HoodaThunk?

When I sat down at my desk this morning, my laptop had fired up and gone about accessing the various systems I’ve got it set up to do. E-mail is, of course, one of the primary chores it handles and I’ve got 3 accounts to manage. This morning’s deliveries included e-mails from 2 of the 3 GOP nomination candidates, John Brownlee and Ken Cuccinelli. Reading over the two of them has left me with an inescapable situation: one of them isn’t telling the truth.

You see, one of the things I’ve noticed about the 3 candidates is that their focus appears to be on very different things and it affects their approach in their communications. Both Dave Foster and Ken Cuccinelli are elected members of legislative bodies. John Brownlee is not. That why, I believe, both Foster and Cuccinelli have spoken often about matters of business and jobs creation where Brownlee has not. This, unfortunately, raises the question of what Foster and Cuccinelli see as the primary responsibility of an Attorney General. As I see things, it’s most certainly not the creation of jobs, nor the advancement of business. Those are responsibilities of the legislature. The Attorney General’s role, as I understood things, was to provide legal advice to the Governor and the legislature as well as direct the prosecution of criminal violations on a statewide level. Also, to oversee the actions of Commonwealth Attorneys across the state and make sure, through direction of those attorneys, that both the law and the civil rights of Virginians are upheld and protected.

That I’ve seen, only John Brownlee has spoken as though he believes that, too. Which brings me to this morning’s e-mail.

The Brownlee Report is an e-mail newsletter sent out by the campaign and, usually, available at the Brownlee website. (This morning’s doesn’t appear to be available there, yet. In this age of new media, that’s pretty sloppy. Since it’s not up there on the site, I’m going to reproduce parts of that report here. I’ll update this post with a link when available.) In today’s edition, Brownlee’s campaign points to his stance on illegal immigration and immigrations law enforcement as compared to a statement made by Cuccinelli:

A new, somewhat surprising contrast between the Republican candidates for Attorney General came to light at Saturday’s debate sponsored by the Virginia Federation of Republican Women.
 
In response to a question regarding illegal aliens and undocumented workers, John Brownlee said he strongly supports “the use of the U.S. government’s E-Verify system.”  Brownlee supports making the use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers in the Commonwealth, including the state government, in an effort to reduce the number of illegal aliens in Virginia.  E-Verify is a proven and effective resource for employers to verify citizenship / residency status and screen out illegals who are seeking employment.
 
In a response to the same question, State Senator Ken Cuccinelli said he  opposed requiring private employers to use E-Verify, suggesting the system was too flawed to be reliable.
 
As one conservative analyst put it, “Our political leaders cannot hide behind the ‘[E-Verify] needs further improvement’ mantra forever, because doing so is the functional equivalent of not enforcing the prohi­bition against hiring illegals in the first place.”

That’s pretty damning. As anyone who’s been reading here for longer than a few weeks knows I am a strong advocate for strong enforcement of our immigrations laws. I have supported the use of the E-Verify system for government employees and contractors as well as for recipients of state welfare services. To have a candidate for our Attorney General say he doesn’t support requiring businesses to make use of the system to verify hiring eligibility would be a serious deficiency for them, in my opinion.

But hold on. This just in from The Cuccinelli Compass, the newletter for the Cuccinelli campaign:

John is out of bounds in his attack that I am somehow against E-Verify (a program established to ensure illegal aliens don’t get hired). His attack is patently false – and like other attacks, John Brownlee also implies that I’m somehow soft on illegal immigration.

It’s pathetic especially since it’s aimed at me, the one State Senator in Virginia who has been more successful than any other State Senator in getting legislation passed at curbing illegal immigration – but folks – desperate campaigns in desperate situations – well, they do desperate things.  It sure would be nice to run positive, issue oriented campaigns and when you have issue differences, to accurately state them. Unfortunately, John Brownlee isnt doing that.

For the record – I do not oppose any effort to verify the status of someone’s legal residency. Unlike John Brownlee, I have a proven record in the State Senate opposing illegal immigration.  No where in my comments did I say I opposed E-Verify.  But don’t believe me – long time party activist, VFRW member and party leader Helen Blackwell was there – and this is what she said:

Cuccinelli then provides the quote from Ms. Blackwell, which I’ll get to in a moment. Here, Cuccinelli is absolutely denying he said any such thing as what Brownlee reports. However, he clearly implies that the comments were from a specific event. Since he’s relying on someone alleged to be a member of the Virginia Federation of Republican Women (VFRW), I went to their website to check what events they might have had recently. Turns out it was their 2009 Convention, held in Arlington. The event itself was a private, members-only thing so there are no videos or transcripts on-line. (Yet, anyway.)

But this is a pretty critical item: Did Cuccinelli say that or not? If he did, then he’s trying to gloss over the truth. If he didn’t, then Brownlee is smearing him. As a delegate who has been, up to now, undecided on the matter I need to know this. Does anyone have any video or transcripts from the comments given at this event?

More to come as I hear more.