Is there a Senate deal that would help both sides?

With the opening of the Virginia General Assembly upon us in two days and with chaos threatening to reign in the Senate, is there a quasi-power sharing agreement that would satisfy by both sides and avoid a lot of aggravation?

There very well might be.

Democrats are claiming that Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling can't vote on organizing the Senate. Republicans claim that vote gives them the majority. Ironically, the two parties are taking the opposite positions that they took the last time the Senate was deadlocked 20-20, in 1996. At that time the lieutenant governor was a Democrat, Don Beyer.

A judge refused to grant an injunction against Bolling casting the tie-breaking vote because the issue was not "ripe," since he hadn't yet done so. The lawsuit filed by Democratic Caucus Chairman Sen. Donald McEachin is still in front of the court. If, really when, Bolling casts his tie-breaking vote, the Democrats could go back to court. Of course, that would require them to walk off the floor, denying a quorum in the Senate until the issue could be resolved. And that's complicated by the fact that Bolling, like the governor or a member of the legislature can't be compelled to answer to a civil suit during the General Assembly session.

So chaos could ensue.

But it's not necessary. Because there could be a deal that gives both sides part of what they want.

Bolling put out a well-reasoned memo dealing with what issues he believes he can cast a tie-breaking vote on and which he cannot. He believes that he can vote on organization, but not on issuing debt, constitutional amendments or final passage of the state budget. I think his analysis is right.

Which could cause problems for Republicans, as well as Democrats. They now need consensus with Democrats on the budget and they are unlikely to get it if Democrats feel that Republicans are trying to grab power they didn't win at the polls.

But there would seem to be a deal out there.

In recognition of their victory at the polls and Bolling's tie-breaking vote, Republicans would be recognized as the majority and control the floor. Sen. Tommy Norment would be the Majority Leader and Republicans would chair every committee.

But, reflecting what each side earned in November, instead of the 10-6 majorities Norment has talked about on committees, each side would have an equal number of seats on committees. This would allow Democrats to kill some bad social issues bills coming over from the House in committee, which probably wouldn't really make Norment, Bolling or Gov. Bob McDonnell -- who could avoid having to sign nutty social issues legislation while auditioning for the vice presidential nomination -- unhappy either.

Democrats would probably also want a pledge that Norment will not, as he's threatened, "revisit" last year's legislative redistricting. From a good public policy perspective, that's a good thing. Redistricting shouldn't be on the line in every election, to be engaged in whenever the majority changes.

In return, Democrats could probably agree to pass the incumbent protection Congressional redistricting plan that all the incumbent representatives signed off on last year. True some think that would lock in the current 8-3 Republican edge. I don't, because that edge isn't natural anyway. Virginia's not a 75% Republican state so there's no way the GOP will hold that kind of advantage long term. In the incumbent protection plan the 2nd District and, to a lesser extent, the 5th would remain "swingy." The 10th would also probably become a swing district once Rep. Frank Wolf retires. The Democrats could probably get a better deal out of the federal courts. They might still have that opportunity. Just because the "incumbent protection" plan passes the legislature doesn't mean it will clear the Obama Justice Department, which could very well prefer the Democratic plan which offered the possibility of electing another African-American to the U.S. House.
This is a deal that could satisfy both sides. Nobody gets everything they want. Nobody gives up everything. That's sort of the point of a "power sharing" agreement. And it's the best both sides can probably get and still get on with the people's business. Democrats will have to recognize that they have lost the majority. And Republicans will have to recognize that 20 seats in a 40-member body don't justify 63% of the committee seats.

Both sides will have to recognize that they will have to compromise and cooperate to handle the range of complex issues, from the budget to uranium mining to highway funding to support for public and higher education that constitute the real work of the 2012 legislative session.

Republicans take some of the fun out of 2012

 The fact that Newt Gingrich is leading the polls in the Virginia Republican Primary but didn't gather enough signatures to get on the ballot sort of sums up his presidential campaign so far in a nutshell.

But Gingrich wasn't the only candidate who failed to make the ballot. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose campaign thus far had seemed to be deficient in brainpower, charisma and debating skills, but not in money or organizational expertise, also failed to turn in enough signatures to qualify.

