There’s lots going on politically.
On Monday night, Republicans selected Gary Grant over Rodney Thomas as their candidate for the Rio District seat on the Board of Supervisors, which is being vacated by outgoing supervisor David Bowerman. They also nominated the unchallenged Christian Schoenwald for the Jack Jouett seat, to run against incumbent Dennis Rooker. Annie Johnson (who must be new — welcome, Annie) had the story in yesterday’s Progress.
At the same event, Tom McCrystal was nominated as the Republican candidate for the 57th District House of Delegates race. McCrystal is promoting himself as a progressive, centrist bipartisan Republican. Rick Sincere has more on his site.
Fundraising reports have come in for the 57th District race. As Bob Gibson reports, Rich Collins has raised $17k, Clement “Kim” Tingley $7k, and David Toscano $76k. Tingley has, however, loaned himself $46k to fund his campaign, having received just two donations from within the district, bringing his budget up to $53k.
Finally, there was a lively debate held last night at City Council chambers, pitting Collins, Tingley, and Toscano against each other for an hour and a half — Bob Gibson covered it. They took questions from the audience and from one another. Growth and local control ended up being the major topics of the night. Collins is an opponent of unrestrained growth and a supporter of home rule, while Toscano and Tingley believe in market-dictated growth and Richmond-centered lawmaking. It was on the topic of the Meadowcreek Parkway where the audience had a good laugh: Collins opposes it, and Toscano favors it, but Tingley? “I can’t figure out what I think about it. It is just so complicated.” Collins, in the words of Gibson, “tweaked Tingley at least half a dozen times about his status as a homebuilder and former president of the Richmond and state homebuilders associations,” which was fun to watch.
Disclosure: I volunteer my time for Rich Collins. I ain’t taking any money from his campaign, but I’m totally biased.
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