Republicans open campaign headquarters in city

An all-star lineup of Republicans teamed up Thursday to open a Lynchburg headquarters where the party will launch its effort to win two congressional seats in November.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Rep. Bob Goodlatte urged about 50 Republican loyalists to work hard on getting out voters for state Sen. Robert Hurt, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello in the 5th District.

“The enthusiasm is electric,” Hurt said after introductory remarks from Goodlatte, who drew cheers when he asked the crowd, “Are you ready to elect Robert Hurt to the United States Congress?”

Both Goodlatte and Cuccinelli mentioned Liberty University’s College Republicans during their remarks about the need for calling potential voters and knocking on their doors. Cuccinelli came to the headquarters event after having met with the students on the LU campus.

“Robert’s race is among the biggest ones we have got, and Virginia is ground zero in the battle for Congress this year,” Cuccinelli said.

“This one is absolutely critical to the Republican strategy to take back the House of Representatives,” Cuccinelli said.

The attorney general’s visit to Lynchburg wrapped up a series of appearances he made Thursday in the western half of Virginia, starting at 9 a.m. in Abingdon.

At 1 p.m. in Rocky Mount, Cuccinelli told about 150 people that his office played a key role in reducing the size of an electricity rate increase that Appalachian Power Co. started collecting in August.

The company requested $167 million and the State Corporation Commission granted it a $61 million increase, Cuccinelli said. “We fought very hard in our office to have this kind of an outcome,” he said, because the attorney general represents consumers in electricity rate cases.

Cuccinelli also said APCo customers have a large stake in cap-and-trade legislation because its parent company, American Electric Power, burns coal to generate more than 80 percent of its electricity. The national average is 53 percent, Cuccinelli said.

If cap-and-trade legislation, now stalled in Congress, were to pass it could mean more rate increases for APCo customers, Cuccinelli said.

Many Republican candidates, including Hurt, are talking up fears of the cap-and-trade legislation.

Cuccinelli didn’t directly mention political races during his talk in Rocky Mount, but he challenged the rhetoric that Perriello used earlier this week.

Hurt voted in 2007 for an electricity regulation bill that, according to Perriello, caused people to see their electricity bills double or triple in December and January.

Hurt replied that the increase came from laws that were in effect before 2007.

Cuccinelli weighed into that dispute in Rocky Mount, without mentioning Hurt, Perriello or the 5^th District.

“One thing I want you to understand. The 2007 re-regulation bill did not introduce this interim rate hike” that helped intensify APCo customers’ complaints to state legislators in January, Cuccinelli said.

“Everybody got that?” Cuccinelli asked. “Because I have seen an awful lot of inaccurate statements about that.” The interim rate increase was repealed by emergency legislation that was signed into law Feb. 24, and Cuccinelli said that kind of increase had been legal since the 1990s.

However, the attorney general did appear to concede that the 2007 legislation contributed to part of the $61 million increase that APCo put into effect in August.

“There is one point here that I can point to and identify an increase and quantify it from the 2007 bill,” Cuccinelli said. “We believe that about $7 million of this $61 million increase is from a change in the law in terms of how the SCC calculates profit” that utilities can earn, Cuccinelli said.

“That comes out to about 70 cents per 1,000 kilowatt hours” on a customer’s bill, Cuccinelli said.

The attorney general raised another point that Perriello had made this week.

“Another comment I have seen, that is very misleading, is the notion that the 2007 bill gave lots of different opportunities to raise rates,” Cuccinelli said — appearing to address another point Perriello made this week about the bill Hurt supported.

Cuccinelli called it “an interesting half-truth.” He said the 2007 legislation broke electricity rate cases into six parts, allowing separate filings for fuel, transmission lines, base rates, environmental upgrades and reliability maintenance.

“So we aren’t giving the SCC any more opportunities to raise or lower rates, but we have broken up these cases from a big one into six little ones, or littler ones,” Cuccinelli said.