Sadly, I’ve been around long enough to have known Harry Parrish, Hal Pal’s dad, who was a Manassas City Councilman and then Mayor of Manassas before he was elected to the House of Delegates in 1982 where he served until he died in 2006. \u00a0I guess this is a “back then” kind of thought but I never remember Harry as controversial or supporting anything except what was best for his constituents which included focusing on transportation and schools. \u00a0Social issues were hardly a blip. \u00a0But the “new” GOP epitomizes Hal Pal’s campaign and his future with the state GOP. \u00a0It is built on amping up the electorate using hot button social issues such as women’s health and guns. \u00a0Hal Pal has demonstrated these interests through his vote for special use permits for women’s health clinics in Manassas as tie-breaker Mayor and the amazing financial support he is receiving from the NRA. \u00a0But Hal Pal thinks that he IS his father. \u00a0He has followed his father’s political paradigm and is, therefore, the natural heir apparent to state office.<\/p>\n
But Hal Pal is no Harry. \u00a0No matter how soft spoken or gentlemanly he presents himself, if challenged, he will turn “ugly” as one constituent told me. He does not like confrontation which is unfortunate for constituents but good news for the NRA, the Bob Marshall crowd and other groups who will be pulling Hal Pal’s strings. \u00a0A puppet of the extreme right is how to characterize Hal Pal. And I suspect this is all part of Hal Pal’s “big plan” just waiting for Chuck Colgan to retire. \u00a0Certainly, Hal Pal is no Chuck Colgan who in spite of voting sometimes against my interests, at least had the integrity to defend his positions. \u00a0I guess that’s exactly what is lacking with Hal Pal: \u00a0Integrity. \u00a0None. \u00a0Zero.<\/p>\n
While running for office, Harry was endorsed by the Washington Post. \u00a0Hal Pal should be examining himself and wonder why he could not earn that endorsement. \u00a0I’m sure that many readers will say, “Well, The Post always endorses Democrats.” \u00a0If you review just this year’s endorsements, you will find that to be untrue. \u00a0Hal Pal is no Harry Parrish. \u00a0He never can be. \u00a0We cannot trust Hal Pal because he has sold his soul to the GOP machine. \u00a0Hal Pal changed in order to go for the gold ring and leave us all behind. He has not earned the right to represent us.<\/p>\n
Or maybe I was naive and never really knew Hal Pal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sadly, I’ve been around long enough to have known Harry Parrish, Hal Pal’s dad, who was a Manassas City Councilman and then Mayor of Manassas before he was elected to the House of Delegates in 1982 where he served until he died in 2006. \u00a0I guess this is a “back then” kind of thought but I never remember Harry as controversial or supporting anything except what was best for his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halparrish"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}