Verga hasn't voted in 21 of last 27 elections

The Lynchburg News and Advance is reporting that Laurence Verga, candidate for Congress in Virginia's 5th District hasn't even voted in 21 of the past 27 elections.

Laurence Verga — a real estate investor from Ivy and one of seven Republicans seeking the party’s nomination against Perriello — skipped the presidential elections of 1992, 1996 and 2000, as well as many other high-profile votes going back to the early ’90s.

Verga, 46, said he did not often participate in the political process until recently, as he found himself growing increasingly dismayed at the direction of the country under the Democrats. 

How are you qualified to represent the citizens of the 5th District if you have barely voted in your life? People like this, who refuse to participate in the political process, have ZERO right to complain about what is being done in government. ZERO.

Verga, who moved from California to Virginia in 2004, chose not to cast a ballot in the 2005 election in which Democrat Timothy M. Kaine was elected governor and Republican Bob McDonnell defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds for attorney general by a mere 323 votes. Verga also sat out the 2003 and 2007 elections in which all the seats in the General Assembly were up for grabs.

He did not vote in Virginia’s Republican presidential primary in 2008. Neither did he participate in the 2005 statewide GOP primary that chose the party’s nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

An internal Republican Party of Virginia voting history database shows every candidate in the 5th District GOP primary is designated as either a “Hard R” or a “Republican Prospect” with the one exception of Verga, who is listed as “Unidentified.”

Verga is just a bored Californian who thinks he can come to Virginia and buy his way into Congress when he has minimal qualifications to represent such a large and diverse constituency and has blatantly refused to exercise his right to vote. I hope Verga will realize this and that he immediately drops out of this race.  He has given democracy and the right to vote the middle finger and the 5th District of Virginia deserves better than that.

Chris LaCivita, strategist for Robert Hurt, a Republican state senator from Chatham and another leading candidate in the 5th District GOP primary race, said Verga’s voting participation should be a cause for concern.

“With a voting record like that, he wants 5th District voters to now vote for him so he can represent them in Washington?” LaCivita said. “That may be the way they do things in San Francisco, but it’s not the way we do things here in Virginia.”