Please split up my 'community of interest'

It's redistricting time.

The General Assembly meets next month to draw the new lines for the state's 11 Congressional districts, 100 House of Delegates district and 40 State Senate districts.

This year we've had an appetizer, since the governor's commission on redistricting (which only has advisory status), college students participating in a redistricting contest, and the incumbent members of Congress have given us sneak peeks at maps they like.

To no one's surprise, the plan the congressmen came up with protects all 11 incumbents, which requires at least two egregious gerrymanders: the continuation of the snake-like 3rd District which winds its way down I-64 in search of African-American voters, and a new "Gerry-mander" in the 11th to give Rep. Gerry Connolly a more Democratic district than the one he almost lost last November.

The other maps are more interesting because they try to create compact, contiguous districts without regard for politics and try to keep "communities of interest" intact. (That's not something the congressmen care about, they created a 5th District that includes Danville and parts of Loudoun County).

That was one of the governor's charges to his commission. It also echoes the major concern I've always heard expressed by local government leaders, and by voters, in the previous rounds of redistricting. "I just hope they don't split up my city/county."

That concern is very important to people. But I've never understood why.

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Choppy seas ahead - The 2011 General Assembly

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride."
                                                                   Bette Davis
                                                                    "All About Eve"

The late Ms. Davis would have enjoyed the upcoming session of the General Assembly.

Because 2011 promises to be a turbulent year in the legislature.

Since this is a redistricting year, there was little chance 2011 would be a placid year on Capitol Square.

But the national rise of the Tea Party, including its Virginia darling, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, has assured the year will feature pitched partisan warfare on other topics as well.

On redistricting we're on uncharted ground. For the first time, the state's Congressional and legislative districts will be redrawn with one party controlling the  House and the other controlling the Senate. There's no telling where that could lead.

Congressional redistricting shouldn't be too hard. Incumbents usually hammer something out between themselves and hand it to the General Assembly. In any case, Republicans won so many seats this year (8 of 11), that it would be impossible to protect them all in redistricting. The 2nd and 4th District may become somewhat more Republican by shedding African-American voters to the 3rd. Other than that, the status quo will probably prevail.

It's when they redraw their own districts legislators have the potential to become an unruly mob.

Many are predicting the gentlemen's agreement that prevailed in the past, the House doesn't meddle in the Senate's plan and vice versa, will be maintained. I'm not so sure. Neither Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (R-Springfield) nor House Speaker Bill Howell (R-Stafford) and new House Majority Leader Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) have sounded very conciliatory lately. Saslaw and Cox, in particular, have reputations for hard-nosed partisanship.

House Democrats, whose paltry numbers leave them helpless in the face of the Republican majority, may appeal to Saslaw as their only chance to get anything resembling a fair redistricting. In 1991, their first opportunity to draw a new map, House Republicans showed they'd learned their lessons from more than  century in the minority. They drew what is arguably the most devastating partisan map in the  history of Virginia redistricting. They managed to effectively decapitate the Democratic leadership in the House and draw a map that let them keep the majority for the entire decade.

Republican Senators, who had a smaller majority to start with, were more merciful. They picked the one Democrat they wanted to get rid of  -- Northern Virginia's Leslie Byrne -- and were satisfied. Perhaps as a consequence, they lost their Senate majority in 2007.

Even if Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House reach some understanding on redistricting -- which would be amazing since they haven't managed to so so on highway funding or electing judges -- will Gov. Bob McDonnell manage to restrain the temptation to kibitz? His predecessors didn't.

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Ten things about Tuesday’s elections

1. A year is an eternity in politics – Who would have thought on election night 2008, when Mark Warner destroyed Jim Gilmore in a U.S. Senate race, Democrats won the majority of Congressional seats in Virginia and Barack Obama became the first Democrat to carry Virginia in a presidential election since 1964, that election night 2009 would feature a landslide statewide sweep by Virginia Republicans? That should put in perspective claims that Tuesday’s elections serve as a preview of what will happen in next year’s mid-term Congressional elections. A lot can happen in a year.

