EXCLUSIVE -- Gilmore Tells HUMAN EVENTS: Why I Will Win Senate Seat

[underpants]

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23568&s=rcmc#continueA

At a time when Democrat Mark Warner holds a thirty-point lead in one poll for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. John Warner (no relation), the almost-certain Republican candidate steadfastly maintains he will overcome the candidate national Democrats dub their likeliest “net gainer” of a Senate seat anywhere in the nation in 2008.

In an exclusive interview with me less than 24 hours after officially becoming a candidate for the Senate, former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore spelled out the issues and strategy he will deploy to defeat “the Democratic Warner,” who succeeded him as governor of the Old Dominion in 2001.

Regarding the Washington Post survey showing Warner with a thirty-point advantage over him, the 58-year-old Gilmore noted that the poll was not of registered voters, that in both the Rasmussen and USA America polls of registered voters only, Warner’s statewide lead over him is cut in half.

“And, if the Democratic ticket is headed by Hillary Clinton, he either has to run with her -- which is going to hurt here in Virginia -- or run away from her, which is going to invite a lot of press criticism,” observed Gilmore. He dismissed newspaper speculation that the front-running Democratic candidate could carry Virginia because, in his words, “that would mean her moving to the middle and not taking the positions she feels she needs to take to carry Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts.”

The former governor and onetime Republican National Chairman also spelled out some of the issues he will underscore to illustrate the differences between himself and Warner: terrorism (“I am a U.S. Army veteran and he did not serve in the military, and I have studied terrorism”), law and order (Gilmore is a former state’s attorney and state attorney general), and cutting taxes. He recalled how he roared to a landslide election to the governorship on a vow to end the state’s hefty car tax; Gov. Gilmore managed to get two thirds of the car tax eliminated and fell short of it killing it outright because of a pack of moderate GOP legislators “who later tried to help my successor raise taxes.”