"Taxes have moved to the forefront of Virginia's Senate race, with Republican Sen. George Allen accusing Democrat James Webb of plotting to raise taxes on millions of Virginians.

Allen made the allegations at the candidates' final debate Monday and is repeating them in a statewide television commercial. But the accusations are based almost entirely on Webb's support from national Democratic leaders and on two vague statements by Webb questioning whether Congress should make federal tax cuts permanent.

Webb, who has never run for public office or cast a vote on taxes, has angrily denied the charge and on Tuesday began airing a commercial defending his views. The Democrat's ad also examines Allen's voting history to accuse him of raising taxes on retirement savings, increasing the cost of tuition and giving tax breaks to oil companies. Webb also told reporters which tax cuts he would keep and what tax loopholes he would consider closing.

"This is one more chapter in this ongoing saga about taxes in Virginia now," said Virginia Commonwealth University professor Robert D. Holsworth. "What the senator is doing is to paint Webb as a knee-jerk, liberal tax-and-spender. What Webb wants to suggest is that his position is far more nuanced."

Taxes have been at the heart of political struggles in Virginia since 2000. The issue has divided the state's Republican Party as its members struggle to finance government operations and road-building. And it has dominated most of the statewide elections.

But it has not always been successful for the state's Republicans. Former attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore (R) opened his first gubernatorial debate with Democrat Timothy M. Kaine last year by warning voters, "You can take to the bank what he's going to do: He's going to raise your taxes." Kilgore lost.

In the current campaign, Allen is hoping to do better, putting Webb on the defensive with an ad that says Webb will "bring back the death tax, the marriage penalty tax and cut the child tax credit from $1,000 to $500."

Those charges are based on comments Webb made about the tax cut package enacted during President Bush's first term, including tax breaks for parents, married couples, investors and many businesses. During an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" program, Webb said he would seek to roll back "some" of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy but didn't elaborate. In a blog interview, with http://MyDD.com , he questioned the wisdom of cutting taxes while paying for a costly war and wrote that "the tax cuts that come up for renewal in '08 -- I would want to take a very hard look at that."

Allen campaign aides Tuesday stood by their charges against Webb, saying that they are fair extrapolations from Webb's comments and his links to such national Democratic leaders as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), whom they described as favoring higher taxes. Allen declined to be interviewed.

"When [Webb] goes out and talks about taxes, he attacks the tax relief plan," said Allen spokesman Dan Allen, who is not related to the senator. "When you're talking about rolling back tax cuts . . . you are talking about a tax increase."

In a meeting with reporters yesterday, Webb accused Allen of misrepresenting his view on taxes. "What they have done in those ads is taken a statement or statements I made in a general way, saying the extensions of the Bush tax cut should be looked at, and [Allen's campaign] applied them to every single tax," Webb said.

Webb also said he opposes raising taxes "that affect a broad swath of Americans," including proposals to reverse efforts to close the so-called marriage penalty.

"I have not talked about going after them," he said.

Webb said he also supports President Bush's plan to reduce taxes on small and middle-sized estates, but he thinks it is all right to tax multimillion-dollar estates. But Webb, who frequently rails against the size of the federal budget deficit, conceded that "more revenues" are needed to finance the war in Iraq and pay down the debt.

"The area I would strongly focus on right now -- and I feel very strongly on this -- is the corporate tax structure," Webb said. "Not to raise rates, per se, but to examine all the loopholes built into the corporate tax code -- and there are a lot of them."

Webb has embraced a populist economic philosophy that includes bridging the gap between the rich and the working class. On Tuesday, he referenced a report by the Citizens for Tax Justice that states 46 of the Fortune 500 companies pay no taxes.

"In terms of how you begin to fix the problems of the tax structure, there are loopholes that exist that will throw billions of dollars of income back in before we have to look at anything else," said Webb, who added that some companies receive tax breaks when they relocate jobs overseas.

Holsworth said Webb has invited some of the Allen attacks by adopting a more populist tone than many of the state's recently successful Democrats. Kaine and former governor Mark R. Warner (D) often talked more about personal responsibility than economic justice.

"On economics, Jim Webb sounds more like [former vice presidential candidate] John Edwards than Mark Warner," Holsworth said.

But like Kaine and Warner, Webb walks a careful line when it comes to taxes. At the news conference, Webb declined to be boxed into a "no-new tax" pledge, saying he isn't ruling anything out if he is elected.

Webb's accusations about Allen in the commercial that aired Tuesday are based on votes Allen took in the past six years in the Senate and on comments he has made in newspaper articles while a public official.

Dan Allen, the senator's spokesman, offered specific rebuttals to Webb's ad: He cited numerous votes Allen made to increase tuition assistance, pass the Pension Protection Act of 2005 and vote for bipartisan tax breaks to encourage production of renewable fuels.

Allen described Webb's ad as a "baseless attack" that will not work with voters. "George Allen has a past record. Everyone knows he helped lower taxes as governor," Allen said. "It's going to fall on deaf ears."" (Michael D. Shear and Tim Craig, The Washington Post, October 11, 2006)

Editor's Note: An index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html