Michele Bachmann, John Huntsman and Rick Santorum didn't bother to turn in any signatures. Not much of a surprise for the latter two. They've just been hanging around. Neither has gotten a bump as the Republican's "flavor of the month" to be the Not-Mitt Romney candidate. Hell, even Donald Trump got a bump and he never got in.

In fact, only Romney and septuagenarian Libertarian Ron Paul made the ballot. The first is the definition of the smooth, well organized, Establishment Republican. Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling heads his campaign in Virginia and there wasn't much chance he wouldn't get the necessary signatures. The second is a cult figure who has never won much besides straw polls, but his Paulistas can managed a signature gathering campaign.

While Gingrich and, to a lesser extent, Perry and Bachmann have been whining about how tough Virginia's ballot access laws are -- they require 10,000 signatures, including 400 from each of the state's 11 congressional districts -- the fact is everyone knew what the rules were from the jump.

And how hard can it be? In 2008 Democratic candidates like Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich, neither of whom were exactly at the crest of a rising tide, made it onto Virginia's ballot.

They had help though. The Democratic Party of Virginia gathered signatures for all of the candidates at various events. The Republican Party of Virginia didn't make that kind of effort this year. They aren't required to, of course, but it might have helped.

Republican incompetency has taken a good deal of fun out of what could have been a very exciting year in politics here.

Read more »

Things we learned from last week's election

It's so much easier to wax profound over an election once it's over.

For honesty's sake, I think I'm on record at various places online predicting that the Republicans would take control of the Senate, 21-19, that Del. Robin Abbott would win a squeaker in the 93rd House District and that Sen. John Miller would beat Republican Mickey Chohany in the 1st District -- and unlike some other people in my newsroom, I expected that 1st District race to be close.

It was and Miller won. Abbott lost a squeaker to Republican Mike Watson instead of winning one. In a higher turn out year, like a gubernatorial election, she probably would have won. And Republicans only forged a tie in the Senate at 20-20, although they are going to use Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling's tie-breaking vote to act like they are in the majority. More on that later.

So what did we learn from the 2011 election?

A few things:

1. It's possible to hold an election where nobody wins.
Obviously the Democrats didn't win, they're down to 32 seats in the House of Delegates and lost the majority in the Senate, their last hold on power at the state level. But you can' t really say the Republicans won. They didn't capture a majority in the Senate, although they were widely expected to. In the weeks leading up to the election I heard and read Republicans predicting that they'd take 25 or 26 seats. There was a Tea Party group set up called "Beyond 21." But they didn't even get to 21.  In fact, of the 24 Senate races contested between the two parties (some of those contests being token opposition), Democrats won 16 and Republicans won only 8. Republicans were able to forge a tie in the Senate because they knocked off two incumbents, without any of their own incumbents being threatened, and because they won two open seats. But it's hard to say they won in the Senate when they lost 2/3 of the contested races.

2. Democrats in the House are in big trouble. For a long time.
While Democrats held their own or better in the Senate, the House races, which got far less attention, were a debacle. They're left with 32 seats. In contested House races, Republicans won 21-6-1 (Del. Lacey Putney, I-Bedford, the longest serving member of the House in history beat both a Democrat and a Republican to win re-election).  It's scandalous that only 28 out of 100 House seats were contested between the parties and, again, some of those were token challenges. Democrats in the House suffered from a huge failure by the leadership, amplified by the Republican redistricting plan. They failed in recruitment so badly that no Republican incumbent member of the House was seriously challenged for re-election. Former House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong paid the prices for the "defense only" strategy. He lost. So did the other two targeted Democratic incumbents, Abbott and Del. Bill Barlow (D-64th). You can't win playing defense. It allowed the Republicans to take money they would otherwise have had to spend on incumbents and use it to win challenge and open seats. In the normal course of events, because Virginia is not a 68% Republican state, you'd expect the Democrats to start winning those seats back at the rate of 2-4 per election cycle. Problem is, that still leaves them in the minority when the next redistricting comes around and Republicans get to draw them back to square one. The best chance for a majority in the House Democrats have for the next 30 years is a Democratic landslide for governor. That hasn't happened in more than 25 years. After 30 years, demographic trends might give Democrats the majority back despite themselves.

