Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 10, 1994 TAG: 9402100171
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Just as singers become identified with a tune, or actors with a role, Norment has worked his first three years in the General Assembly to be associated with the anti-drunken-driving movement.
Each of the past two sessions, he has introduced bills to lower the limit on the amount of alcohol in the blood before a driver is considered legally drunk, from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent.
Both times, the bills cleared the Senate easily and then vanished in the House. Both times, the lead opponent was Del. Richard Cranwell of Roanoke County - House Majority Leader, acerbic debater and fatal adversary.
Now Norment was watching a 0.08 percent bill roll toward approval in the courts committee - with Cranwell as its sponsor.
During a lull in the presentation, Cranwell wandered by Norment and the diminutive senator attempted a joke, "Well, you've convinced me."
Cranwell fixed him with a withering glare, held it a moment, then broke into a grin. Touche.
Such tacit acknowledgement may be all the credit Norment gets if 0.08 becomes law this year. He has a bill in the Senate, but Cranwell's has the weight of, well, Cranwell.
The Roanoke delegate says he finally decided to support 0.08 because of mounting medical evidence. The Williamsburg senator has a different diagnosis:
Politics.
The "P" word is catching at the General Assembly these days. Republicans and Democrats are unusually susceptible because their numbers have drawn so close - five-vote margins in both the 40-member Senate and the 100-member House.
When the whole legislature comes up for re-election in 1995, Republicans are hoping to win their first-ever majority. Democrats, needless to say, are hoping to hold their slim advantage.
Both sides look to Republican Gov. George Allen, who made winning seem so easy last fall. The race is on to claim credit for some of the issues that worked for him. Specifically: parole and welfare reform, and the fight against drunken driving.
Last month, not 12 hours before Allen called for tougher drunken-driving laws and parole reform in his maiden speech to the General Assembly, Democratic bosses called a news conference to discuss both topics.
Cranwell was the spokesman at the news conference. The drunken-driving bill he introduced is a sweeping rewrite of the law, with a 0.08 percent limit as only one feature. Also included is a provision to allow police to seize the license of any driver who fails a breath test, a process called administrative license revocation.
That bill won preliminary approval in the House on Wednesday and looks sure to clear a final vote today.
Which means there could be a showdown, because the governor is opposed to administrative license revocation. The Democrats, if they can get Cranwell's bill through the Senate, would relish forcing Allen to veto the bill or sign it into law with an unpalatable provision.
The alternative is for the assembly to favor Norment's proposals, which do not include administrative revocation.
Norment says he would not mind getting credit for a concept whose time has arrived. But he is understandably shy about it: The former delegate who got the issue rolling in the Assembly a decade ago was a Democrat named Mary Sue Terry.
Parole reform, theoretically, should be a dead issue right now. Allen plans to call a special session of the General Assembly later this year to handle it.
But two Democrats in the House have decided to blast ahead with Allen's most famous campaign promise: abolishing parole.
Dels. Roscoe Reynolds and Ward Armstrong, both from Martinsville, have submitted a bill that would eliminate the possibility of parole for any prisoner sentenced after July 1.
There is, however, a catch: The bill requires a statewide referendum on borrowing $400 million or so to build prisons for all those languishing inmates.
It is the most extreme parole bill introduced this year, but more than half a dozen "three strikes and you're out" bills are floating around, several sponsored by Democrats. All eliminate parole for any felon convicted of a third violent offense. All descend from another Allen campaign promise.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we're being flattered a lot these days," gloats Scott Leake, director of the Republican caucus. "They've adopted our agenda, for the most part."
Just don't go to House Speaker Thomas Moss, the Norfolk Democrat, with that line of thinking.
"Whatever we do, they're going to say it's their idea," Moss says. "I think that's pure politics on their part."
The most prominent welfare reformer in the General Assembly recently has been Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, chairman of the state poverty commission.
This year, Beyer's commission churned out a complex bill to alter Virginia's welfare system. There is just one problem: Allen wants to make welfare reform his own issue.
Sen. Mark Earley, a Republican from Chesapeake, was on Beyer's bipartisan commission but is the patron of an Allen resolution creating a new welfare reform team, the Commission on Empowerment.
"I suspect the governor's commission will probably be more enthusiastic about some basic changes to the system, as opposed to pumping more money into the existing system," Earley says.
Will Earley and other Republicans stand by Beyer's bill? Would Allen sign a parole reform plan without his own name on it?
According to the Moss, it might not matter which side wins. "I'll tell you what the bottom line is on this General Assembly, and I've seen it for 30 years: Whatever happens, the governor gets the credit for it."
And that's one political contest the Democrats have already lost.
by CNB