http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20051104/cm_thenation/20051121blumenthal;_ylt=A86.I1z8f21DJyMAQwf9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--The Nation -- Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, promising an aggressive crackdown on day laborers and undocumented immigrants attending state universities. "Will we reward illegal behavior with hard-earned dollars from law-abiding citizens?" he asked a campaign rally crowd this August. "I say the answer to this question should be an easy one: no!" While Kilgore accepts the financial support of an anti-immigrant group with racist ties, he also has taken massive contributions from companies notorious for exploiting undocumented immigrant labor.
Virginia Republican Attorney General candidate Bob McDonnell has declared himself "a drug dealer's worst nightmare," while appearing in ads slamming imaginary crooks behind prison doors and pledging to protect Virginians from sexual predators. McDonnell has not only financed his campaign through a possibly illegal slush fund but has hired three former associates of indicted Republican über-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. One of them, who once served as McDonnell's campaign manager, is now in prison for soliciting sex with a young boy.
By introducing the anti-immigrant movement's extremist agenda into a high-profile statewide race in barely warmed-over form, Kilgore has not only added an expedient wedge issue to his arsenal; he has sought to neutralize the criticism other pro-business Republicans have earned from the right for embracing the immigration-friendly policies that insure their corporate donors a steady pool of cheap labor. Kilgore has attempted this political high-wire act by homing his attacks on state-funded forms of assistance to undocumented immigrants, such as a public day laborer center in northern Virginia. He has studiously shied away from criticizing the corporations that lure the bulk of illegal labor to Virginia, however, reflecting a central contradiction of his candidacy. snip
Kilgore's donation from US Immigration Reform PAC is dwarfed by those he has received from companies that habitually prey on the state's ever-increasing population of undocumented laborers. One of them, Smithfield Foods, has stuffed Kilgore's campaign coffers with $36,000. According to the United Food and Commercial Workers's Justice@Smithfield, "Smithfield Packing {a subsidiary} has created an environment of intimidation, racial tension, fear and sometimes, violence, for workers who desperately want a voice on the job." In 2000 Judge John H. West ruled that Smithfield committed thirty-six labor violations during a union-busting campaign in the 1990s, which included threatening to report Latino workers to the Immigration and Naturalization Services if they joined union ranks. snip
While McDonnell has echoed Kilgore's anti-immigrant rhetoric, pledging among other things to block undocumented immigrants from receiving driver's licenses, he is better known as Taliban Bob, a nickname his critics gave him for his reactionary stance on social issues.
A graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University who owes his election to the Virginia House of Delegates to the support of Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition, McDonnell tried to block a judge from appointment in 2003 for allegedly being a lesbian. That same year, when a reporter asked McDonnell if he had ever committed sodomy, he refused to give an unequivocal answer, replying, "Not that I can recall."
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