* Marro drops out of Senate race

By Candace Sipos -- csipos@nvdaily.com

WINCHESTER-- Donald C. Marro, an independent candidate for the 27th District state Senate race, has dropped out days before the November election.

In a news release issued Sunday, Marro said he had "no groundswell of support for an issues campaign from the press ... the people, or the Parties." He claimed that the press, except for the Clarke Daily News website, "supports money politics," the people "were either indifferent to me or perhaps even to any opposition candidate that doesn't titillate or intimidate," and the Democratic Party is not like it used to be.

According to the release, he entered the race to give Republican Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel some competition. He spoke out against her experience, saying she was "a freshman senator who won by a whisker," and her policies.

Her "first term achievements were to turn back the clock on women's reproductive rights, deny healthcare to the disadvantaged and pander to NRA extremists who just can't have enough weaponry in enough places to really feel really safe," the release states.

Marro lost to Vogel in 2007, when he spent almost $29,000 of his own money and took out of a loan totaling more than $22,000, according to the Virginia Public Access Project's website. He received almost 2,200 votes, or about 4 percent. The race was close between the two other candidates, with Vogel taking 48 percent of the vote and Democratic candidate Karen Schultz winning 47 percent.

Marro also said that Democratic candidate Shaun Broy is young and "has no meaningful professional experience" but he's smart and training has helped him quickly. However, Marro claimed that the Democratic Party only went through the motions with the candidate instead of working harder to promote him.

"I made it my business to make a race if I could so he could," Marro wrote, but that race is over for him now.

Balloting takes place on Nov. 8

For more on this breaking story, visit nvdaily.com or read Tuesday's issue of The Northern Virginia Daily.
--