Finance Case Muddies Race for District 27 Senate Seat

The candidates vying for the Republican nomination in the race to replace retiring state Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. have a lot in common.

Both own small businesses, support anti-abortion policies, oppose tax increases and list growth and traffic as top issues. Both are hoping to build a legacy quite different from that of Potts, a maverick Republican who sided with Democrats on key votes over taxes and abortion.

And both have found their stance on the issues overshadowed by a campaign finance scandal that broke three weeks before the June 12 primary.

Candidate Mark D. Tate, a former Middleburg Town Council member, was indicted May 22 by a Loudoun County grand jury on two counts of election fraud and nine counts of perjury over his campaign finance statements. The specific allegations have not been made public.

The indictments also have cast a shadow over his opponent, Jill Holtzman Vogel. Her campaign has been forced to defend itself against accusations that she had a hand in bringing the issue to the attention of the Loudoun County prosecutor, who is a supporter of her campaign.

She denies any involvement, accusing Tate in a written statement of seeking to "shift blame to others and to attack our judicial system."

In an interview, she called the indictments "an unfortunate distraction" from an election that could have repercussions for the entire state.

"Frankly, if this seat is not a Republican seat, we will very likely lose the Republican majority in the state Senate," she said. "It's so important we focus on maintaining the Republican majority."

Tate, however, accuses Holtzman Vogel of dirty politics and plans to plead not guilty.

"Everything about this smells bad, and we are fighting through it," he said.

The two candidates differ sharply in the paths they took to the race in the 27th Senate District, which covers all of Loudoun County west of Route 15, most of Fauquier County, all of Clarke and Frederick counties and the city of Winchester.

Tate is a longtime Loudoun resident who, with his brother, owns the Coach Stop restaurant in Middleburg. There, he said, he does "everything. I even wash dishes sometimes." He has been active in the effort to head off a high-voltage power line planned for Northern Virginia. He ran once before for the same seat, in 2003, when he lost the nomination to Potts by a little more than 100 votes.