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For all Virginians

Ed Gillespie: My Campaign Is Focused on Economic Growth

Ed joined Fox 5 DC this morning to discuss our campaign, his 10% across the board tax cut for all Virginians, and his plans for economic growth.

Ed talked about our struggling economy, and the news this week that Virginia dropped — again — in rankings of business-friendly states. Most importantly, he outlined the solution to turn the tide and get Virginia back to its right place at the top of the list:

Virginia needs a plan to get us moving again. We’ve been stuck for five straight years; our economic growth rates have been anemic. We’ve shed 69,000 manufacturing jobs.

We’ve got to create more opportunities for more Virginians, increase take home pay, create more jobs, help people lift themselves out of poverty, improve our schools. Transportation is always important and congestion relief and economic growth is really the focus of my campaign, and I find it’s resonating everywhere I go to have solutions to these problems we face, the challenges we face.

Ed was asked about the political climate in Washington and how it impacts Virginia. Ed responded by saying,

I will be a governor for all Virginians and that’s going to be my focus. As, you know, we need to make sure that Virginia’s economy gets growing again, creating more opportunities for our young people coming out our high schools and great colleges and universities and the fact is, you know, in terms of this administration, policies that will help Virginia, you know, I’m looking forward to working with them on.

They’ve announced they’ll lift the moratorium off of development of our oil and gas resources off our deep sea coast that’s good thing, building more ships Newport News is a good thing, stopping the war on coal in Southwest Virginia will be helpful to our fellow Virginians in coal country, but the fact is, we need to be les reliant on federal policies and federal programs and spending and to me the way that we’re going to do that is to foster more start ups and scale ups in Virginia, make it easier, like I say, to open a new business and expand an existing small business. That’s the key to our long-term sustainable job creation in Virginia, we are less affected in our economy by federal programs.

It wasn’t all policy, however, Ed got to talk about his background when the host asked about Ed’s college job as a Senate parking lot attendant in Washington, D.C.:

I did work my way through college. I got student loans and went to the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and my morning job 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. was parking cars for the staff that worked on Capitol Hill in the Senate parking lot. That job led to a job inside one of those office buildings as an intern which was nice because it was a lot warmer in the winter. Working inside and led to another job and ultimately I got to serve as Counselor to the President of the United States of America.

The Republican primary is on June 13th. Make sure you have a plan to vote for Ed.