Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Donner speaks in cadences associated with veteran radio commentators like the late Paul Harvey or the Canadian broadcaster Byron MacGregor. His speaking style is a reminder that Donner began his career as a TV sports announcer before establishing his own film and video production company in Northern Virginia.
The effect is that Donner’s responses to questions sound thoughtful even if he is speaking off-the-cuff. His deliberate delivery offers not sound bites but complete paragraphs that leave little room to be taken out of context.
On Veterans Day, Donner spoke to a group of Virginia political activists in Richmond on the topic of the importance of candidate debates to voters’ ability to evaluate contestants for public office. He traced the practice from Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson’s quip in a 2011 GOP debate, “My next-door neighbors’ two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than [the Obama] administration.”
Reaction to McDonnell endorsement
That same morning, Governor Bob McDonnell endorsed Donner’s principal opponent for the Republican Senate nomination in 2012, former Senator George F. Allen.
The Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner asked Donner for his reaction to that endorsement.
“It’s disappointing and yet predictable,” he said.
“George Allen is a product of the establishment. Bob McDonnell represents the establishment,” he explained, adding: “I respect the fact that their relationship has gone back many years and I honor loyalty.”
Donner noted that McDonnell had telephoned him the day before making the endorsement public to inform him about it.
During their conversation, Donner said, “I tried to urge him, in as strong terms as I could, to keep the pressure on George Allen,” if he wins the nomination and the general election, to be “an authentic conservative who works to reduce the size and scope of government, not to increase its size and to add trillions to the national debt like the last time that George Allen went to Washington.”
Differences between the candidates
There are several key issues that divide Allen and Donner.
“My policy differences with him would be based on his record in the Senate,” Donner explained. “He did have six years [in office], so I think it’s fair enough to look at the record because the way to predict someone’s behavior in the future is to look at what they’ve done in the past.”
One policy difference between the two candidates is on education.
“George Allen voted for No Child Left Behind, which has managed to do something rather unique. It’s infuriated people on the left and the right. Everybody hates it,” Donner said. “It’s an unfunded mandate and it has been grossly ineffective and it’s the greatest expansion of federal power in education in the history of the nation.”
Another policy difference between them is on entitlements.
“I disagree with [Allen] on the expansion of Medicare to [create the] Medicare prescription drug program,” which, he said, “increases government liabilities, increases the national debt, increases the size of government and is the greatest expansion of federal power in health care since the days of LBJ’s Great Society. I fundamentally disagree with him on that.”
A third area of disagreement is on banking and housing policy.
“It’s important to point out,” Donner explained, that Senator Allen “had an opportunity in 2002 [or] 2003 to join in on an initiative by Senator Chuck Hagel to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
That proposed legislation, he said, “might well have resulted in -- at a minimum -- a smaller meltdown in 2008 (or perhaps none at all), but George Allen refused to participate in that.”
Additional differences
Donner also offered a laundry list of other legislative items with which he differed from his opponent.
Allen, he said, “voted for an expansion of hate-crimes legislation. He voted for the farm bill. He voted for a massive transportation bill and voted for budgets that increased the national debt by over three trillion dollars.”
As a result, Donner explained, “I have substantial differences with his record. While he has tried to recast that record, nevertheless that is his record. If he did that before, I think it’s very tenuous to believe that he won’t do that kind of thing again.”
On December 7, the Associated Press will host a debate with George Allen and the likely Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2012, former Governor Tim Kaine. The other candidates from both parties are excluded from the debate, which has led to protestations from them and their supporters.
What will Donner be doing that night, assuming he is still excluded?
“We’ve got several possibilities that are in play at this point,” he said. “I’m not going to discuss them now but we won’t be absent. [That’s] all I will say.”
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