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Kevin Miller and Ernest Sehlabaeh, candidates for the —tith district seat in the Virginia Senate, could both share a line from Miller’s speech at the forum held last Wednesday at the Washington Baptist Church.
"If there’s any place 1 should be more visible, it’s Rappahannock County because out of all the district, 1 know fewer people in Rappahannock County,” Miller told the audience at the forum sponsored by the county’s Democratic Committee.
Miller and Sehlabaeh aren't exactly household names here, judging by the results in the Rappahannock News’ pre-election poll. Thirty-eight percent of the registered voters contacted in a random telephone survey a month before the election were undecided on the Senate race. A hefty percentage of those who expressed a preference did so by party affiliation, not by individual candidate. “I’ve never seen or heard of either of them,” “I don’t know anything about them” were typical responses.
The candidates were working on filling in those blank spaces at Wednesday’s forum. Miller stressed his commitment to financing state government without a tax increase by taking from the “have” departments and relocating to the “have not enoughs”.
Sehlabaeh stopped short of promising that he would vote against a tax hike. Citizens of the Commonwealth must determine what level of services they want from state government and then that decision will control the rise and fall of taxes, according to the Democrat from Harrisonburg.
“In 1979, when I first ran for the House of Delegates, I only made one campaign promise,” Miller told the audience in his five minute presentation. “I’ll make the same promise here that I did in Page County—if elected, 1 will least make regular visits, at last monthly, announced in the newspaper and on the radio.”
He acknowledged that the area he hopes to represent is a “sprawling district” but added “It doesn’t bother me a bit to make that beautiful drive across the two ridges (between Harrisonburg and Rappahannock).”
After winning a seat in the House of Delegates in 1979, Miller ran unopposed for a second term. He resigned to stage an unsuccessful race for U.S. Congress and then an
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