24th District Primary

In the central Shenandoah Valley there will be a Senate primary this year as well. It will be between incumbent Senator Emmett Hanger and Lexington/Buena Vista businessman Scott Sayre.

Like all the other primaries, this one centers around Hanger's support of the tax increase in '04 and also original support for Chichester's tax plan in the past 2 years.
A few other things surrounding this race are that some people in this district are mad at the way Emmett handled his LG run in 2005, where he waited until March to begin gathering petition signatures (and we all know how that turned out). One other small thing was his castration bill last year has some people wondering what he is doing in Richmond.

Sayre is originally from Waynesboro, now lives in Lexington, and runs a business in Buena Vista. This should be a good set up for him, since he should know people in a couple different parts of the district starting out.

Other advantages Sayre enjoys are having the Rockingham Chairman and VCAP board member Mike Meredith in the district, as well as anti-tax millionaire Walter Curt nearby to give plenty of dough to his campaign. Many of the committee members in these locales are very ticked off at Emmett so he should also have a good base of supporters starting out. One final advantage is the solid GOP lean of the district, which like we have seen in other districts, should prevent concern of losing a seat by ousting an incumbent. A GOP will win this seat no matter who runs.

Hanger enjoys having a good bit of the business community still behind him, as well as the "evangelical" community. This area is very socially conservative, and that probably favors Hanger. Like most other incumbents, no one is questioning his socially conservative creditials. Also, Emmett has lived in Augusta County his entire life and has alot of friends there as well. Lastly, due to the strong GOP lean here, there will likely be alot of dems voting for Hanger in the primary; to get the "less of 2 evils" in office.

One final note on the campaign issues. Hanger just put himself in a pretty good position by voting against both "tax increases" in committee. Emmett can now say he voted against 2 tax increase proposals recently. The fact that NOVA won't get more road money due to his votes will have zero effect in this district, which made the vote all the more brillant.

On the money front Hanger only has $40,840 on hand, which is a drop in the bucket for a Senate race. That should give Sayre the ability to get closer to matching Hanger; especially if he can convince Mr. Curt to open his wallet for him.

Yet again, I give Hanger the early advantage here; and he is probably safer than some of the other incumbents. Even so, Sayre may make this an interesting race.