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Virginia Governors Project
'A sea change' in Virginia
State legislature has undergone sweeping changes in operations and culture in less than a decade
By Michael Hardy and Pamela Stallsmith
Times-Dispatch Staff Writers
The Richmond Times-Dispatch July 25, 2004
Ethics scandals. Nonstop fund raising for megadollar campaigns. No-holds-barred partisanship. Deterioration of camaraderie.
Those flaws describe not just the Washington political scene but are also fit descriptions of the Virginia General Assembly and its once-sterling reputation for clean and efficient governance.
In less than a decade, the assembly has undergone a complete change in its operations and culture, judging from comments at a two-day symposium last week that examined the recent history of the oldest legislature in the New World.
Republicans made history in taking over the assembly from Democrats, technology has transformed lawmaking, thousands of bills inundate legislators every year, and just this year the assembly took a record four months to produce a state budget.
And to top off the dramatically changed landscape, lawmakers will be working in makeshift chambers as the state Capitol is renovated for the 2007 celebration of Jamestown's 400th anniversary.
"There's been a sea change in Virginia politics," said House Appropriations Chairman Vincent F. Callahan Jr., R-Fairfax, who was first elected a delegate in 1968.
But at the same time, Republicans have generated more news through scandals, from eavesdropping on Democrats' phone calls to a sexual-harassment scandal that forced the resignation of the first GOP speaker of the House.
"The challenge for Republicans is to show we can lead," said House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, who replaced disgraced S. Vance Wilkins Jr. of Amherst two years ago.
Howell and Callahan joined a score of lawmakers - past and present - who participated last week in the two-day examination of the assembly. The Richmond gathering was presented by the University of Virginia Center for Politics and the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Panelists discussed and reminisced on the role of citizen legislators and their influences, the frayed civility both within and between the parties, and the future course of the legislature.
Asked about the expectations of his constituents, former state Sen. Joseph V. Gartlan Jr., a Fairfax County Democrat, declared, "I don't think they knew what I was going to do ... not surprising because I didn't know myself."
For example, Gartlan said he was tutored on mental-health issues by his wife, Fredona, a member of the local community-services board. His major accomplishments on environmental cleanup grew out of family vacations in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay.
One veteran Democrat traced the party's decline back a half-century, to its unrelenting opposition to school desegregation after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed the "separate but equal" doctrine.
The Byrd organization that then dominated Virginia stubbornly - and unsuccessfully - launched its Massive Resistance against court-ordered desegregation. The fight of the organization, led by then-U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., helped put in motion the Democrats' eventual loss of power.
Clifton A. Woodrum, who represented Roanoke in the House for 25 years until he decided to retire last year, decried the Byrd organization's adherence to Massive Resistance as "morally wrongly and politically stupid."
"The seeds of the Democrats' failure were sown in the intransigence of the Byrd machine in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and we lost some of our people at the precinct level," Woodrum said.
Virginia's first Republican governor of the 20th century, Linwood Holton, won the governor's race in 1969 in part because of feuding in the Democratic Party, said Senate Finance Chairman John H. Chichester, R-Stafford, a member since 1978 and a one-time Democrat.
William P. Robinson Jr., a former chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and a Democrat who represented Norfolk in the House for nearly a quarter-century, pointed to the move to single-member districts in 1981 from multimember districts as the cause for the Democrats' decline.
But the person whom many credit with the Republican ascendancy was unmentioned until former Senate Majority Leader Hunter B. Andrews of Hampton, a Democrat, acknowledged Wilkins' efforts in bolstering the GOP.
Then, Republicans touted the former speaker's political successes.
"Vance Wilkins worked tirelessly recruiting candidates and raising money" across Virginia, Howell said. He also credited former Govs. George Allen and Jim Gilmore for their work in building the GOP.
Jerrauld C. Jones represented Norfolk in the House for 15 years before joining the Warner administration as the director of the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Jones said that when he arrived in Richmond in January 1988, "the legislature was grayer, it was more male, it was still somewhat rooted in Virginia's past, and Speaker [A.L.] Philpott was still smoking on the rostrum, which I don't think you could get away with now."
A handful of lawmakers controlled the levers. That has changed over the past two decades, Jones said. "Power and authority are more diffuse in the House, and that's probably a good thing."
The Republican leadership's iron-fisted control of the assembly sometimes has given way to ineptitude and chaos.
In the aftermath of this year's budget debacle, an embarrassed assembly recently had to return for another special session to fix a major flaw in a bill that could have wreaked havoc on businesses from hotels to power plants.
"The dirty little secret," confided Del. Bradley P. Marrs, R-Richmond, "is that many bills get through with mistakes in them. We often correct them the next year." He called for limiting the number of bills to give lawmakers more time to focus on legislation.
Besides the soured relationships and intensely partisan culture in the assembly, there is also greater scrutiny by the media on the prowl for scandals.
"After Watergate, the relationship changed subtly but still changed," said former Del. A.R. "Pete" Giesen Jr., a Republican who represented the central Shenandoah Valley.
After a day of work, he said, legislators and reporters used to socialize. "What was said was on background and was not reported or attributed [to a lawmaker]. A subtle difference developed between the 1960s and 1970s."
The escalating cost of campaigning has grown exponentially over the past several decades and, some lawmakers predict, threatens to put elected office out of the reach of ordinary citizens as legislative races easily exceed $300,000.
That wasn't always the case. In their first races in 1963, both Andrews and Callahan said they spent less than $5,000. Howell's first House race in 1987 cost about $30,000, while Woodrum spent about $28,000 on his initial legislative bid in 1979.
"And I thought that was way too much," Woodrum recalled.
While the workload steadily increases, so do the demands on the 140 citizen legislators.
"We are a part-time legislature. We are full-time legislators," said state Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach.
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Copyright © 2002 U.Va. Center for Politics. All rights reserved.
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