Virginia Lawyers Weekly

HOT SPRINGS (AP) Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Jim Gilmore feuded July 19 over energy policy and trustworthiness in a debut debate in their race for the U.S. Senate, but neither former governor scored a breakthrough.

Gilmore, trailing significantly in polls and fundraising and badly needing a break, attacked Warner’s veracity pointedly and often, mostly on the issue of energy and the damage high fuel prices have inflicted on the economy.

Advocating aggressive oil production on the nation’s coasts and Alaska’s virgin wilderness, Gilmore labeled Warner’s murky positions as deceptive.

“Clarity is what’s necessary,” Gilmore said. “Without that clarity, you can’t trust what Mark Warner will do in the United States Senate.”

Warner said his rival’s mantra of “drill here, drill now” off the nation’s outer continental shelf and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and natural gas is more of Gilmore’s trademark bumper-sticker sloganeering and governance by gimmick.

Just as Gilmore’s “No Car Tax” pledge won him the 1997 governor’s election but wreaked havoc on the state budget after it was enacted, Warner claimed, Gilmore’s energy plan is simplistic, unworkable and sure to further U.S. dependency on foreign oil.

Warner last month offered measured support for lifting a federal moratorium on offshore oil exploration with states having the final say. He has stood steadfast against drilling in Alaska, a position he shares with Republican presidential candidate John McCain. His positions on producing oil offshore, however, have been more elastic.

“I favor the exploration piece but not the development piece because you’ve still got to go through the environmental hurdles,” Warner in mid-June.

A campaign ad Warner began televising last week, however, featured footage of a deep-sea oil platform as an announcer said Warner would “expand oil and gas production at home.”

So, before a crowd of several hundred lawyers attending the Virginia Bar Association debate at The Homestead, Gilmore asked Warner whether he would vote to lift the federal offshore drilling ban if elected.

“My position is that Congress should lift the moratorium on offshore oil and natural gas drilling (and) leave that decision to the states,” Warner countered. “It’s the same position I believe Senator McCain has. I don’t believe we should be drilling in ANWR because Congress has set it aside as a pristine area.”

Warner’s energy plan, however, is much broader and more detailed than Gilmore’s. He advocates cracking down on commodities speculators, expanded fuel mileage standards and greater use of telecommuting. His alternative energy ideas include solar and wind power, but also ideas that put him at odds with many other Democrats: expanded use of coal with technology to remove greenhouse gases and greater use of nuclear power.

Warner also highlighted a conspicuous difference between the two candidates’ offshore drilling proposals: states would have no say on whether oil derricks would spring up off their coastlines, or how many.

Gilmore’s advisers note the tracts off the outer continental shelf are federal land outside the jurisdictions of states. Giving states power to veto offshore production, Gilmore said, would allow them to “hold federal energy policy hostage.” But the prospect of oil rigs offshore is unsettling to Florida and other states heavily dependent on tourism.

Both men disputed each other’s gubernatorial records, President Bush’s record and their criteria for confirming U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Warner noted that under Gilmore’s watch, the state returned more than $50 million in federal money to provide health insurance for children of poor families. He also blamed Gilmore’s zeal in advancing the car tax rollback in 2001 for exacerbating a fiscal crisis that eventually blossomed into a cumulative revenue shortfall of $6 billion over three years.

Gilmore defended his resolve to continue the car tax phase-out and accused Warner of pursuing a $1.4 billion tax hike in 2004 while hiding news from his finance secretary that the state was expecting budget surpluses from a resurgent economy.
Gilmore, whom Bush appointed in 2000 to head the Republican National Committee, defended the unpopular president, including his handling of the worsening economy.

“I believe the president has worked very hard to make sure the economy is running well with the tax cuts he put into place,” Gilmore said.

“I take that, then, as an endorsement of the last years of the Bush economic policies. I take that, then, as an endorsement of … America’s decline in standing in the world. I take that, then, as an endorsement of the fact that in the last years under the Bush administration, we have had no comprehensive energy policy,” Warner replied.

With several aging justices likely to leave the high court soon and possibly altering its ideological balance for a generation, each candidate was asked his criteria for confirming federal court nominees.

Warner said he opposed litmus tests on the most contentious issues of the time such as abortion. He also said the criteria for confirming Supreme Court candidates should focus on nominees’ records and judicial temperament.

Gilmore, however, named the court’s most conservative justices as the nominees he would support.

“Who are the judges I would try to appoint? People like (Antonin) Scalia, (Samuel) Alito, (Chief Justice John) Roberts and (Clarence) Thomas,” he said.

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