"Democrat Al Weed and 5th District Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount, disagreed often on issues and snapped off a few personal jabs Wednesday in front of a standing-room-only Albemarle County crowd of about 200 people.

Implying that the Republican is a professional politician, Weed questioned how good a lawyer Goode was if he made more money as a state senator before winning a 1996 election to Congress. Goode said he made about $20,000 in his last year as a practicing lawyer before entering Congress.

Goode shot back that Weed, a vintner, must not make high quality wine if a Charlottesville weekly newspaper that otherwise supports him thinks little of his product.

Two-thirds of the crowd that packed the Northside Library meeting room at Albemarle Square loudly applauded Weed and cheered and clapped when Goode said, “If you want to legalize gay marriage and homosexual unions, you ought to vote for Al Weed.”

Much of the rest of the room cheered when Goode added, “However, if you believe that marriage ought to be a union between one man and one woman, you ought to vote for Virgil Goode.” He said he co-sponsored the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and would continue to vote for that as he did last week.

Weed, who has a gay daughter, supports civil unions for gay couples. He said prior to Wednesday’s forum that he wants his daughter to have the same rights as his married son.

At the forum, Weed called Goode’s words on the subject an “opportunistic appeal to the innate bigotry that tempts all of us.” He said the congressman makes a big point of opposing gay marriage and says the unions would “destroy Social Security. … This is alarmist claptrap for which there are no supporting data.”

The core difference between them, Weed said, “is his belief that it is acceptable to use public stigmatizing to exclude a whole class of Americans from enjoying full rights.”

A graduate of Yale and Princeton universities, Weed said that even if many gay Americans “entered into legal marriages, and the surviving spouse were to claim survivor benefits, why should they be denied the same Social Security benefits as others can claim? Is this not the core of the argument?”

Goode, a graduate of the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia law school, disagreed with Weed on the war in Iraq, which the Democrat referred to as “the failed war,” on foreign aid, which Goode said he would slash, and on abortion, which the Republican opposes while Weed supports a woman’s right to choose.

Weed, a Nelson County Democrat who founded Mountain Cove Vineyards in 1973, said Goode has sponsored seven amendments to the Constitution and “would use the Constitution as a Christmas tree for his posturing, radical right-wing views.”

Noting that Goode often calls him a liberal, Weed said, “Conservatives used to revere the U.S. Constitution. Seems that only ‘liberals’ are saying that these days.”

Sponsored by the Senior Statesmen of Virginia, Wednesday’s event was the second of eight forums both candidates have agreed to attend across the sprawling Greene County-to-Danville district in the three weeks before the Nov. 2 election.

A question-and-answer session highlighted major differences between the two on health care issues.

Goode said health care costs could be cut by tort reform and refundable tax credits of $1,000 for individuals and $3,000 for families to assist with the cost of private health insurance.

The GOP congressman supports $250,000 caps on pain and suffering awards and punitive damages in medical malpractice cases.

“I talk to doctors every day who just can’t wait until they stop practice because they have to spend so much time, so much of their practice, in getting the funds to pay for their malpractice insurance,” Goode said. A Martinsville doctor told Goode that the first 500 baby deliveries he makes a year pay the $75,000 annual premium for his malpractice insurance, the congressman said.

Weed pledged to work to expand Medicaid to cover all Americans for health care and prescription drugs in a single-payer system.

“Every other industrialized country in the world has this, but Virgil and his pals in the drug and health insurance industry will try to persuade you that health care justice and efficiency is a socialized plot,” Weed said. “I believe you can think for yourselves.”

The candidates agreed on two things. Each supports the right of Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada and each agrees that the two of them are, as Weed put it, “very different.”" (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, October 14, 2004)

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

Editor's Note: See also, Opening Statement by Al Weed at the Senior Statesman of Virginia Candidate Forum.