Right off the bat I want to tell you this is a long article, but it is important information for voters to understand. Please read this article in its entirety before you consider posting negative comments about this information, my motives, or anything else. And please do your research; I think you’ll find this information very accurate.
If you are a Corey Stewart supporter, you may find this information upsetting to you; which is not my intention. It is meant to inform you. Please don’t be upset at me; be upset at Corey Stewart for misleading you.
After spending my entire adult life in the military and leaving in 2007, I quickly realized local politicians weren’t who they claimed to be. Corey Stewart is one of those politicians. Is it really unimaginable to ask politicians to be honest?
Everyone I talk to who follows politics in Prince William County (PWC), and are longtime residents say Corey Stewart was an honest and very respectable conservative when he got involved in politics/ran for public office. He fought for conservative principles and kept to his word. I have lived in PWC since 2004 and I actually campaigned for Mr. Stewart in Woodbridge several years ago. But something happened to him after he won re-election as the Chairman of the Board of County Supervisors (BOCS) in 2011. Slowly, and steadily, he started making decisions (or pushing agendas) within our County based on who was giving him campaign money. And in the last two years, Stewart has gone completely off the rails.
People are starting to take notice of Stewart’s shenanigans. Granted, Stewart came close to Ed Gillespie in the primary, but the results should not be viewed as a win for Stewart. Here’s why…
1. People were fooled right before the vote. Stewart ran a nasty, distasteful and dishonest TV ad a few days before the primary election and Gillespie foolishly did not respond. In the ad, Stewart claimed Gillespie was FOR partial birth abortion, he was FOR amnesty and he was FOR taking down Robert E. Lee statues. FACT: Ed Gillespie was endorsed by the National Right to Life folks one week before the election. As a prolife warrior, I find Stewart’s tactics to be the lowest of the low. FACT: Ed Gillespie is NOT for amnesty of illegal immigrants. He also has a lot of public statements out there being against sanctuary cities. FACT: Ed Gillespie is NOT for taking down statues. His position is local governments should decide for themselves what to do; and frankly I agree with him. Big Government shouldn’t be telling local governments what to do.
Stewart ought to be thankful that Gillespie isn’t the same kind of nasty guy he is, because if he was, he could have hit him a lot harder with an equally nasty ad. But Gillespie is not; he has class. Saying Gillespie was for partial birth abortion is equal to running an ad with Stewart surrounded by Confederate flags (which he often was) and saying he (Stewart) is a proponent of slavery and segregation.
2. PWC no longer has an actual newspaper which can be delivered on a doorstep. People have to get their local news from the internet and most do not bother. So it is difficult for the citizens of PWC to learn what is going on in the county without searching a dozen or so websites. And once again, most people do not bother.
3. Stewart never had a fact checker around him. He was able to run around the state making outrageous claims against his opponents and no one was there to contradict him. He was also able to say a whole lot of good things about himself that weren’t true. And once again, no one was there to correct the record.
4. If Stewart would have won the primary, he would have been ripped to shreds by the Democrats over all of the false claims and statements he was making. They wouldn’t have been as nice as Gillespie was and the real Corey Stewart would have been exposed for who he really is. And I believe he would have suffered a huge loss in November…we all ought to be thankful Stewart lost the primary. At least we have a chance to take back the Governor’s Mansion with Ed Gillespie.
So when it comes to all the other transgressions of Mr. Stewart, what kind of things am I talking about? I’m going to give you five reasons why people in PWC are disappointed in Corey Stewart and his (lack of) leadership.
1. Corey Stewart has turned into a tyrant on the dais. As Chairman of the BOS, he bullied an elderly supervisor into voting yes on a motion he was supporting in order to gain favor with the Muslim community. There is a portion of PWC called the “Rural Crescent”. The Rural Crescent was established by the County many years ago to fight urban sprawl. This area was supposed to be (for the most part) free of public sewer lines, traffic congestion, large commercial buildings and big housing developments.
