Primaries Will Weigh Virginians' Tax Anger

The state's leaders -- governor, attorney general and lieutenant governor -- will all be new. And all 100 seats in the House of Delegates, where the fight over taxes climaxed last year, will be up for election. Only the 40 state senators, who serve four-year terms, are excused from facing voters until 2007.

But perhaps the biggest question of all to be addressed is the one that roiled the 2004 General Assembly: How high do taxes need to be to pay for it all?

"Taxes have been the big issue in Virginia since 1995," when then-Gov. George Allen launched an unsuccessful bid to cut taxes, said Frank Atkinson, Allen's policy director at the time. "It's been a pretty continual debate about the appropriate level of taxes and the relationship of that to spending."

That debate intensified last year, when Warner insisted that the state's finances demanded an overhaul to the tax system and a $1 billion tax increase for the following two years.

For six months, Warner pushed and prodded as the state's Republican Party convulsed. Centrist GOP senators pushed for a $4 billion tax increase. Conservative House members vowed to stop any increase. Finally, a group of 17 Republicans in the House of Delegates broke with their party and gave their blessing to a $1.5 billion tax increase.

At the time, conservative Republicans and anti-tax activists demanded the ouster of anyone who voted for the increase. James T. Parmelee, president of Republicans United for Tax Relief, vowed to unseat the offending lawmakers "step by step by step."

In the end, anti-tax groups mustered enough money and candidates for six challenges to maverick GOP delegates. One of them is Del. Gary A. Reese (R-Fairfax), who was out on the campaign trail in yesterday's heat.

"If the House of Delegates goes extremist, if the Senate goes extremist, no one is going to want to invest . . . invest in schools, invest in roads, invest in anything," he said. Reese is running against a local youth minister, Chris S. Craddock.

Money has poured into the six House races, although a centrist business group formed to defend the incumbents, Leadership for Virginia, raised more than the Virginia Conservative Action PAC, which supported the challengers.

The Republican Main Street Partnership, a national group that represents centrist GOP members of Congress and governors, also helped Reese and a handful of other Virginia incumbents. "What's at stake is another war between centrists and conservatives," said Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, the group's executive director. "I don't mind a good fight, but these centrists are sitting incumbents and fellow Republicans."

Norquist is unapologetic about targeting Republicans. He said the primary is the continuation of a process of "thinning out the herd" by ridding the party of tax-raisers. He said the challenges prove that raising taxes "is something for which they are ashamed and which they hide."

Although sparked by the legislative tax fight, several of the six GOP delegate races have centered on local and social issues. Challengers to Robert D. "Bobby" Orrock Sr. (Spotsylvania) and Edward T. Scott (Madison) pointed to their stands on availability of contraceptives.