"Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, at one point this summer ranked fourth in the Virginia General Assembly in campaign cash.

The four-year veteran of the House of Delegates is still in the top dozen candidates for cash contributions statewide during this election cycle as $312,477 has poured into his campaign coffers. He has the third-highest total of cash raised of any candidate outside Northern Virginia.

Bell, 38, is running campaign ads that tout his success as a delegate sponsoring bills that target school bullies and drunken drivers.

Democratic challenger Steve Koleszar, a member of the Albemarle County School Board the past 10 years, is stressing state aid to education and economic issues in his bid to replace Bell.

If cash support were the only measure in the race, it would be over as Koleszar trails Bell in fundraising by a quarter of a million dollars.

Koleszar, who turned 59 on Thursday, has raised $53,314.

Del. Mitchell Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville, whose Democratic Party Road Back PAC has given Koleszar $14,169, is by far the Albemarle County Democrat’s largest contributor.

Bell’s huge money advantage, and where it is coming from, tells a story, Koleszar said.

“Rob Bell has gotten over $100,000 from developers,” the Democrat said. “Does that affect how he feels about something like impact fees? I think so.”

Koleszar said counties facing growth pressures, including Albemarle, need more tools to deal with developers. “One thing I would like to do is allow counties to enact impact fees,” he said.

“He just hasn’t addressed the issue of growth and sprawl,” Koleszar said of Bell. “He should be taking a leadership roll on these key issues instead of running his campaign on things that are totally quite safe.”

Van Yahres said Koleszar works hard as a candidate and carries a good message but is facing “a popular incumbent and that’s in a conservative district. He has a hard time raising money for that reason.”

The Democratic Party officials in Richmond who handicap House races for big donors do not rate the Bell-Koleszar contest as one of the nine or 10 in the state considered truly competitive.

“According to the people in Richmond, it’s a 43 percent Democratic district,” Koleszar said. He noted that he has won three School Board elections in Albemarle and is running on a platform of “schools, not jails,” meaning educational opportunity prevents more expensive jail options and hope should trump fear.

Despite the positive message, “If Steve were to win, I would be very surprised, but very happy,” Van Yahres said. “There’s always an outside chance.”

Bell is campaigning hard as an anti-tax incumbent taking no chances. He cites bills that he crafted and pushed to establish a statewide anti-bullying policy and to increase penalties for drunken driving and sexual assault.

Bell promises to work in the next General Assembly session to close loopholes in the sex offender registry laws, to restrict the government’s powers to seize private property and to reign in state spending.

Social issues, on which he is more conservative than Koleszar, have not been a focus of the campaign or of the questions voters usually ask him about, Bell said.

What Bell talks with voters about or discusses at five joint forums “is driven by what people ask us about,” Bell said. “If people ask us questions about taxes, we talk about taxes.”

Bell did not vote for last year’s tax package, which Gov. Mark R. Warner engineered and includes $1.4 billion in tax increases over two years.

“I thought that the tax package was not necessary,” Bell said. Koleszar “fusses at me for not voting for the tax package.”

The governor’s budget with its new taxes helped the state come closer to meeting its share of education and law enforcement funding, Koleszar said.

“Passing more laws to strengthen penalties doesn’t reduce crime” as much as better salaries for law enforcement does, the Democrat said. The governor’s budget increased pay for State Police and sheriff’s deputies.

Koleszar said Democrats have much work to do to continue climbing back toward majority status in Virginia. “The country for too long has been slipping and sliding in the conservative direction,” he said. “We’ve allowed them to take control.”

Koleszar said he challenged Bell because the Republican voted against Warner’s tax package to fund the budget, which contained new revenue for education as well.

“I’ve been advocating full funding of education at the state level,” Koleszar said.

He also advocates changing redistricting from the current partisan process to a process run by judges to take the worst partisan excesses out of the redrawing of legislative district lines.

“If you leave it in the legislature, it will always be partisan,” the Democrat said. “If you give it to the judiciary, it will be less so. They don’t have a bone in that fight.”

Virginia’s legislative districts should be carved to allow more competition, he said. “Our whole process is so broken. It’s all about fundraising. It’s all about TV ads and it’s not about substance.”

Koleszar said he is concerned that university restructuring “will be used to lower wages for University of Virginia employees, and what that will do is lower wages throughout the area.”

Bell, a lawyer who earned two degrees at UVa, has been a supporter of the university restructuring legislation." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, October 24, 2005)

Contact Bob Gibson at (434) 978-7243 or bgibson@dailyprogress.com.