'Cutthroat' Virginia Legislative Races
posted 7:25 pm Fri October 12, 2007 - RICHMOND, Va.
But one race, between Republican Del. Timothy D. Hugo and Democratic challenger Rex Simmons, has gotten so mean it has surprised seasoned political analysts and, they say, risks alienating voters. A new mailer done on Simmons' behalf by the Democratic Party of Virginia alleges that Hugo lobbied for a major defense contractor linked to "torture abuses at Abu Ghraib," the notorious prison in Iraq.
The slick, single-sheet mailer features a small photo of Hugo, the bleak and shadowy interior of a prison cell. A short and sharp block of text concludes by asking, "If Tim Hugo will work for people like this, do you really want him working for you?" Hugo, R-Fairfax County, sent a letter Thursday to Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine asking him to urge his party to renounce the flier and apologize to his family.
"If Delegate Hugo believes that there has been a violation of election law, we certainly encourage him to contact the commonwealth's attorney's office to report it," said Delacey Skinner, the governor's spokeswoman.
Democratic Party spokeswoman Danae Jones defended the mailing, noting that Hugo is listed among 60 "principals and consultants" for The Livingston Group LLC, a large Capitol Hill lobbying group that was paid $20,000 in 2004 by CACI International.
CACI provided nearly three dozen interrogators to the U.S. Army in Iraq under a standing information technology contract. Army reports on abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad accused one CACI interrogator of encouraging mistreatment of detainees and other CACI interrogators of pouring water on prisoners who were forced into uncomfortable "stress positions."
CACI's contract with The Livingston Group was a tiny piece of the $310,000 the defense electronics giant spent on lobbying that year, according to opensecrets.org, an online political finances database operated by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Hugo said in a telephone interview that CACI contracted Livingston solely to lobby for a CACI technical training center in Louisiana, and that his work never involved Iraq.
"They're saying I'm complicit in war profiteering and torture and that crosses the line of decency," Hugo said.
Jones noted, however, that Hugo had resorted to cutthroat campaigning with a television ad based on excerpts from comments posted under a pseudonym on a Democratic blog.
They accused Simmons of running "a cowardly campaign" and "lying to voters."
But linking Hugo to the torture of Iraqi citizens is a claim so explosive it could backfire on the Democrats, said Mark Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University.
"These are not the images you expect to see in a Virginia state legislative campaign," said Rozell, who lives and works in Fairfax County, by far the fiercest battleground in this year's state House and Senate races.
"A lot of the stuff that's coming out of the Democratic Party right now is almost over the top. They smell blood and they're trying to maximize the opportunity they think they have to switch one of the two houses of the Legislature," he said.
Democrats can take control of the 40-member Senate for the first time since 1995 by winning four GOP seats next month. In the House, they would have to win 11 Republican seats to reclaim the majority they lost in 1999.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the mailing was so far out, it almost resembled a parody of a political attack ad.
"To try to tie a state delegate to torture in Iraq is somewhere between ludicrous and desperate," Sabato said.
Livingston Group principals and consultants:
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