They're running on empty

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
They’re running on empty				September 28, 2005

Another raucous Virginia election will soon be upon us, and, as usual, we in James City will be bedeviled by a plethora of wickedly astute candidates from whom to choose.

The political kickoff consisted of two astoundingly informative gubernatorial debates that no one heard. The twangy-tongued Republican, Jerry Kilgore, tussled with Democrat Tim “I was a Christian missionary in Honduras” Kaine. Kaine’s insistence on the near-epithetical “Christian missionary” label is obviously intended to disentangle him from the hordes of Muslim, Shintoist, Buddhist, Hindi and Zoroastrian missionaries who have recently flooded that beleaguered Central American country.

But it is on the local level that the real razzle-dazzle will occur, since we have two passionate firebrands contending for a seat in the House of Delegates from the 64^th District: Republican Troy “The Boy” Lapetina, and Bill “Van Winkle” Barlow (D-64^th).

That these two political wrestlers are dead serious about pinning each other to the mat is nowhere made more manifest than in the number of bucks that have been flowing into their respective campaign chests. As Bill Tolbert informed us in last Wednesday’s Gazette, they may well get beyond the combined total of $130,000 that they tossed around in their last contest.

What’s so interesting about this is that you can frequently tell the political lay of the candidates on the basis of who contributes to their campaigns.

Lapetina obviously has a lot of friends, since many of his contributions come from the “Friends of” this or that group. But one of his best friends is Marion G. Robertson, who pitched $1,000 worth of woo wampum into Troy Boy’s hope chest.

Marion G. Robertson is, of course, really Pat Robertson in disguise. Why he changed his name from Marion to Pat, I have no idea, unless he thought that people would confuse “Marion” with its homophone “Marian” and thus consider him too feminine to extract millions from his fleeced followers on the 700 Club.

In fact, Robertson seems to wax rather psychopathic when it comes to things feminine. Not long ago he let loose with the claim that “feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

More recently, Marion G. urged the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the duly elected president of Venezuela, which even his fellow right-wingers found a disastrously idiotic notion. Norm Coleman, the Republican senator from Minnesota, called it “an incredibly stupid statement.”

Just last week, Robertson came out with the even more crazed pronouncement that Hurricane Katrina was a plus, since she diverted our attention from the flap over John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court.

In short, Troy Boy is in bed with a loon.

To his credit, Lapetina, though still clutching Marion’s loot, has disavowed much of the nonsense burbling up from Robertson’s frothy mouth. He repudiates Robertson’s assassination suggestion, as well as his apparent acquiescence in abortion in the case of China’s “One Couple, One Child” policy. For Robertson, abortion is evidently a no-no only in those foreign countries in which he does not have vested financial interests.

Lapetina, whose primary experience has been in fire fighting, also touts the fact that he’s the education candidate. Yet his website has an eerily uneducated link to “Teacher’s and Kid’s.”

Note to Troy: Most second graders know that in English we do not use an apostrophe to form the plurals of nouns. Apostrophes indicate possession, as in the sentence: “I was never the teacher’s pet.”

For his part, Barlow seems not to be in bed with loons, though his mattress is certainly stuffed with any number of corporate blandishments. He’s in solid with the porker pokers at Smithfield Foods, as well as with Norfolk Southern and Northrop Grumman. One might wonder why a Democrat is so attractive to corporate donors, though in these parts Democrats are lucky to be solicited by anyone, let alone corporations.

Barlow’s problem is basically one of image. Unlike the fiery Lapetina, Barlow gives the impression that he’s quite capable of dozing his way though sessions of the General Assembly and awaking only now and then to cast a vote. However, if you peruse the list of bills he’s sponsored, you do find a lurking gem.

In the last session, Barlow gave birth to a badly needed constitutional amendment (HJ 173) that would take the business of redistricting out of the grubby hands of partisan gerrymanderers and place it before an independent committee of 11 retired judges. Bucking recalcitrant Republicans, the bill now languishes in the Committee on Privileges and Elections and awaits continuance in the next session of the legislature.

The other race for delegate in James City is no race at all. The ineffable Melanie Rapp (R-96^th) will go unchallenged.

Rapp, who has been known in the past primarily for her irresistible irrelevance, last session pulled off what some consider a major coup when she finagled to get the inaugural ceremonies for the next governor switched from Richmond to Williamsburg. On the other hand, since the world at large doesn’t give a flying farkle about where the next Virginia governor is inaugurated, why didn’t Rapp, who doesn’t represent Williamsburg, get the ceremony moved to Toano or Yorktown, which she does represent?

But that’s how things are going this political season in James City with Troy Boy the fireman, the Legend of Sleepy Barlow and the rambunctiously redundant Rappster.

It just doesn’t get much better than that.