3. 2011 was not 2010, so there's no reason to suppose that 2012 will be.
Republicans were predicting bigger gains than they got because they were fighting the last war. They were expecting the kind of Tea Party-fueled wave election that swept Republicans back into power in the House of Representatives last year. It didn't happen. One reason may have been that the Republicans in Congress have managed to damage the brand. While 2010's results were largely blamed on the unpopularity of President Barack Obama, the Republican House of Representatives is currently less popular than Obama. That suggests that Tea Party wave may have lost its momentum. So does current polling for the U.S. Senate race in Virginia in 2012, which shows former Gov. Tim Kaine, one of the president's staunchest allies, tied with former governor and Senator George Allen.

Read more »

Ten things that are plucking my last nerve

On Facebook, I usually call this "Things I Hate." But I'll try to confine myself to political topics here and we'll just say these are things that are on my nerves, as the 2011 campaign rushes to a close and the 2012 presidential election kicks into gear.

1. The assertion, generally by Republicans, that a requirement to bring photo ID to the polls has something to do with curbing "voter fraud."  One candidate even said in debate the other night that voter fraud was on the rise in Virginia. When asked to provide an example he, of course, could not. Look, you don't steal an election where the votes are cast, you steal it where the votes are counted. Anybody who gave this issue about ten seconds of thought would realize you can't fix an election by voting fake voters. It's too cumbersome, requires too many people to be in on the scheme. It's a silly idea. We've had three presidential elections in this country that might have been stolen -- 1880, 1960 and 2000. If they were, they were all stolen after the polls closed. So, when Republicans get serious about voting machines with computer software that can't be easily hacked and paper trails to allow an accurate recount, I'll believe they care about "voter fraud." Until then, they're just trying to suppress the vote.

2. Stupid campaign charges. I've got to call out Sen. John Miller's campaign on this one. Miller (D-1st), who's been accused of having a conflict of interest for taking a job with a local aviation company after voting for a bill that gave them a tax break, accused his Republican opponent Mickey Chohany of having a bigger conflict. The issue? That Chohany twice voted for street improvements on the street where his restaurant is located. Look, I've been in that business, I understand "Deny, deny and make counter accusations," but make them sensible. The street improvements were included in packages of citywide street projects that were recommended by the city administration, not Chohany. It's like saying a City Council member has a conflict because he votes to repave every street in the city, including the one he lives one. For the record, the allegation against Miller is more serious. I don't think it rises to the Phil Hamilton level of a violation of the conflict of interest laws that needs to be prosecuted. There's no evidence of quid pro quo. At the same time, it looks bad and -- if in my opinion -- he shouldn't have done it.

3. Republican presidential debates. The only person more exhausted than I am by the multitude of debates is apparently Rick Perry. I might join him in his resolve to ignore some of them. Of course that won't have the consequences for me that it will for him. If you can't win a debate against Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, you aren't going to stand much of a chance against Barack Obama.

4. The way some people who cheered on the Tea Party rallies last year, mock the Occupy Wall Street rallies this year. And, I suppose, vice versa. Before the Tea Party got co-opted by the Republican Party, it expressed a lot of the same populist outrage that Occupy Wall Street does. In my view, this is a country long in need of a little healthy populist outrage. The nightmare of the powers-that-be is that the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Tea Partiers might realize that they're mad at some of the same people. That graphic going around the Internet isn't a total joke; there is an intersection of interest between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street around the too chummy relationship between government and business.

5. Michele Bachmann. Voice like a razor blade, crazy eyes and crazier ideas. Come back, Sarah Palin, all is forgiven.

Read more »

The end of Republicans as we have known them?

Former Williamsburg City Councilman Mickey Chohany is facing off against incumbent Democratic Senator John Miller for the 1st District seat in this fall's elections.

There are a lot of things you can say about Chohany as a candidate. Based on recent debate performances, you might say he's not ready for prime time. You might say he's a stalking horse for Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3rd) and that if he's elected Norment will effectively have two votes in the Senate. (Although if we were going to give a Republican senator two votes, I'd argue that Norment -- who at least understands the importance of governance -- isn't a bad choice. I'd rather he had two votes than Sen. Steve Newman.).

But the odd thing that some people are saying about Chohany is that he's RINO (Republican In Name Only).

I'm not sure on what basis anybody is saying this. Is it guilt by association because he's an ally of Norment, who has also been called a RINO?

