From the DPVA:
Speaker Howell is in a pretty bad place if he's trying to distract Virginians from the Terry Kilgore scandal by drawing attention to… the other Terry Kilgore scandal.
Let's recap. This weekend, the Roanoke Times revealed yet another catastrophic effect of Terry Kilgore's ineffectual leadership of the Tobacco Commission. Their latest in-depth report shows that Kilgore pushed to continue pumping millions into a controversial project that had shown next to no progress, while legitimate proposals went unfunded. Add that to his past behavior surrounding the suspect multimillion-dollar Commission grants to his family members and you get one headache for Speaker Howell and House Republicans.
Howell, no stranger to manufactured crises, went to great lengths to remind Virginians about the federal investigation into whether Terry Kilgore bought a Senate majority by offering Senator Phillip Puckett a job in return for resigning his seat. He sent a bizarre letter asking the Obama administration to prove that Governor McAuliffe's appointments were valid – while simultaneously admitting that actually, he knows these appointments are valid.
“Speaker Howell basically admits in his letter that he is wasting everyone's time,” said Morgan Finkelstein, press secretary for the Democratic Party of Virginia. “And despite this sad effort to distract Virginians from the scandals within his party, it's not working. Virginians are getting tired of charade after charade from Speaker Howell and Republican leadership. The Commonwealth deserves action on real issues, not desperate distractions.”
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