2. What Creigh Deeds and Mary Sue Terry have in common – Tuesday’s election was similar to 1993, when George Allen won in a landslide over Mary Sue Terry. In both cases, a large percentage of blame was placed on an “unpopular” Democratic president. In both cases a bad economy, which forced an increasingly unpopular Democratic governor to repeatedly make cuts in the state budget, probably had more to do with the results. Bill Clinton in 1993 and Obama this year are being blamed for the loss. Probably a bad rap in both cases. While Clinton was genuinely unpopular in Virginia in 1993, Obama’s approval rating is equal to the share of the vote he garnered last year, about 53%. Exit polls Tuesday showed that 70% of Virginia votes said the president didn’t have anything to do with their vote for governor. Of course the coalition that elected Obama, young people, African-Americans and suburban independents, either didn’t show up for Deeds Tuesday or voted for Republican Bob McDonnell. That has a lot to do with a slow economy and the resulting loss of status of Gov. Tim Kaine. Like Doug Wilder’s, Kaine’s troubles came home to roost for his potential Democratic successor. One reason that happened is that Deeds, like Terry, ran a miserable campaign.

3. Virginians won’t vote for the “mean guy” - Deeds’ campaign never gave anyone a reason to vote for him, concentrating on reasons to vote against McDonnell. That was a critical mistake. Although McDonnell’s college thesis, which evidenced hostility to working women, gays, unmarried fornicators and divorce, served a purpose for the Deeds campaign in cutting into McDonnell’s lead, the Democrats never followed it up with a positive message. They just kept pounding the thesis story. Most voters indicated that they thought Deeds was running a negative campaign. Uh oh. As 2005 loser Jerry Kilgore could have told Deeds, that won’t work in Virginia. You can make comparisons, you can even go a little bit negative, but if Virginia voters think you’ve been rude or mean, you’re toast.

4. Will the “McDonnell model” catch on with the national GOP? – McDonnell won by running as a moderate, mainstream candidate primarily interested in pocketbook issues, as “Bob for Jobs.” That’s not who he had been for 14 years in the legislature, when he was much more interested in bills restricting abortion and making it more difficult to get a divorce than he was in generating jobs. But it’s the image he made stick with voters through a nearly error-free campaign. He disassociated himself from the screamers on the right, the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party who are busy yelling “Socialist” at a president who hasn’t even shown himself as much of a liberal yet. He didn’t even criticize Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, which seemed to befuddle the president himself. The other model for Republicans is to go full “old mad white guy” and embrace the Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh model of conservatism. That didn’t work out so well for them in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where a Tea Party type forced the mainstream Republican out of the race and Democrats captured a seat that Republicans had held for more than 100 years.

5. Democrats should remember those Republican “part-time governor lines – I know Bob McDonnell. He’s an ambitious guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if next spring, after the General Assembly has finished its work, we see him start to accept speaking engagements in Iowa and New Hampshire and other early 2012 presidential primary battlegrounds. His victory Tuesday makes him one of the brightest new stars in the Republican universe. He could attract a good deal of support. He combines Mike Huckabee’s appeal to the Religious Right with Mitt Romney’s slickness and ability to run to the middle, without Romney’s documented record of flip-flops or Mormon religion. Even if McDonnell chooses not to explore the presidential waters, he’d be an attractive vice presidential candidate, particularly for a nominee like Romney or Sarah Palin, who comes from outside the GOP’s Dixie base camp.

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The fault, Horatio, lies not in our politicians but in our selves

The Center of Public Integrity doesn’t think Virginia’s legislators have much.

A report released last week gives Virginia an “F” on the transparency of legislators’ financial disclosure statements and ranks Virginia 31st among the 50 states. Among the center’s complaints are that legislators fail to identify clients that they represent in court and before state agencies.

Understand that the center’s complaint isn’t that lawmakers are violating the law, but that the law itself is defective.

The fault for that lies, not with the General Assembly, but with Virginia’s voters.

Having worked as a legislative staffer and as part of state party staff, I can tell you that good government regulations that would fix those problems are disdained both by our elected representatives – of both parties – and their staffs.

