23rd District candidate profile:  Jeff Helgeson

For Jeff Helgeson, politics is about numbers.

“I have a few degrees in finance,” he said. “I look at numbers and help with budgets,” and those are the top qualifications he lists for the House of Delegates nomination he’s seeking in the June 9 Republican primary.

Helgeson is running against Scott Garrett, another councilman, for the party’s nomination to oppose Del. Shannon Valentine in the Nov. 3 general election in District 23, which includes Lynchburg and Madison Heights.

Helgeson, who represents Ward III on City Council, has been relying on a door-to-door campaign and trying to build up support from city employees over pay cuts council made to balance the budget. “I’m a tested conservative and trusted Republican,” he said.

His sifting of Lynchburg’s budgets the past five years has been a primer for dealing with Virginia’s nearly $80 billion state budget, Helgeson said. “We’ve seen taxes increased and seen budgets overspent at the state level,” much like in the city, he said.

Dealing with those issues “is a unique skill set that I bring,” Helgeson said.

Other qualities Helgeson lists are that “I know where I stand” on the social issues many Republicans hold dear.

“I’ve been fighting for taxpayers and for fiscal responsibility” in his five years on Lynchburg City Council, he said.

He also said he believes marriage should be between one man and one woman, he would refuse to fund abortions, and “I will protect life from conception to natural death.”

He supports gun owners’ rights and says he has a concealed-weapons permit.

“I am not just a hunter and not just a sportsman, but a person who believes strongly in our right to defend ourselves,” he said. That defense includes letting people with concealed-carry permits take their guns into restaurants that sell alcohol or onto college campuses, he said.

Helgeson also outlined a pro-business stance on issues such as the smoking-in-restaurants ban the General Assembly adopted this year.

“They’ve far overstepped their bounds,” he said of lawmakers.

“I don’t go into restaurants that are nothing but smoke, but it’s a business,” he said. “The old saying is, ‘mind your own business.’”

Owners of those restaurants are “technically, legally and philosophically minding their own business,” but three establishments in Lynchburg are likely to close when the smoking ban takes effect in July, he said.

Government should restrict itself to core functions and the No. 1 function is public safety, he said, hence his efforts on council to protect employee salaries.

Infrastructure is his second priority, Helgeson said, and he advocates basic maintenance over what he feels are primarily aesthetic projects such as a roundabout on Fifth Street or improvements to Jefferson Street in Lynchburg’s downtown.

Helgeson declined to say whether there’s a third priority of core functions government should provide, although he said he supports public education “100 percent.”

Efficiency is needed in educational spending, he said. Enrollment in city schools is dropping, but the number of employees isn’t, he said.

City schools could save more than $100,000 by not replacing an assistant superintendent who retired recently, he said.

He also lamented the construction of the new Sandusky Middle School, on which the debt service of $2.5 million a year matches the property-tax increase that resulted from reassessments this year.

“Fiscal discipline says don’t spend it when you have it just because you’ve got it,” Helgeson said.

Virginia can attract new businesses that would generate more revenue, he said, and that recruitment process can become easier if the state reduces regulations and taxes that are not business-friendly.

Helgeson didn’t have any specifics on which regulations or taxes should be reduced.

A proposal Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made this year to increase the state’s cigarette tax also went against Helgeson’s philosophy.

“Most of our issues in government aren’t about lack of revenue,” he said. “Most of the time it’s about spending. We don’t allocate enough revenue to things that are truly priorities.”