Former Democratic National Committee chair and candidate Terry McAuliffe dropped in on Roanoke City council Monday morning interrupting their budget briefing. In typical showman style McAuliffe hastened to say if he had been elected governor “you wouldn’t be worrying about revenue.”
McAuliffe still has “big ideas” saying, “when I ran for governor I said I was going to run on big ideas and if you don’t like them then don’t vote for me – and you didn’t but I had a great time doing it.” McAuliffe lost the Democratic primary to Senator Creigh Deeds.
He’s been traveling the state arriving in Roanoke Monday from Radford the night before. He was then off to Danville, Lynchburg and Charlottesville Tuesday before heading back to Northern Virginia. McAuliffe was touting his electric cars the first of which will come off the assembly line July 4. (See Article on Page 9.)
McAuliffe is looking for incentives to bring in his new plant that he says will employ 5000 people, “I’m hoping to bring it to Virginia – love to bring it to Roanoke,”
Mayor David Bowers who had a private meeting with McAuliffe for about 20 minutes said, “when you get to that bid process please contact us and see what our best offer is – we want to put it on the table.”
“If you have a good workforce and good education that will bring jobs,” said McAuliffe.
Catching up to him later he said, “We are losing business to our neighbors. We have got to start aggressively courting green technology here.” He still plans to offer the first 100,000 electric cars for $10,000. “It’s not green unless it is affordably green,” said McAuliffe.
On a side environmental note: McAuliffe did not commit to support for uranium mining in Virginia saying, “we ought to wait until the study gets done … make sure there are no issues that effect air or water – let the scientists do their work. Safety is the number one issue.”
