Robinson and Brown Face Off For 27th District House Seat

Republican Delegate Sam Nixon was appointed by Governor Bob McDonnell to head the troubled Virginia Information Technology Agency in March.

Now Democrat Bill Brown and Republican Roxann Robinson are running to replace him in the House of Delegates.

Robinson is an optometrist and owns her own practice in Chesterfield County.

Robinson:  The reason I ran for the House of Delegates seat is because when I talk to my patients, there are four big concerns that people have.  It’s jobs, people are concerned about the government and its overspending and government keeps getting larger.  They were concerned about their health care and they’re worried about their children’s education, because that’s the future of our country.  As I kept hearing this over and over again I kept thinking, well these are the same things I worry about every day, so I thought well I can represent the people at the General Assembly  because I have the same concerns and I understand where they are coming from.

Brown, an accountant and retired college professor, also stressed the importance of education, but expressed his concern for what he called unfunded mandates passed down by the state to localities.

Brown:  For instance, in public education we have standards of excellence that are supposed to be met; supposedly the State provides funding to those various school systems so those standards can be achieved, but the State support for education has been reduced so drastically that it’s going to be difficult to do that.  Education is the cornerstone, the foundation of so many other things, in mitigating or solving so many other problems, it just defies rational belief that the Commonwealth continues to cut education budgets at all levels.  This is putting a burden on our children as they grow older, that they’ll be paying for it for the rest of their lives.

For the last decade, the House Republican majority has fought fiercely against tax and fee increases, something Robinson agrees with.

Robinson:  I’m not for any type of tax increase of any kind.  I think we can increase our revenue some other way besides increasing taxes and fees on the citizens in the Commonwealth.

Though the House of Delegates balanced the budget this year without tax increases, Brown says many of the cuts made were irresponsible.

Brown:  There is not enough waste, fraud and abuse in State government spending to pay for things like transportation and education.  What they did to balance the budget in the most recent session which really troubled me was to slash funding for education and public safety, and they still didn’t solve the transportation problem.  And I hope to move the State in the direction of solving those problems and dealing with other issues that will face us in the coming years.

The 27th District has been in Republican hands for over twenty years, though it did support Barrack Obama in 2008.  In terms of funding, Robinson’s campaign contributions have out-paced Brown’s more than 10-1.

Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. tomorrow.

Craig Carper, WCVE News, Capitol Square.