You'd think falling behind in the race, and thus out of favor with her constituents, would make Thelma Drake down play her anti-constituent plans for oil drilling right off her district's coast. (potential oil drilling area shown in pictured map)
"This shows us the resource is there," said Virginia Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Norfolk, a member of the House Resources Committee and an outspoken drilling advocate. "Certainly the need is greater now than ever before to not have this resource concentrated in one geographic area. We need geographic diversity."...
Drake, whose district includes Virginia Beach, said the Chevron find could spur momentum in Congress to consider more offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy strategy.
"I think this helps us to get very comprehensive reform through," she said. "I'm optimistic we might have something by the end of the year."
Well, perhaps it could be the last thing she works on as a congressman.
Only the "HA" part of that is true, and only if you meant it ironically. Yeah, we would lose the tourism part of our income, but it would not be replaced with the tax revenues from Chevron (always providing they could find any oil in the area), who's very busy fending off the greedy guts in Congress who'd, conveniently, "forgot" to write in a little provision that taxes ought to be paid, once one's income rose to indecent levels...
And there's no guarantee that she'd lease the "environment-trashing rights" to Chevron... It could be BP :)