Chase relies on green grass roots as money flows to her 87th District opponent

When Virginia’s redistricting process created three new electoral districts in Loudoun County earlier this year, an energized Republican Party produced plenty of candidates to populate the new seats.

In both Senate District 13 and House District 10, three Republicans are in primary races to contest one unopposed Democrat in November.

But while the Republican organization held spirited debates last week in both of those races, there was no debate in House of Delegates District 87.

The 87th reflects the new order in eastern Loudoun politics. It encompasses Potomac Falls, Stone Ridge, Brambleton, South Riding, and several developments in the Route 15 corridor that didn’t exist 10 years ago.

Like the candidates in other new districts, the two Republicans who seek the nomination for state delegate in the 87th are staunch conservatives, one with Tea Party bona fides. Neither was born in the continental United States. Both hope to face unopposed Democrat Mike Kondratick in the general election.

So, with the election less than a week away, why hadn’t they engaged in a party debate?

Jo-Ann Chase of Brambleton, a Tea Party candidate born in Puerto Rico, says her opponent, David Ramadan, wanted their debate to be held within the confines of the Loudoun County Republican Committee (LCRC). "My opponent wanted the debate to be held only in one [closed] location," Chase says. "All the others were held at open locations." 

Chase says she insisted that the debate in the 87th district should be the same as the other contested races in her party. "What is different about me, other than I am a woman and a Hispanic?" she says. "I had a problem with that. I wanted my opportunity to be equal: not better, not worse, but equal. Obviously, the other side won."

Howie Lind, Republican Party Chair for the 10th Congressional District, said late this week he was still trying to schedule a debate in the 87th, possibly at a previously scheduled meeting of the LCRC on Aug. 22, but the date didn't jell. Lind confirmed that Ramadan wanted to debate only "in conjunction with an LCRC meeting. 

"They are two separate things," Lind said. "One's a committee meeting; one's a debate. It would not have been optimal to rush through the business at the committee meeting" to make time for a debate. As of Aug. 19, with three days left before the election, it appears the candidates will not debate in the 87th, Lind said. 

So Chase, a lifelong Republican loyalist, finds herself in a lopsided contest between a candidate who has plenty of campaign "green" -- money -- and one for whom campaign “green” represents the grass along the median of the wide boulevards through Brambleton, where campaign signs are grouped around her house. 

She has a strong endorsement from Va. Del. Bob Marshall, her mentor, but watched from the wings when party regulars flocked to an Aug. 10 cocktail-hour fundraiser for Ramadan held outside the 87th District in Leesburg. Former Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese introduced Ramadan to a throng of supporters and candidates that included Loudoun County Commonwealth Attorney, Jim Plowman. 

The Chase campaign also suffered through a well-blogged account of a private investigator alleged to have visited a South Carolina courthouse to sift through a long-dormant case file from her divorce many years ago. 

But the Chase campaign may have contributed to the distance between the two Republican camps in the 87th after some Chase supporters created a distraction an hour before Ramadan’s triumphant fundraiser at Tuscarora Mill. They staged a demonstration across the street at the Loudoun County government center, carrying signs suggesting Ramadan’s Lebanese roots had not been adequately sorted out.

This week, Chase says she accepts the probable outcome of an election decided by money. According to figures computed through Aug. 10 by the Virginia Public Access Project, Ramadan has raised ten times more than Chase: his $252,775 total includes 124 cash donors with two for $50,000 each and 49 for less than $100 each. Her $25,424 total includes 151 cash donors, the largest for $1,000 and 108 for less than $100.

Chase accepted $300 from Ron Speakman, a candidate for Loudoun County sheriff whose bid for office ended at a Republican convention last month. He has since announced he will run as an Independent.

Ramadan’s list of donors includes McLean lobbying firms Alcalde and Fay and Edward J. Newberry of Patton Boggs; Republican loyalist Jo Thoburn of Reston and Glade Hill, and Great Falls developer C. Daniel Clemente. 

"If spending is a reflection of who wins and who loses, that is a little bit of a difference" in the candidates, Chase said. 

Chase named five political values that guide her quest for political office: defense of the right to life, traditional marriage, the rule of law,  2nd Amendment rights, and fiscal conservation. If the Republican primary contest in the 87th is determined by money, Chase said, “I will lose knowing I was here for the people.”

“You have to be cause-driven,” she said. "You get a lot of people in politics who are paid."

If elected, Chase wants to eliminate waste in state spending by identifying duplication among agencies and by delegating work to the private sector. "I am against taxes and I am against fees," she says.

When she decided to run, Chase says she told Speaker of the House William Howell that "There is no price. Nobody can buy me. Money doesn't make me and it doesn't break me. I don't want any. All that I want is to be given a fair opportunity.

"I will speak the truth. I am not going to go along to get along, to pass along, to spend along, to lie along, and to cheat along. I am not going to do that." Chase says she is guided by, and answers to, her Christian faith. “My faith is going to guide how I do things,” she says. “I am a Christian woman, and I want to put that out there, even though I am being smacked around about it, and told that politics doesn’t mix with religion.

 "The faith that you have makes you or breaks you. If it’s a good faith – if you have a faith that is about goodness to others, that is about contributing to your fellow man and society -- then that’s who you are. If you come from a faith that is about killing people, destroying ways of life, I don’t think that is a good faith," says Chase. 

"Who we are with our relationship with our God is definitely part of the component of a candidate running for any office. That is my position and it has been forever. It has always been there," she said. "I am a Christian. I want that to be understood in this race. It is a component of what is going on in this race. No matter what other people want to say about it, I know it, and I am living it.

"I will stand for all those conservative values of families and children and society. As far as the fiscal component of my life, I am very frugal. I have always saved money. That's how I have been able to survive in a real estate market when you don't sell a house for two or three months," she says.

Chase says she favors "legal immigration." 

"Right now, we have a law on the books that clearly stipulates the way we are supposed to come into this country, and we have to obey that," Chase says. "I don't believe in many deviations from that -- which has cost me a lot of problems with a lot of the Hispanic community. That's a very controversial issue, and for a Hispanic to have that position, you're a minority within the minorities. That's another place I get banged around, too."

After moving to the continental United States at 19, Chase:

• Attended Trinity (College) University in Washington, DC, volunteered for numerous senatorial campaigns, and was a delegate for Col. Oliver North.

• Ran for the local school board in South Carolina, where she lived in Columbia, in U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s district. She chaired the Hispanic Outreach Committee for the South Carolina Republican Party, and was appointed by Gov. Mark Sanford to the Economic Development Task Force. 

• Moved to Virginia in 2001 and joined the Loudoun County Republican Committee. 

• Serves on a Hispanic Advisory Board for U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10th).

• Was vice chair of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Virginia.

• Ran for the State Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia in 2008 at the suggestion of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and won the first of three seats in a six-way contest.

• Runs her own real estate company, Exclusive Realty in Ashburn

• Lives in Brambleton.