Chap Petersen and Gerry Connolly Speak At GMU

On Wednesday evening, both Chap Petersen and Gerry Connolly were at George Mason University in order to speak to the GMU Democrats. While the crowd wasn’t as large as the one Sen. Barack Obama attracted at an event on campus last February, there was a sizable crowd at the event. There were so many people there, for instance, that a significant number of people were standing along the edge of the room while listening to the speakers. When you consider that many of the students at the event were from outside of Fairfax County — if from Virginia at all — I believe the size of the crowd A) really goes to show how much work Grant Herring (President of the GMU Dems) and others have put into the organization and B) shows that young voters actually do care about politics.

The event kicked off with Chap Petersen talking about how he was 24 years old when he first really became involved with politics. He was a Clinton supporter and would make trips up to New Hampshire and later New York in order to help Clinton win the election despite the fact that the Republicans had been in the white house for three terms and many people thought that trend would continue.

Petersen also touched on how we have an opportunity to make history here in Virginia this year. Why do we have a chance to make history? Because if the Democrats win the majority in the Senate, Chap pointed out, it will be the first time since Reconstruction that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate in a southern state away from the Republicans. As a history major, I must admit that I always enjoy when Chap mentions this little piece of historical trivia.

Chap then continued by discussing how he has a strong interest in seeing GMU do well. Before this could be brushed off as simply Chap trying to reach out to college voters, he went into some detail about he is serious about addressing some of the concerns facing our higher education system here in Virginia. He mentioned how on Tuesday, for example, he held a press conference discussing student loan reform and a student bill of rights that would 1) force student lenders to disclose their “for profit” status to potential borrowers, 2) prohibit exclusive lending relationships between lenders and colleges, and 3) prohibit predatory collection practices.

Gerry Connolly began his speech by mentioning how he was a College Dem back in 1968 when people were trying to end another war — Vietnam. He also mentioned how during that time he was a supporter of Bobby Kennedy and briefly discussed his reaction to his assassination.

Through mentioning how many political movements work from the bottom up, Connolly then transitioned into current events. He also focused on how what we do here in Fairfax County can have an affect on Virginia politics — especially when you consider, as Gerry pointed out, that 1 in 7 Virginians live in Fairfax County. Plus, Fairfax also has a larger population than several states. He concluded this portion of his speech by arguing that if Fairfax County is solidly blue, then it is very likely that the entire Commonwealth will be competitive and cannot be considered a definite victory for the Republicans.

Connolly then proceeded to discuss what he believes are some of the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans. One of the issues he used to help make his argument that “we want to govern and they don’t want us to” was Hurricane Katrina. Even though there were expects saying that New Orleans wouldn’t be safe if there was a major point, Connolly pointed out, there was nothing done. If Democrats had been in power, however, he argues that philosophy of the Democratic Party would have resulted in the Government doing something in order to fix the levees.

Another issue he addressed was how President Bush had vetoed the SCHIP bill, which would provide health care to millions of children who’s families otherwise couldn’t afford it. In Connolly’s opinion, the fact that this was one of only four times that Bush had vetoed a bill really provides an interesting perspective on what the president and his cronies really value.

After Gerry finished his speech, he took some questions from the audience. What I found to be interesting was that even though he is running for a local office, most of the questions focused on national or foreign affairs related topics such as Iraq, our relationship with the United Nations, and the possibility of impeaching President Bush. If this were in another setting, I might have attributed the focus on Federal issues to the fact that there are rumors Gerry might run for Congress in 2008. Based upon conversations I had with other people at the event, however, many of them weren’t even aware of the fact Gerry is considered a potential Congressional candidate. (This is not necessarily a comment of Gerry’s chances, just an observation about some of the people at the event). I would therefore make the argument that many of the people in the crowd either felt more knowledgeable or were more interested in national issues. There are a variety of factors as to why this might be the case, but the one that really jumps out at me is that national issues are usually what receive the most attention in the mainstream media. Furthermore, one must consider that not all of the audience members (aka GMU students) call Fairfax County home.

All in all, I believe the event went well. It was a little different than many of the candidate forums that I’ve attended because I felt as thought it was a little more casual and both candidates also touched on their younger days and volunteering for presidential campaigns. In my opinion, that made the event even better because it provided a slightly different view of the candidates than one might usually get. I certainly hope that events like this happen again in the future at GMU or other locations.