On June 27th, there was a huge citizen turnout at the PWC BOCS meeting. The topic of the evening was whether or not to allow the building of a mosque in the Rural Crescent for the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS). The most contentious issue was denying or granting the public sewer line. This is significant because it determines the size of the building. ADAMS knew when they bought the rural land that the sewer line was against county policy but they threatened to sue if the BOCS denied it. The residents of the Rural Crescent were overwhelmingly against both. The first vote was decided unanimously in favor of allowing the mosque to be built. The second vote on sewer access failed with a 4-4 vote. Then all hell broke loose. Corey Stewart was having none of this…he was going to make sure this vote passed. He cheated by flagrantly breaking Parliamentary Procedure and the Board’s own rules, completely dismissed Supervisor Lawson’s objections, stifled debate and more. Stewart even accused the elderly supervisor of being confused and not voting the way he intended. He called for a motion to reconsider and a fellow supervisor, who was on the losing side, made the motion to reconsider. According to Roberts Rules of Order, a member on the losing side of a vote is not allowed to make a motion to reconsider. Otherwise, people who lose votes would constantly make motions to reconsider. The motion to reconsider was seconded and another vote was rammed through by Stewart. During the vote, Chairman Stewart was actually telling the elderly supervisor how to vote…he really was bullying him. The elderly supervisor acquiesced to Stewart and voted the way he was told.
Watch this video for yourself and see how the elderly supervisor talks about how he will vote against the sewer, then Stewart loses the vote and then Stewart bullies the elderly supervisor to vote his way. As soon as Stewart rammed the vote through, he bullied the other supervisors into a quick motion to adjourn. Corey is a tyrant and is unfit to be Chairman.
2. Corey Stewart runs around the state claiming how fiscally conservative he is. Well, he is ready to put into motion the biggest corporate welfare scam in PWC’s history. He is ramming through a vote this month to put the PWC taxpayer’s on the hook to finance a 6000 – 7000 seat ball stadium next to I95 in Woodbridge for a single-A baseball team. When the stadium idea surfaced in 2011, it was being fully financed by the team’s owner and the developer. At public meetings, the owner and developer announced they were putting up $65 million dollars to fund the stadium.
Fast forward to 2017, the developer is not putting up a dime, the team’s owner is only putting up a small amount and the County will sell bonds to fund the stadium on land owned by the developer. Yep, the County will own the stadium on leased land. The 77 year old owner of the team will be signing a 30 year loan from the County. If the team owner defaults, the taxpayers of PWC will be on the hook to pay the loan. In addition, selling bonds will go against the County’s credit rating. The location of the stadium couldn’t be worse. Traffic is already a nightmare directly where they will build, there is a hospital with a helipad across the street and the I95 exit from the South is very dangerous to navigate in order to get to the new location. In addition, there will most likely be an additional $30 million in infrastructure work to try to accommodate the traffic.
Mr. Stewart has taken over $140,000 in campaign contributions from the team, the team’s owner and the original developer. Watch the news this month and you can watch Mr. Stewart once again, put the screws to the taxpayers…unless he is somehow pressured out of it. Stewart is a bought and paid for politician with no scruples or moral compass.
3. Corey Stewart’s mismanagement of the County has resulted in one of the most poorly developed municipalities in the Commonwealth. Corey literally rode the housing boom of the 2000’s all the way to the bank – his campaign coffers that is. He has raised millions of dollars from real estate developers since winning the chairmanship in 2005. In return Corey has given developers the green light to build thousands of homes and apartments, far beyond what our infrastructure can handle.
Among United States counties with more 300,000 residents, Prince William County is number 17 in population growth since 2010. Its population has increased more than a 13 percent growth since the beginning of the decade, and the County last year surpassed Virginia Beach as the 2nd largest municipality in Virginia. In 2002, Prince William’s population was 310,000. In 2016, it was 455,210 and growing.
Growth is fine. That’s not the issue. The problem is Prince William’s infrastructure has never caught up with the population boom. I could go on and on about how the rapid population growth has resulted in horrible transportation and commutes, an underfunded police force, and numerous sewer and water challenges… but I’ll use education as a simple example.
