Former senator campaigns among Lynchburg Republicans

Former governor and senator George Allen visited Lynchburg Monday to rally local Republican activists to support him in a U.S. Senate election that is still 18 months away. 

“We are getting an early start. This campaign is going to be a grass-roots insurgency. Virginia is going to be pivotal” in the 2012 elections, Allen said, referring to races for the presidency and U.S. House and Senate seats around the country.

Allen spoke to a lunchtime gathering, mostly of Republicans, at Lynchburg’s Depot Grille.

“There is a poll that was just taken that has us neck-and-neck against our opponent, who doesn’t have the same views we have on taxes and spending and right-to-work laws and a variety of issues,” Allen said, referring to Democratic candidate Timothy M. Kaine, also a former governor.

 The Washington Post poll, announced Monday, showed both Allen and Kaine with 46 percent support among registered voters in Virginia.

Allen never mentioned the Republican Party primary election he will need to win next year in order to get the party’s nomination. Four other candidates have announced for the GOP nomination, including: Jamie Radtke of Richmond, Earl W. Jackson of Chesapeake, Timothy Donner of Great Falls and David McCormick of Virginia Beach. 

 Allen said he wanted to be the senator who casts the deciding votes on three issues: a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution; an end to the Environmental Protection Agency’s control over carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants; and to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”

Audience member Richard Flack asked Allen how he would have voted on the health-care bill that Congress passed in March 2010.

 “It is really important for everyone to know that we are against this health care monstrosity,” Allen said, adding states should be allowed to adopt their own health-care plans.

 Allen also reminded the audience that, as a senator in 2002, he supported Henry Hudson for a U.S. District Court judgeship. Hudson’s ruling against the health care bill is being reviewed today Tuesday in the 4^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

 “It is important for folks to know what we are for, and what we will do and advocate and get done,” Allen said.

 He listed his support for a balanced budget amendment, presidential authority for a line-item budget veto “to knock out wasteful spending,” approving the federal budget before Oct. 1 each year, reducing taxes on businesses, and taking power away from “unelected bureaucrats” such as EPA officials.

 In a reference to Lynchburg’s nuclear-power industry, Allen said he supports recycling spent fuel, although it is currently prohibited under U.S. law.

 “I know this is blasphemous for me to say, but we can learn from the French,” Allen said.

 “They reprocess spent fuel. It is much safer, and I know that if the French can do it, so can America,” Allen said.

 Allen also said he wants to develop American fuel sources by drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, on Alaska’s North Slope, and off Virginia’s coast.

Allen served as Virginia’s governor from 1994 through 1997, and as a U.S. senator from 2001 through 2006, when he was defeated by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. Webb is retiring this year, and Allen is seeking to reclaim the seat.

Kaine was governor from 2006 through 2009, and was chairman of the Democratic National Committee for the past two years.