Morris Meyer For Delegate

Last night, just before dinner, the Curmudgeon got one of those phone calls we dread--a political campaign soliciting a contribution. This time, however, it wasn't some hapless volunteer manning a phone bank, but rather the candidate himself. And despite our inclination to politely, but firmly, get off the phone and join the family for dinner, he managed to say a couple of things that kept us interested.

The candidate, Morris Meyer, is running for Delegate in Virginia House District 40, a suburban swatch of western Fairfax County between Manassas Park and Fairfax City. The seat is currently held by Republican Tim Hugo.

The first thing Morris told us was that this is a winnable swing seat--the district went for Governor Tim Kaine in '05 and for Sen. Jim Webb in the last election and like much of Fairfax County the demographics continue to slide toward the blue end of the spectrum. That's good--if the Curmudgeon is going to invest in a campaign, we want it to be in a contested race where we have a chance to unseat an incumbent Republican (or take an open seat). It will take a good campaign to win, however--our research shows many prognosticators putting this as a safe Republican or leaning Republican seat.

Then Morris told us that his big issue is energy and global warming, that he is one of Al Gore's trained presenters, and that if elected he would work hard to get Virginia on the path to widespread use of renewable energy. That certainly warmed our heart, so we said yes, we'll make a generous contribution.

We imagine that for a candidate in one of these races, making cold calls--albeit to folks who must be on a list of past contributors to Democratic campaigns--is one of the least desirable activities. Reeling in a decent contribution must help with the resolve to keep making calls. So, hopefully, we gave Morris a little morale boost.

After the call (and dinner with the family), we checked out Meyer's campaign website, at www.morrismeyer.com, and further liked what we saw. So we've added Meyer to our blogroll and we'll try to follow his campaign and report periodically on it.

Before Meyer can take on Tim Hugo, however, he'll have to win the Democratic nomination in a primary against Rex Simmons. This is a little like the race last year between Webb and Harris Miller in the sense that we have nothing against Simmons, we just like Meyer's chances a little better. We also like the fact that Meyer has been endorsed by Raising Kaine (although NLS weakly endorsed Simmons, claiming a pox on both candidates). The primary is in a week, on June 12, so we'll see how that turns out.

Meanwhile, the threat of serious competition has forced Hugo to a more moderate position, as has been the case with other Republicans in Fairfax County. This term he sponsored a pretty decent net metering bill that was endorsed by the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, two darn respectable groups on energy, environmental and global warming issues. The problem is that those moderate--or newly moderate--Republicans are still in league with their much more conservative colleagues who control the committees that control the legislation. So Hugo's got to go.