Because, on the issues, Chohany seems to meet all the Republican litmus tests. He's pro-life, pro-gun and anti-tax. He's tried a straddle on gay rights, but it's the same straddle that Virginia Republicans, and voters, let Gov. Bob McDonnell get away with.

Are guns or abortion what got Chohany (or Norment) into politics? No. But that doesn't mean they aren't Republicans.

This stupidity has gone so far that some in the right-wing blogosphere are calling for a write-in campaign for Tricia Stall. In case you don't remember Ms. Stall, she's a right-wing Republican who took out another "RINO", Sen. Marty Williams in a primary in 2007 only to lose to Miller in the general election. She lost that election in a 1st District that was far more Republican than the current configuration. Tricia Stall not only has no chance to win as a write-in, she couldn't win if she was on the ballot. She couldn't come close. A vote for her is a vote for John Miller.

Chohany might win. More likely, given the nature of the district now, he won't  But at least he stands a chance.

Read more »

Governor going after state employees ...again.

[Note:  Yes, I know I've been a little slack in updating the blog. Chalk it up to selling a house (sort of), buying a house, sloth, an earthquake, a hurricane and other writing projects. I promise to be more diligent. Until I'm not.]

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell announced this week that state employee retirement benefits might need to be cut, because the system has $18 billion in unfunded liabilities.

He's right about the unfunded liability. Over the next 75 years it does total $18 billion.

But that's not the state employees' fault.

McDonnell has done little to endear himself to state employees. Last year he pushed a measure to require them to pick up part of their own retirement costs.

That doesn't sound unreasonable on the face of it. Why shouldn't they pick up part of the cost? But the way McDonnell structured his proposal, it would have cut the take home pay of every state employee. The General Assembly intervened and gave state employees a pay raise sufficient to offset the retirement contribution. That was in line with the original deal which led to the state picking up the employees' contribution -- it was done in lieu of a raise.

The legislature showed much better common sense and a greater sense of justice than the governor on this issue.

It's odd that McDonnell, who doesn't have the reflexive anti-government instincts of a lot of Republicans -- former governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore for instance -- would be taking another swing at state employees.

Maybe McDonnell, recently chosen to lead the Republican Governor's Association, feels he need to do it to have some street cred with his peers. From Scott Walker in Wisconsin to Rick Scott in Florida to Chris Christie in New Jersey, it seems like wherever you have a new Republican governor these days, he's at war with his state employees.

Read more »

Washington is psychotic

"You'll get mesmerized /By alibis/ And limbo dance in pairs/ Please lock that door/It don't make much sense/That common sense/Don't make no sense/No more"

John Prine

"Common Sense"

It's hard to believe that people we elected to represent us and who swore to act in the best interest of the United States and its citizens could have pushed the country to the brink of default just to make a political point.

But it's true.

With about ten days to go until the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling, Washington has shown that it's gone from being dysfunctional to being psychotic.

Our capital and our government have been dysfunctional for a number of years due to the inability of Democrats and Republicans to work together on anything. That had negative effects on the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, but the cancer of partisanship has metastasized in Barack Obama's administration.

There's enough blame to go around for both sides. But in the debt ceiling debate, the Republicans are acting crazier than the Democrats.

While Obama has laid out plans that include up to $4.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years, Republicans have turned them down flat. Why? Because, in addition to a lot of spending cuts that would trim programs that help lower and middle-income families, Obama has included tax increases on corporation and one the wealthiest Americans.

So have the "Gang of Six" in the Senate, which includes Virginia's Mark Warner.


But Republicans, who have clamored loudest about the deficit (which they discovered about the time Obama was sworn in), have said that deficit and debt reduction needs to be done with budget cuts only. Some of the cuts they advocate are sweeping and would change Medicare and Social Security, as we know them.


It's an example of just how unserious about deficit reduction they are. As recently as January they fought tooth and nail to retain the Bush era tax cuts, which contribute to the deficit.
This attitude led David Brooks, a mainstream Republican columnist, to say that Republicans aren't operating more like a normal political party.

He's got a point.

Republicans are now acting more like a religious cult than a political party. They've raised a "no tax increases ever" ideology to level of Gospel. It's the Church of Ronald Reagan, except that it's run by people who have made commandments out of a few of the dumbest things Reagan ever said and ignore what he actually did while in office.

Read more »