2011.10.20
Poindexter and Allen campaign at Westlake businesses and on Scruggs Road
George Allen
Charles Poindexter
Republican candidates for the General Assembly are getting plenty of help campaigning this week. Gov. Bob McDonnell is in town tonight for a Ralph Smith fundraiser, and Congressmen Morgan Griffith and Robert Hurt will campaign tomorrow for Bill Stanley.
This afternoon, former Gov., former U.S. Sen. and Republican U.S. Senate candidate George Allen swung by 4-year incumbent Del. Charles Poindexter’s Westlake office to campaign around Smith Mountain Lake this afternoon.
They visited Smith Mountain Building Supply and Capps Home Building Center to talk to store employees about the effects of a slow economy on their businesses. Both politicians asked whether government regulations and energy costs had hurt their bottom line.
Capps General Manager Bruce Shelton said that new construction has slowed — with new construction permits down 30 percent even from last year. Most of the contractors using his store are doing repair and renovation work, he said.
Shelton also complained about a crackdown on docks — not just new ones, but those built years ago — in American Electric Power’s Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) under consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That comment was echoed by a contractor at Moosie’s, a Bridgewater Plaza watering hole that Allen and Poindexter visited after the building supply stores. After an initial encounter with a Roanoke County patron who questioned whether the two were buying a round, a contractor down the bar explained his take on the SMP’s effect on the local lake economy.
Poindexter also told the story of helping the bartender, Margie Arrington of Snow Creek, when her car was broken down. Poindexter said he was on his way home from Richmond about midnight and stopped by the post office when he saw she couldn’t get her car started. He said he carries wrenches in his vehicle and helped clean her cables and battery, eventually restarting the car.
The two visited the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce before heading down to knock doors in the Park Place and Montego Bay subdivisions on Scruggs Road.
