Another Candidate for District 57

I have commented on the 57th District race to succeed retiring Delegate Mitch Van Yahres on several occasions -- as recently as this morning, and earlier on March 14 and March 11.

It's only natural, since this is the most exciting political story in the Charlottesville area in the pre-primary season.

Now we have another candidate ready to announce. According to WINA radio,

A local contractor will join two fellow Democrats in the contest for an open seat in the House of Delegates. Clement "Kim" Tingley will formally declare he's a candidate at 10 a.m. Wednesday outside Burley Middle School at 901 Rose Hill Drive. Kingley's entry will make this a three-man race for the 57th District House seat which Charlottesville Delegate Mitch Van Yahres is vacating. The other two candidates in a June 14th Democratic primary are former Mayor David Toscano and retiring University of Virginia Professor Rich Collins.

The leading candidate in the race, former Charlottesville Mayor David Toscano, reveals his political philosophy in an interview with C-VILLE Weekly. He tells reporter John Borgmeyer:

Values make a difference. Any elected official who doesn’t have a strong sense of right and wrong will ultimately fail, because they aren’t centered enough to weather the storms of public reaction to what they do.

Fairness and opportunity is a value I developed a long time ago when I was young. The notion that people ought to have a chance to succeed in life and we ought to reward people for working hard stems from growing up in a household where my father worked six or seven days a week, and I worked with him. I learned how to run a business, and how important it was to be honest and treat people fairly. That has to spill over in your public life.

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Overall, I think Democrats need to speak to the values we think are important—economic justice, opportunity, fairness and compassion. I’m willing to work with business and UVA to create jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t think the public sector alone is going to be able to create those kinds of jobs.

I think people believe that the government’s proper role isn’t to solve every problem, nor is it leaving people to fend for themselves, but to empower people with the tools they can use to solve their own problems.

And Toscano reveals one of his top legislative priorities, should he be elected to the General Assembly come November:

[P]arents ought to be able to get release time from work to go to parent-teacher conferences. It’s a little thing, but it can make a huge difference in the life of a child.

Two names are mentioned as possible Republican candidates: Tom McCrystal and Sharon Jones. That nomination will be made at a mass meeting scheduled for June 6.