell game down there; one minute they say they cut, then they raise taxes," Donegan said to Chris Craddock, a youth minister who is challenging Republican Del. Gary A. Reese (Fairfax) for his House seat in the June 14 primary.

"And they think we don't understand what's going on, but we understand that our taxes are going up," the real estate broker continued. "And these are Republicans."

Such sentiment amounts to sweet music to Craddock, who has made Reese's support for a tax increase last year the central theme of his campaign to unseat the two-term delegate.

Craddock said he is hoping that such fervor flows through the homes of western Fairfax as he takes on Reese, who is one of six GOP delegates facing a primary challenge stemming from their support for the tax increase.

"What Gary did was break a trust with Republican principles," said Craddock, 26, who is running in his first campaign. "When we work three or four months a year and it's just going to the government . . . we need to work towards a more efficient government before we raise taxes on working families."

But Reese, 60, is convinced that the anti-tax furor is limited to a vocal minority that does not have broad appeal in his community. And he is quick to point out that while he did vote for the initial plan to raise taxes by $750 million, he did not vote for the final package that increased taxes $1.5 billion in the state's two-year budget.

"When I go door-knocking in my district, no one talks about taxes," Reese said. "What do they talk about? Transportation. Education. Maybe property taxes. Those are the things that they care about." He defended his actions as necessary to ensure that the state had a budget last year.

Reese and other delegates said that their opponents and the movement that they represent hold a fundamentally flawed view of Virginia government. They said that their solutions are driven by rigid ideology and not sound policy.

Indeed, each of the anti-tax challengers outlined a nearly identical platform -- often in similar language -- based on the idea that future economic growth would provide the commonwealth with enough money for education, transportation and health care.

Each said that more government cuts could be found, and some of the challengers called for the elimination of local business taxes, capping real estate assessments and the immediate elimination of the car tax.

"This is just sound-bite politics . . . There's no there there," Reese said. "They don't understand the practicality of what's actually going on."

But anti-tax activists said the challenges prove that their movement is very much alive.

They said the intra-party debate is needed and could help anchor the party to its true roots of fiscal conservatism, especially in the Washington suburbs, where a tradition of moderate Republicanism recently has had to compete with a more conservative strain of politics.

"Those tax increases are still a huge issue for a lot of people," said Robin DeJarnette, executive director of the Virginia Conservative Action PAC, an organization that is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for such challengers as Craddock.

As of March 31, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, Craddock had raised $49,383, including $19,531 from the Virginia Conservative Action PAC.

Reese had raised $33,371 at the same point, including $10,000 from Leadership for Virginia, a group that is backing candidates who voted for the tax package.

"This is a watershed moment for the anti-tax movement," said Larry J. Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia. "If they can't defeat a substantial amount of Republican delegates who voted for higher taxes in a low-turnout, conservative-based GOP primary, then they have lost the battle. But they will always win the war."

Others pointed out that it is difficult to defeat incumbents of any political bent. "The anti-tax movement really is most successful when they are running in open seats," said Stephen J. Farnsworth, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington.

Anti-tax activists brush off criticism that they might have lost some momentum, saying that many of the incumbents are running on a fiscally conservative message.

"They really are running our message, whether they've always voted that way or not," said James T. Parmelee, president of Republicans United for Tax Relief. He pointed out that delegates -- including Reese -- have trumpeted on campaign literature that they have fought to keep taxes low.

"Tax cuts are the stars of the ball, and everyone wants to dance," Parmelee said.