Winchester Star 09/03/2008
Tate Agrees to Plea Deal

By Drew Houff - Winchester Star

Leesburg — After facing two court cases totaling 20 felony counts, former state Senate candidate Mark David Tate pleaded guilty Tuesday to two misdemeanors.

He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and fined $1,000.

Both charges were ones that he and his attorney had said he was guilty of all along.

Tate had been scheduled for trial next Monday in Loudoun County Circuit Court on six felony counts of campaign election fraud stemming from the Republican’s bid for the Virginia Senate in 2007.

Three other felonies stemming from Tate’s 2003 campaign for the 27th District Senate seat were dismissed last month by Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne because the charges exceeded the statute of limitations.

Through a plea agreement Tuesday, the remaining six felony charges were dropped and Tate admitted to two misdemeanor counts of failing to file his campaign finance forms on time during his 2007 campaign.

Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said after the hearing that Tate already does ample community service, so completing the 100 hours within 365 days should be no problem.

“He will just need to file a letter for the judge’s file with all of the work he has done,” MacMahon said.

Tate said in a separate interview Tuesday that he was unsure what forms of community service he would do to meet the terms of his sentence.

He said he performs volunteer work with the Loudoun County Arthritis Association, the Loudoun County Heart Association, and the United Way.

“Quite frankly, that is what I do,” Tate said of his volunteer work.

MacMahon said the strength of the prosecution’s case was evident in that all the felony charges were reduced to two misdemeanors in the plea agreement.

“The felony charges should never have been brought in the first place,” he said, adding that Tate accepted responsibility for his late filings of campaign finance forms.

“I am pleased I get my good name back,” Tate said, adding that he admitted to the two misdemeanor counts simply to get things finished.

“I am not a wealthy man,” the Loudoun County restaurant owner said. “I could not fight in court forever, so I have pled guilty to two misdemeanors.”

Tate added that the charges placed against him were part of “a witch hunt” by supporters of his opponent for the 2007 Republican nomination, Jill H. Vogel, who went on to win the general election.

Special prosecutor Matthew J. Britton said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he was willing to accept the plea agreement because Tate admitted that he had intentionally not filed or misfiled his campaign finance reports.

“It is an egregious, pervasive pattern of misconduct that went well beyond any slim chance of accident,” Britton said.

Laurie Letourneau, a potential witness in the case because she had alerted the Virginia State Board of Elections to Tate’s improper campaign finance filings, issued an unsolicited statement via e-mail Tuesday.

“From the beginning my interest has been only in making sure that there was a level playing field for all candidates for office,” she wrote. “My role in this was only to alert the commonwealth attorney’s office to what I believed were serious errors in one candidate’s reports that were so obvious and longstanding that they could not possibly be merely errors but rather a willful intent to mislead.”

Tate was indicted on two occasions for alleged improprieties with his campaign finance reports during the 2003 and 2007 campaigns.

He was first indicted by a Loudoun County Circuit Court grand jury in May 2007 on 11 felony counts. Those charges, which addressed the accuracy of figures in Tate’s campaign finance reports, were dropped in October with the understanding that new indictments could be issued at a later date.

In January, another Loudoun County grand jury handed down nine new felony counts against Tate.