This election season, races are growing incredibly tense in Virginia.
Politicians are coming out of the woodwork to make their case to the voters and are growing louder as Election Day draws near.
Only, some of them are coming under fire from conservative activists for trying to hide their record.
Enter Bob Thomas, Republican Delegate for the 28th District of the House of Delegates, representing parts of Stafford County and the City of Fredericksburg.
Thomas is locked in a heated battle with Paul Milde in what is shaping up to be one of the most heated Republican primaries of the 2019 election cycle.
Milde’s run against Thomas was largely spurred on by Thomas’ vote for Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion in Virginia, which was widely panned by conservative activists as fiscally irresponsible. Funding for Planned Parenthood was also included in the package Thomas voted for.
But rather than own up to this vote and make the case for why he sided with every Democrat in the General Assembly to ram through Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion, Delegate Thomas instead seems to be running away from his record in Richmond.
Thomas Attempts To Hide His Vote To Give Planned Parenthood 6 Million Taxpayer Dollars
New Virginia Press recently acquired a copy of one of Delegate Thomas’ campaign mailers.
After voting to give taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, which The Family Foundation called a six million dollar “slush fund,” Thomas claims he is both 100% pro-Life and voted against giving money to Planned Parenthood.
The trouble is, these points clearly contradict his own voting record.
Perhaps the most glaring example of this is Thomas’ claim to have voted to defund Planned Parenthood, and that he has voted to cut taxpayer funding for abortions.
Specifically, Thomas claims to have “voted to stop taxpayer dollars from going directly to Planned Parenthood.”
That word “directly” is key.
Thomas can claim to have voted against sending money directly to Planned Parenthood in 2019, but his record clearly shows that he voted to send Planned Parenthood taxpayer funds in 2018.
This betrays the claim in Thomas’ mailer that he is 100% pro-life.
During the 2018 legislative session, Delegate Thomas joined every Democrat in the General Assembly by voting to pass a bill which gave millions of taxpayer dollars to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.1 2
But in an attempt to hide this fact, Thomas’ campaign is now slapping the word “directly” onto their campaign mailers.
Because while Thomas’ vote did not send Planned Parenthood pallets of cash, it did send them, and other abortion clinics support through government programs to the tune of six million dollars.3
Thomas’ claim to have voted to stop taxpayer money going to Planned Parenthood glosses over his vote to send six million taxpayer dollars one year ago.
In fact, Virginia pro-Life groups are highlighting that the more taxpayer-funded support abortion clinics receive, the more they have available to market and perform more abortion procedures.
Abolish Abortion Virginia recently went so far as to state that Delegates like Bob Thomas voted to “allow more early-term abortions to take place through grants for abortifacient drugs.” 4
The Family Foundation Dubs Thomas’ Vote As Creating A “Slush Fund For Planned Parenthood”
To add further insult to injury, Thomas claims to have voted in 2019 for a budget that The Family Foundation describes as “the most Pro-Life budget in decades.”
Yet, when Thomas quotes The Family Foundation, he outright avoids their description of his 2018 vote as enabling a “slush fund for Planned Parenthood.” 5
Two of Virginia’s pro-Life organizations criticized Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion as providing one of the largest taxpayer subsidies for the abortion industry in Virginia’s 400-year history.
Conservative activists are also criticizing Thomas’ claims of being a fiscal conservative, with the Delegate stating in his mail piece to have “passed [the] second largest tax cut in Virginia history”. Thomas also claims to have “stopped $1 billion in new taxes from Governor Northam and Democrats”.
But Thomas isn’t telling his constituents that he also voted to raise taxes by $800 million in 2018.6
Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion includes hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases levied against hospitals across Virginia.
Tax increases that hospitals will pass on to the consumer.
And these are all facts that Thomas knows as well.
This is why when campaigning for Delegate in 2017, Thomas promised to oppose Medicaid Expansion.7
Thomas vocally opposed expanding Obamacare when he first ran for office, calling Medicaid a program that “needs fixing as it is.”
In a debate held at the University of Mary Washington on September 21, 2017, Thomas “said millions of dollars in costs would trickle down to local governments if the General Assembly expanded Medicaid,” according to the Free Lance-Star.8
“What has to go—teachers, firefighters, deputies?” Thomas asked, when answering a question of why he opposed Medicaid Expansion at the time. “There will be no money for any of those things.”
If Thomas intends to run an honest campaign, he owes it to his constituents to stop running from his record.
What do you think?
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