Seriously, of all the General Assembly legislative sessions we’ve covered, this has got to be the weirdest one yet. And if there was one moment that perfectly encapsulated the off-kilter nature of the proceedings, it happened during the annual Commonwealth Prayer Breakfast, which is traditionally held on the first day of the session. When the breakfast kicked off at 7am, the capitol building was already crawling with reporters anticipating the arrival of Delegate Joe Morrissey, who had won reelection the day before despite being incarcerated in a Henrico county jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. But if the attending legislators were hoping to get a respite from scandal, they were in for a surprise: an unexpected visit from ex-Governor Bob McDonnell, who days before had been sentenced to two years in prison for corruption. Making the scene even more surreal was the presence of current Governor Terry McAuliffe, who greeted his predecessor warmly and kvelled over a photo of McDonnell’s new grandchild.
So it goes in the Commonwealth’s capital circa 2015, where the fabled “Virginia way” now apparently includes legislating with a tracking bracelet on your ankle, and a term in the governor’s chair is occasionally followed by a stint in the hoosegow.
Of course, the Assembly’s ongoing soap opera is merely a distraction, and once the tabloid headlines fade the real story of this session will emerge. And that story, mark our word, will be the ongoing polarization of a body long known for its comity, and the complete inability of Virginia’s state legislators to reach meaningful compromise on almost any issue.
The reasons for this are myriad, but perhaps the single biggest factor is the increasing rightward tilt of Virginia’s Republican Party, which now controls both of the Assembly’s chambers. With a Democrat in the governor’s mansion, and facing an election year in which all 140 seats in the General Assembly will be up for grabs, Republicans have little reason to work with Democrats, and vice versa. Indeed, the first flurry of proposed legislation included all sorts of veto-bait from the majority, including a bill that would rescind the promise of in-state tuition for Virginia students who entered the U.S. illegally. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are pushing legislation favored by McAuliffe (expanding Medicaid coverage and renewing Virginia’s one-handgun-a-month law chief among them) that have no chance of making it to a vote.
So it should come as no surprise that, in the current polarized atmosphere, many veteran lawmakers are choosing to call it quits. In the months leading up to this session, three Republican senators with over a hundred years in combined service—Chuck Colgan, John Watkins and Walter Stosch—announced their retirement. Stosch is the most recent to step down, and does so after infuriating the right wing of his party by pushing Marketplace Virginia, an Obamacare alternative that would have utilized Affordable Care Act taxes to purchase insurance for hundreds of thousands of low-income Virginians.
Compare that to former Delegate Bill Janis, the first Republican to declare for Stosch’s seat, who released a statement declaring that “the next senator from the 12th District must be ready to say ‘no’ to Obamacare expansion in Virginia, ‘no’ to further encroachments on our fundamental rights, ‘no’ to the inexorable growth of government.”
No. No. No. If there’s one word that perfectly defines the current atmosphere in Richmond, that would surely be it.
Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, bi-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics.
