RICHMOND -- Republican Jerry W. Kilgore says he's the anti-tax candidate for governor. Yet he supports giving Northern Virginia and other regions the power to raise taxes for roads, a position that helped earn him the endorsement of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce last week.
Democrat Timothy M. Kaine vows to oppose all taxes for roads until a constitutional amendment locks up the state's transportation fund. But he, too, leaves the door open a crack, saying that something short of an amendment might allow for tax increases.
Each wants to make it clear -- crystal clear, in fact -- that he won't raise taxes if he is elected governor next month.
And yet both are willing, if not vocally so, to embrace the idea that taxes might just have to go up if that's what it takes to pay for roads, schools or other services that Virginians want.
In the complicated world of Virginia politics, where popular anti-tax sentiment often runs head-first into fiscal reality, Kilgore and Kaine are finding that it's not so easy to take black-and-white stands on issues that affect the voters' pocketbooks.
"There's probably a recognition there that people in both parties know we are going to have to raise some taxes to meet the transportation needs," said Bob Chase, executive director of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, a pro-roads group. "But it's still the third rail."
State Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. (R-Winchester), an independent candidate for governor, has leapt onto that rail. His main campaign proposal is to raise $2 billion or more a year through tax increases and tolls to pay for massive road, bridge, tunnel and transit projects. Like former presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale, Potts openly admits he would raise taxes.
Potts's position may be one of the things costing him support, political observers believe. Public opinion polls show him mired in the single digits while Kaine and Kilgore each garner about 40 percent of the vote.
With a month until Election Day, Kilgore, the former state attorney general, has gone on the offensive, trying to cast Kaine as a liberal with an insatiable appetite for higher taxes.
In a biting 30-second political commercial, a ghoulish cartoon rendering of Kaine gobbles up plates of money as an announcer says that "nobody chews up tax money like liberal Tim Kaine."
Kilgore spokesman Tim Murtaugh said that if Kaine "were true to his heart, he would come out and say, 'I am going to raise your taxes.' He is going to raise the gas tax at the earliest possible moment."
In fact, Kaine's position on taxes is more complicated than that, especially when it comes to gasoline.