Staff doesn’t want to stop the flow of campaign contribution gravy that pays their salaries and members don’t want to turn off the spigot of legalized bribes that insures they’ll have an easier time being re-elected. And they don’t feel they have to.

Because you don’t care.

“That doesn’t move one vote,” a senior staffer once told me of a proposal to limit campaign contributions to General Assembly and statewide candidates. The same is true of other “good government” initiatives like non-partisan redistricting. You, the voters, just don’t care about that.

And he’s right. The lack of any effective limits on campaign contributions hasn’t imperiled any incumbent’s time in office. Quite the opposite.

In case you don’t know, Virginia is one of the few states with no limits on campaign contributions. If you, or more likely Dominion Resources, wanted to give a candidate for governor a million dollars, that’s perfectly okay under Virginia law. As long as he reports the contribution.

Virginia politicians have gone for the “full disclosure” route rather than limit campaign contributions under the logic that “the public will decide” if a contribution was improper.

Except that you the public are not going to take up the time to look up who gave how much money to whom. And, if you do find out, usually as the result of an opponent’s negative advertising or a newspaper story, you don’t care.

We allow legislators to represent clients before state boards and agencies that they appoint and to practice law in front of judges that they elect, because you don’t care. It doesn’t affect your vote, so the politicians have no reason to change a system that benefits them.

That’s why Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3rd) didn’t think it was any big deal when he was appointed commissioner of accounts for Williamsburg and James City County. He didn’t even send out a press release. Because other legislators had held the same position before, some currently hold it and, with the exception of two cases, the voters haven’t cared.

He’s playing by the rules. The rules say there’s nothing wrong with him holding that position, to which he was appointed by a judge he voted to put on the bench.

When I wrote about that story last year we got a few letters and Last Word comments contending it was a conflict of interest. It’s not.

Virginia’s conflict of interest statute is so loosely written that, to be in violation, a member of the General Assembly would basically have to put in, and vote for, a bill that required the state treasurer to cut him a check. And, if the law specified that everybody in the state who looked like the legislator, or was the same height, or was in the same business also got the check, even that might pass muster.

Because you don’t care.

Richmond lobbyists aren’t shadowy figures who do their deals in secret. They wear their influence on their sleeves.

Sometimes, it’s rather comical. At about 4 p.m. on any day the General Assembly is in session you can see legislators in the halls searching for their “lobbyist of the day,” who’ll pick up the check for dinner. Sometimes lobbyists pick up checks for large groups of up to 100 that include legislators, their staff and sometimes even the press.

“If you can’t drink their whiskey and eat their steak and then vote against them the next day, you don’t belong here,” a veteran legislator once told me.

Unfortunately, the record shows that they more often vote for the folks with the whiskey and steaks.

That’s why Virginia is a bad state for underdogs. If you’re a tenant, you’ve got basically no rights that can be enforced in court against your landlord. If you’re a consumer, you’re left at the mercy of predatory businesses, like payday lenders. If you’re a lobbyist for Common Cause or the League of Women Voters pushing some “good government” reform, you won’t get the hearing that a big corporation will because you can’t afford to pick up dinner checks.

During roll call votes in the House of Delegates, you’ll often hear joking exhortations to “lean to the green.” It’s more than a joke. The side with the most “green” wins more often than not.

Lobbyist and legislators, of course, will tell you that the meals and the gifts and the campaign cash only buys “access” That’s not true. They buy bills and votes. Look up you favorite legislator on the Virginia Public Access Project’s website. See who their largest contributors are and then check how many bills they sponsor that benefit that donor and how many votes they cast for and against that donor’s interests.

It’s legalized bribery. But there’s nothing wrong with it, because that’s the system that’s in place.

Because you don’t care.

Jeff Shapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote his Sunday column about a new member of the FBI’s public corruption squad who’s looking around the General Assembly to get the lay of the land.

The FBI in Richmond has caught a couple of members of the Richmond City Council with their hands in the cookie jar over the past several years and successfully prosecuted them for bribery. They got caught with the money in their hands, more or less.

Members of the General Assembly are smarter than that.

I predict that FBI agent will see a lot of corruption at the Capitol. But very little of it will be against the law.

Because you don’t care.