It is a well-known fact that the County has the most overcrowded classrooms in the state. Corey likes to build homes, but not schools for the kids living in those homes. Prince William has experienced average growth of 1,000 to 2,000 additional students per year for the last decade, next year’s expected projection is 2,400 students. The average elementary class size is about 23 to 24 students while the average secondary school class is beyond 30, the largest in Virginia. Corey’s over-development management has forced our over-crowded schools to use outdoor trailers as classrooms. This upcoming school year, there will be more than 200 trailers in use within the County School system. This is no way to run a County.
4. Corey Stewart is a hypocrite. The big focus of Stewart’s gubernatorial campaign was to save Virginia’s heritage. He traveled all over the state telling everyone he was a fighter and he would fight against the politically correct left and the RINOs (Republican in name only). He skillfully fooled hard working everyday Virginians who care about their heritage into believing he was a fighter for them. What he didn’t tell all those everyday hard working Virginians is that last year he was making speeches in PWC and saying just the opposite.
Case in point: Mills Godwin Middle School in Dumfries, Virginia. It was named after a Virginia Governor touted for his achievements in the community college system, and just last year was renamed the George Hampton Middle School. The renaming was being pushed by people who didn’t like the school named after Godwin, who was also known for being for segregation. And guess who was a big supporter of the name change? Yep, no other than Chairman Corey Stewart!
Here is a quote from him the day of the renaming ceremony: “A lot has changed in Prince William County since 1970 – and let me tell you something – those changes, in Prince William County, have been good…I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as we’ve become safer, as we have become more educated, as we have become more prosperous, Prince William County has also become more diverse…there’s perhaps no person in the community, or perhaps in America, that represents all of that goodness and change for the good, than Dr. George Hampton,” Pictured below and circled is Corey Stewart at the renaming ceremony. Surrounded by Democrats who some would say were rewriting history. No matter how you feel about this subject, one thing is for sure, Corey Stewart lacks integrity, he lacks character and he is a huge hypocrite.
5. Corey Stewart continuously demonstrates his lack of judgment and character in his political decisions. In 2015 there was a chance for the conservatives to take a seat from a far left, tax and spend supervisor in the Woodbridge District. We had a great candidate who is an honorable family man. Instead, Corey Stewart decided he was going to have one of his political buddies run for the seat. It turns out that his “buddy” has a very, very repugnant background. Stewart’s “buddy” moved into an apartment in Woodbridge to run for the office and Stewart used his political muscle to get people to vote this guy in as the Republican candidate. Below is a snapshot of his buddy in a disgusting rap video he made on YouTube. It was made before his “buddy” ran for office. If you would like to watch what kind of people Corey Stewart endorses for public office, watch this video…
And just to be clear, Stewart did endorse this person. Below is the endorsement which was handed out the day of the primary in Woodbridge. His “buddy” won by a little over 100 votes and then went on to lose by 30 points in the general. Birds of a feather…
There may also be signs people are catching on to Stewart. His published finances on VPAP.org show a very low level of cash on hand. See the chart below. As of June 1, 2017 Stewart had just over $195,000 in his governor and Lt. governor accounts. Of course that is before he ran the nasty TV ads on Gillespie. In his supervisor account, he had only $6419 as of the end of December. I can tell you Stewart was desperate for cash in the last couple of months before the primary. I personally received approximately three emails a day from his campaign begging me for money. We’ll see where his supervisor account is in a few weeks; he has to file again on July 17th.
Conservatives in Virginia dodged a huge bullet when Corey Stewart lost the gubernatorial primary. If he would have won the primary he most definitely would have lost in the general. Stewart lost his way as a conservative and we cannot afford to nominate this guy to any higher office.
For the record, I do not wish any ill upon Corey Stewart or his family. I have known Corey for six years and he knows me. We are not friends, but we had drinks last year in Cleveland, and he can be a very charming man. Having said that, when it comes to Stewart and higher office, Virginians would be better served if he just got out of politics altogether. If he continues to fool conservatives into voting for him in the senatorial race and he becomes the Republican nominee, we will once again lose a great opportunity to send an actual conservative to the Senate. Millions of dollars will be poured into the race, the Democrats will do their homework, and Corey Stewart will be exposed for everything he’s ever done in the last fifteen years.
Virginians deserve better. ABC…Anybody but Corey!
