McEachin, Mills Blast THE most “radical,” “extreme,” “far-right” slate in Virginia history

I just got off a media conference call with Sen. Donald McEachin and DPVA Executive Director David Mills, in which both men blasted the Republican Party of Virginia’s slate of candidates for the General Assembly this year as “radical,” “extreme,” “far right,” “far outside the mainstream,” etc. I agree 100% with Dave Mills, who says that this slate is THE most “radical,” “extreme,” “far-right,” “outside-the-mainstream” slate “in Virginia history.”

A few examples of this extremism pointed out by Mills and McEachin?

*Adam Light, who called for ending Social Security and Medicare, as well as for privatizing benefits for victims of black lung, called them a “pyramid scheme”

*Tom Garrett, who has called for abolishing Virginia’s Dept. of Environmental Quality (and who believes in mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients)

*Ben Loyola, who has called for elimination of the US Dept. of Education

*Dick Black, who is “widely known as the most extreme of Republicans to have ever served in the General Assembly,” once actually sent around plastic fetuses as a protest against a woman’s right to choose.

*Jeff Frederick, who compared Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and who thinks Darwinian Evolution is an atheist plot to explain away the existence of god

In stark contrast, both Mills and McEachin emphasized, Virginia Democrats “pride ourselves on solving problems and putting partisanship aside,” and will focus on things that Virginia families really care about (jobs, transportation, education, etc.).

The bottom line, according to Mills and McEachin, is that Virginians have a really clear choice, between radical ideologues/far right Republicans on the one hand, and results-oriented, pro-middle class Democrats on the other. In the end, if Virginians turn over the State Senate “to folks who have this type of agenda, we’re looking at a real catastrophe for Virginia government.”

I couldn’t agree more. Go Democrats!