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Posted Jan. 18, 2002

Views from a Republican

During this week's Herndon Dulles Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Republican Congressman Tom Davis, the keynote speaker, took pleasure in taking Maryland, the Democrats and liberal arts college graduates to task, while extolling the advantages of baseball in Northern Virginia.

After all, as he admitted, he no longer will represent the Herndon area as congressman next year, so he was free to speak his mind. While Mr. Davis will still be the congressman in the 11th District, Herndon will be moved to the 10th District with Frank Wolf as its congressman.

In a joke more likely to be told by a bunch of college kids trying to be funny, Mr. Davis said that while engineers, scientists and accountants have lofty goals in their pursuit of technology, liberal arts majors simply ask, "Do you want fries with that?" There were friendly boos from the audience until Mr. Davis reminded them that he, too, was a liberal arts graduate.

And his views on Maryland? "Why would anyone ever go to BWI airport? All it has is low air fares," Mr. Davis said. As if that's not reason enough to travel to BWI. What would you rather do, pay $400 for a round-trip ticket to Chicago and fly out of National, or $185 and fly out of BWI? Travelers watching their pennies can put up with a lot of traffic to go to BWI.

And a new Potomac River bridge? It's Maryland's fault that the idea has been stalled so long, he said. He's right of course, but Virginia must bear some of the delay. Wasn't it Republican Congressman Frank Wolf who voted down a study on the "Techway," a highway vital to any new river crossing?

Speaking of Democrats, Mr. Davis said that the Enron financial fiasco falls equally on Democrats as it has on Republicans. From all reports, that simply is not true, although Democrats certainly took campaign money from Enron.

Mr. Davis also might have forgotten that Republican Attorney General John Ashcroft had to recuse himself from the Enron investigation because the company gave more than $50,000 in support of his bid for the Senate. When you think of Enron, you naturally think of energy, oil, oil men, Texas, and Mr. Pretzel himself, President Bush.

But what about this baseball for Northern Virginia plan? Our transportation is so bad around here we can't move people from here to there even without a baseball stadium. Think of it this way: A Northern Virginia baseball park would host about 82 home games each season. With an average attendance‰and brother, is this ever a guess‰of 20,000 fans, that's 1,640,000 more people moving around Northern Virginia every year.

Add three or four concerts each year, four tractor pulls, three motorcycle racing events and two revivals and you approach 2 million extra people trying to get there and get home.

Baseball, football, hockey and basketball belong in downtowns where there is adequate rail transportation and critical mass. Baseball in Northern Virginia? It should be called out immediately.

And that's Our Town this week.