Gary West, the Democratic challenger in the 94th House district, has joined the call for the resignation of Phil Hamilton, the Republican incumbent in the adjacent 93rd District.
Making skewed priorities a common theme of his door-to-door campaign, West is outraged that Delegate Phil Hamilton lined his own pockets with taxpayer dollars appropriated for education. “Enough is enough,” West said. “Hamilton has breached the public trust and should own up to his misconduct and resign.”
While Democrats and Republicans at the highest levels have joined forces to call for Hamilton’s resignation, West’s opponent has remained silent. Delegate Glenn Oder has taken no steps to distance himself from Hamilton and has yet to rebuke his colleague and friend. The two Newport News legislators are slated to appear together at a joint office opening event over Labor Day holiday.
Calling on Oder to put the public trust ahead of political and personal allegiance, West expressed his belief that “citizens of Newport News deserve representatives who value public service over personal gain.” West continued, “I respectfully ask Glenn Oder to put friendship and partisanship aside and do the right thing for the people by joining me in asking Phil Hamilton to resign.”
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
The question is, “Did Del. Hamilton do anything illegal?” If he did, he should be prosecuted.
Then we ask, “Did he do anything that violated the House of Delegates ethics rules?” If he did, then the ethics panel should deal with the matter.
If it is just a matter of appearance of impropriety, then is it not up to his constituents to decide whether they want to continue his employment as their Delegate? After all, there are many politicians (Barney Frank took an underage intern overseas to and had sex with him; Nancy Peloci’s husband’s company get zillions in government contracts, etc.) who have similar issues or worse, but their constituents apparently want them. On the other hand, Sen. Stevens resigned because of allegations of which he was later acquitted, depriving his constituents of their preferred Senator.
I say get the information out there, including the full text of all the email traffic between Del. Hamilton and ODU, and let his constituents decide.
It’s out there, check the va pilot and dailypress sites. the pdf is up.
Found them, Laura. Thanks.
Click to access 781.pdf
I must say, it seems like much ado about nothing. There is no hint of “If you get us this money we’ll hire you” from ODU, nor is there any hint of “I’ll get you this money if you promise to hire me” from Del. Hamilton.
From looking at his website, it looks like he is qualified for the job:
Mouse, sometimes you are really funny. I mean – you know more than all of the folks who have called for Hamilton’s resignation, including (but not limited to) Bob McDonnell, Creigh Deeds, Bill Bolling, Jody Wagner, Steve Shannon, Pat Mullins, the Virginian-Pilot, the Roanoke Times, and the Richmond Dispatch.
Dude – if you think you can look at 3 pages of what I read somewhere was a 5″ stack of emails and come to the conclusion that it’s “much ado about nothing,” I think Hamilton needs to hire you. Seriously.
I’m sorry. I said that “the full text of all the email traffic between Del. Hamilton and ODU” should be released, and Laura said, “It’s out there, check the va pilot and dailypress sites. the pdf is up.” I assumed that that PDF was, as I said, the FULL TEXT of ALL the email.
So now we have two questions for the Pilot:
1) Why didn’t you release ALL the emails you got?
2) Why did you release those that were not particularly incriminating?
These so-called “news” organizations get this information because of the public’s purported “right to know,” then they don’t show the public what they got. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Viv,
It’s simpler than that. The stack of documents is the size of a ream of paper. But the one e-mail where Hamilton inquires about a job with the program, BEFORE he’s put in the budget amendment and says he’d like some clarification on the matter before session starts is all that’s really necessary to know that he violated the Assembly’s ethics standards. That e-mail doesn’t present the appearance of a conflict of interest, it IS a conflict of interest.
“I think Hamilton needs to hire you. Seriously”
You’ve hit on a salient point, that has exposed Mouse’s disposition. Anyone that reads those emails, and claims its “much ado about nothing” is working for the candidate, the RPV and has exposed themselves for ridicule.
Good to see Gary West stepping up and doing the right thing. Funny that his opponent, GLenn Oder hasn’t done the right thing, about this, or anything else. Oder needs to go! BIG TIME!