The Richmond Times Dispatch described the recent struggle for the Republican nomination for the 27th District seat in the Virginia State Senate as "one of the state's nastiest contests." Sources generally describe former Middleburg Vice Mayor and restaurant owner Mark Tate and Warrenton-based former national GOP legal counsel Jill Holtzman Vogel as birds of a feather on "the issues:" anti-tax, pro-Bush, anti-Roe v. Wade, anti-immigration, pro-"family values," right-wing Christian, "traditional" conservative Republicans. By the end of the campaign, however, tactics had degenerated to the point of Tate supporters distributing copies of a 2001 petition for divorce, in which Alexander Vogel's ex-wife accuses "JH" of adultery; and Holtzman Vogel supporters charging that Tate was not only a fraud and a liar, but an "enemy" of the Republican party.

The rhetoric appears to have escalated to nasty after a Vogel supporter, Laurie LeTourneau of Winchester, accused Tate of irregularities and deliberate deception in his reporting of campaign contributions. Described in the press as only "a Vogel supporter" or "campaign volunteer" or sometimes as "Vogel's babysitter," LeTourneau remained something of a mystery. All accounts, however, confirm that officials at the Virginia State Board of Elections took LeTourneau's complaints seriously and suggested that she take her concerns and documentation to the Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney, Jim Plowman.

Plowman, a publicly declared Vogel supporter, recused himself and put LeTourneau's complaint into the hands of Matthew Britton, King George County Commonwealth's Attorney. Britton, in turn, took LeTourneau's charges to a Grand Jury and obtained indictments against Tate for perjury and campaign fraud, just weeks prior to the Republican Primary.

With Vogel and her supporters claiming that she had nothing to do with LeTourneau's complaint, and the Tate campaign insisting that the charges against him were a trumped-up rehash of clerical errors, driven by Vogel and a cabal of national, state, and local GOP officials and their cronies, bloggers and the traditional political press had a field day. In the end, Vogel defeated Tate by some 30 percentage points in a low-turnout election, with Tate receiving a majority of votes only in his home county, Loudoun.

Who is Laurie LeTourneau?

Laurie LeTourneau, who recently moved to Virginia from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, was, it seems, neither a simple "volunteer" nor Vogel's "babysitter," but a well-known and highly effective conservative Catholic political operative and organizer from Massachusetts. Her photograph, speaking at a mass rally in Worcester, Massachusetts, appears in a February 8, 2004, Time/CNN story by John Cloud, entitled, "The Battle Over Gay Marriage," posted on the Time.com website. The Vogel campaign also used her photograph, just above a picture of the Vogel family, on one of Jill Holtzman Vogel's direct mail pieces. She served on the board of the pro-life Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), which, in 2002, recognized her with its "Citizenship" award. According to MFI's press release, LeTourneau founded "a political action committee dedicated to electing pro-life legislators" and hosted "Close to Home," a pro-life, pro-family local TV show. She co-founded and then chaired the Life Action League of Massachusetts, which strongly supported President George W. Bush's anti-stem-cell-research initiatives and, as recently as June 9, sponsored a "prayer vigil" on the future site of a Planned Parenthood facility in Worcester. LeTourneau also served as a Counselor at "Problem Pregnancy," an "abortion alternative" organization that maintained offices next door to Planned Parenthood's Worcester offices.

The Worcester Telegram and Gazette credited her with playing a key role in the Roman Catholic Church's 2002 ouster of the Rev. Chester J. Devlin, who headed the "Respect for Life" office for the Diocese of Worcester. LeTourneau, according to the Worcester paper, had complained that "many people in the 'pro-life movement' had been unhappy with the way Rev. Devlin directed the diocese's anti-abortion efforts." Devlin's bishop, Daniel P. Reilly, cited allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor as the reasons for Devlin's reassignment. In January 2005, the Telegram and Gazette's Dianne Williamson editorialized about LeTourneau, whom she described as "a local anti-gay activist who said she's moving to Virginia because Massachusetts has become a 'cesspool' of immorality." Admitting that she was no fan of LeTourneau, and that she considered her "a hatemongering zealot who pushes intolerance to new levels," Williamson published the text of a letter from LeTourneau to a 16-year-old female student at St. Peter-Marian High School. According to Williamson, "Letourneau and her group, Mass Voices for Traditional Marriage, organized a rally at St. Peter-Marian to ban gay marriage in Massachusetts. The students were upset that their school hosted the rally because some of their friends are gay, so they decided to put their education to good use by taking the time to articulate their views in a letter."

Williamson quoted passages from LeTourneau's response to the student's "painfully polite" letter in full. "I shall give this to the Bishop tomorrow," one passage began. "Where are your guts ... you poor sad creatures ... don't you know anything about your religion? Duh ... sex outside marriage is a sin!! Try reading the catechism and actually learning about homosexuals learned behavior. I am fed up with twerps who don't have the brains to come in out of the rain. Try studying before you shoot your little ignorant mouths off. This will be given to the media and the Supt. and the principal and maybe they can actually teach you something. Your (sic) are really sad people and I would be so ashamed as a parent if I had not done a better job rearing children ..." Williamson, noting that she was happy LeTourneau was leaving the Bay State, concluded, "That letter said more about her than I ever could."

Her paper later quoted LeTourneau's parting shot as she left Massachusetts: "This place is a cesspool. It's pathetic. We have an ineffective Church and a bunch of wimps in the legislature."

Rumors now abound that the former Senator from the 27th, Republican Russ Potts, will support a Democrat, Shenandoah University professor Karen Schulz, in the general election. Democrats, for the most part, appear to have simply enjoyed watching the brawl from the sidelines, a fight described in more than one blog as: "Republicans Eat Their Young."