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By: Jeff Schapiro
Published: June 24, 2010 2:05 PM
Vance Wilkins—now there’s a name one doesn’t hear too often—is getting back into Virginia politics.
Sort of.
Wilkins, Virginia’s first Republican speaker until he was forced to quit the House of Delegates in 2002 in a sexual-harrassment scandal, is signing with a political-action committee launched by the distant runner-up in that hard-fought Republican congressional pimary in the Southside-anchored 5th District.
Jim McKelvey, who pulled 26 percent of the vote against winner Robert Hurt, says Wilkins is joining the board of directors of the Take-Our-Country-Back PAC. McKelvey, a wealthy property developer from Moneta in Bedford County, has yet to endorse Hurt, raising concerns that McKelvey’s voters won’t be there for Hurt in November.
That could scramble the calculus for the contest with freshman Democrat Tom Perriello of Charlottesville. He was barely elected two years ago, edging veteran Republican Virgil Goode in the nation’s closest congressional contest. Perriello got a big boost in 2008 from the Democrat who isn’t on the ballot this year: President Barack Obama.
In an e-mail, McKelvey said Wilkins brings to the PAC “vast experience in both the political and legislative fields” and that his “recruiting, training and electing conservative candidates will be invaluable in our efforts .”
Wilkins, an Amherst County road-builder who spent years plotting the Republican takeover of the House of Delegates in 2000, said, “I’m looking forward to working with Jim and his PAC to find and support conservative candidates and leaders to lead the commonwealth in the coming years.”
It’s not clear whether Wilkin’s return to the political fray has to do with Republicans, in general, or Hurt, in particular.
Hurt came to the House in 2002, months before Wilkins’ dramatic flame-out. Hurt’s now in the Virginia Senate and has a record and reputation as a comparative moderate, having supported Democratic Gov. Mark Warner in 2004 on that $1.4 billion tax increase for education, law enforcement and social services.
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