N. Va. is focus of U.S. Senate hopeful

The candidate with the colorful nickname is running again.

Glenda Gail "for rail" Parker is the Independent Green candidate for the U.S. Senate seat of Sen. John W. Warner, a Republican who is retiring after 30 years.

In her previous run for the Senate in 2006, she fared the way most independent candidates do. Unable to raise money and get her message out, Parker got 1.2 percent of the vote.

This time around, she said in a telephone interview, she is more encouraged despite not been able to get around the state as much as she did in 2006. She has a full-time job as a consultant to the Justice Department and has campaigned in her spare time.

Parker said she has devoted most of her attention to Northern Virginia, where her signature issue, advocating for high-speed rail, most resonates.

Parker said the Independent Green Party stands for "common sense conservatism and for socially responsible high-speed rail in Virginia."

Virginia has the population mass to support high-speed rail, including the most advanced and expensive magnetic levitation trains, Parker said.

As a former Defense Department budget analyst, Parker said she would promote budgeting reforms in Washington that would bring more competition to government procurement. She estimated this would free about 19 percent of the federal government's $250 billion in purchasing costs to devote to high-speech rail.

"We can connect Roanoke, Richmond, Virginia Beach and the District of Columbia so that we can travel faster by train than we can by plane," she said.

Instead of bailing out Wall Street firms with a $700 billion rescue package, Congress should invest in "green" infrastructure, such as solar, wind and hydrogen technology, she said.

Parker said rail would cut the nation's addiction to oil and promote cleaner air and cleaner water. She wants a one-time federal tax incentive of 25 percent on rail-improvement projects.

In addition to promoting more rail use, Parker has promised to work to pay off the $9 trillion federal debt.

If she could draw 10 percent in tomorrow's election, Parker said it would spare her party the expensive and time-consuming task of collecting 10,000 signatures to get on the Virginia ballot and preserve more money for future campaigns.

Parker, who lives in Alexandria, is the mother of three grown children, two of whom graduated from high school in Northern Virginia. She has five grandchildren.
Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or .