Williamsburg restaurateur vies to unseat incumbent Democrat

Four years after John Miller's election to the state Senate helped propel Democrats into the majority, Republicans' strategy to take back power includes recapturing his Newport News-based seat.

The GOP candidate trying to defeat Miller is Williamsburg restaurateur Michael "Mickey" Chohany, a former city councilman who says he's qualified to get government working more like a business.

The 1st Senate District consists mostly of communities on the Peninsula but gained a portion of Suffolk in this year's legislative redistricting.

The candidates are sharply divided on whether to raise taxes and other revenues to pay for transportation improvements.

Miller supports that concept, saying other options to pay for repairs on aging roads and deteriorating bridges have been exhausted. Yet he's found little support for his proposal to incrementally raise gas and car titling taxes, and dedicate potential toll and offshore drilling revenues to roads. Bills he's filed to do that have stalled in the legislature.

There's near-universal agreement Virginia needs more road cash, but no consensus on how to generate it. One thing is clear, though: Republicans have no appetite for the gas tax approach preferred by some Democrats.

In Miller's view, any serious solution to transportation problems requires hard choices to be made now. "And the only way that we're going to be able to do it is if both sides give something up," he said.

Chohany said he isn't convinced Hampton Roads receives a fair share of transportation funds and he is therefore reluctant to consider a gas tax.

"You can't dig yourself out of this hole by throwing money at this system if you think it's not going to come back to this area," said Chohany, who favors the use of reasonable tolling and offshore drilling profits, among other things, for road funding.

His transportation ideas, like his economic pitch, echo the message of the state GOP. He favors cutting corporate taxes and establishing a tax credit for businesses that provide vocational training to new hires.

"Voters have the opportunity to send a businessman up to the General Assembly who knows how to create jobs, help the budget and cut wasteful spending," Chohany said.

He insists he's his own man.

"I will vote with my party as long as my party is voting the way my constituents in the 1st District want me to vote," he explained, describing himself as a fiscal conservative who's socially moderate.

Miller similarly casts himself as a conservative willing to break with fellow Democrats on principle. As an example, he cites his vote for a statute exempting Virginians from the insurance mandate in the federal health care law.

Making a case for re-election, Miller says he's sponsored bills to cap payday loan interest rates, a law to aid veterans with stress disorders who are charged with certain crimes, and bills to allow seniors to vote by absentee ballot as a matter of right.

"I have worked hard to improve education, to help veterans... in a bipartisan way and offered real solutions to the problems that we have," said Miller, a former broadcast journalist and congressional staffer.

While political contributions have been substantial from both parties in the 1st District contest, more intense scrutiny has fallen on another financial issue in the race: Miller's job with a Newport News aviation company.

That attention came after conservative blogger Brian Kirwin reported the company, Orion Air Group, is eligible for tax breaks under legislation Miller co-sponsored this year. The law exempts companies from paying the aircraft sales and use tax if they invest at least $4 million and create at least 50 new jobs in Virginia. The bill was introduced by Republican Sen. Tommy Norment.

A company official said there's no link between the legislation and Miller's job, and Miller said suggestions of anything untoward are a "desperate move" by political foes. At the time the bill was proposed, he said, he had no idea that he would ever work for the company.

Chohany says he didn't instigate the report.

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com