Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508210078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE AND MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Ask most Virginians what the single worst trend in state government is these days and the answer comes overwhelmingly: There's too much bickering between Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
"Party politics is killing us. It's preventing progress," says Marilyn Larsen, a Fairfax County retirement community director.
"They spend a lot of time fighting among themselves," says Frances Little, a Botetourt County graphics designer. "They're fighting each other instead of listening to everybody."
"The oddity is that the parties are divided on non-issues to us," says Bob Middlebrooks, a Chesapeake architect. "The issues they're divided on aren't the ones we're voting on."
Sometimes it seems rather silly. Last year, for example, Gov. George Allen invited 13,000 fellow Republicans at a state convention to help him kick Democrats' "soft teeth down their whiny throats." Earlier this year, angry Senate Democrats refused to issue Allen the customary invitation to deliver the annual State of the Commonwealth speech before the General Assembly. As a result, Allen gave the speech from his office.
And sometimes the partisan power plays produce gridlock. The proposed Lake Gaston pipeline plan that would have provided Virginia Beach with an independent source of drinking water - albeit over the objections of Southside legislators who saw their region's interests threatened - fell by the wayside this summer when Democrats and Republicans couldn't agree on the details of calling a special legislative session.
It wasn't always this way in Virginia, which has long prided itself on efficient government and courtly politics. That's because for most of the century Democrats controlled the governorship and more than 90 percent of the legislative seats. Republican lawmakers, it was said, could caucus in phone booths, and had little choice but to curry favor with the majority.
Today, Republican caucuses are standing-room-only events that greatly influence the direction of state government. In this fall's elections, the GOP needs to gain only three seats in the 40-member Senate and three in the 100-member House of Delegates to win unprecedented majorities in both chambers.
At stake are control of the state's $32 billion biennial budget, the ideological direction of the legislature, personal clout and dozens of powerful committee chairmanships.
Yet citizens appear to see little personal stake in the outcome. Two out of three in a recent poll commissioned by The Roanoke Times and its sister paper in Norfolk, The Virginian-Pilot, said they are generally satisfied with the performance of state government. A solid majority - 54 percent - said it makes no difference to them which party controls the legislature.
"I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican," says Charles D. Taylor, a Norfolk clinical therapist, during a recent discussion on state government. "What I do care about is can you help me find a solution to a particular problem."
While voters often are exasperated by partisanship, political scientists defend it as the wet-nose sign of a healthy democracy. There are two ways of viewing the phenomena.
The positive view is that partisanship is a lens that provides focus in the chaotic universe of political ideas. Without political parties, it would be infinitely more difficult for lawmakers to build coalitions and piece together legislative majorities.
In its highest form, partisanship offers clear choices for voters. In theory, the political parties offer a set of contrasting ideals and citizens base their votes on the philosophy that most closely matches their own. "Voters often have a hard time in legislative races figuring out what each candidate stands for," says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "Parties provide a shorthand for figuring that out."
Some of those benefits are being offered to Virginia voters. Citizens essentially have a choice between the Republican promise to cut taxes and reduce state services and the Democrats' pledge to keep taxes and services at current levels. "There are sharp alternatives," says Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. "We're much better off as voters than in the days of one-party rule."
The downside of partisanship - and the view that disgusts so many voters - is that it turns governing into a game. Lawmakers, voters complain, become obsessed with which side is winning, not with what's right or wrong or good or bad for the state.
Many veteran lawmakers acknowledge that the negative side of partisanship is getting out of control. Toward the end of last winter's General Assembly session, House Democrats and Republicans spent countless hours on the floor settling scores in angry speeches. Democrats were accused of following a consultant's "playbook" to shoot down much of Allen's agenda. A Republican lawmaker admitted that he opened and disseminated politically sensitive mail sent to a Democratic colleague.
In the end, Del. Clinton Miller, R-Shenandoah County, decided he'd had enough. He cited partisan bickering as a key reason for his decision not to seek re-election this fall after 24 years in the legislature.
"It used to be a fairly collegial body," Miller said of the House. "Democrats and Republicans were able to forge one of the best state governments in the country, with low taxes and little stifling regulatory burden. It bothers me to see that effort tainted as `liberal' by today's Republicans. ... It used to be that you could disagree with your party and offer different ideas. Today, if you do that, you get denigrated as a compromiser."
Miller hopes the infighting will ebb as Democrats and Republicans get used to sharing power in Virginia. "The public just won't stand for this hateful gamesmanship," he says. But several academics say that partisan rumbles may become a lasting byproduct of Virginia's newly competitive political climate.
The growing pains are by no means unique to the Old Dominion. Republicans have made huge gains in state houses across the South during the last 20 years.
In 1975, Democrats occupied 89 percent of the legislative seats in the South. Now, they hold 62 percent.
Republicans have gained 462 legislative seats in 11 Southern states over the past 20 years. The GOP posted gains in each of the nine Dixie states that held legislative elections last year, taking 112 seats away from Democrats.
The party has won recent majorities in the Florida Senate and the houses in North Carolina and South Carolina, although it has yet to establish dominance in any Southern legislature.
Republicans occupy six of the 11 Southern governor's mansions.
Political scientists say the trend in state legislatures is the end of a fundamental political realignment in the South that began 40 years ago. They cite two reasons for the change.
The first has to do with race. For almost a century after the Civil War, the South aligned with the Democratic Party, which opposed Abraham Lincoln and was rooted in a conservative philosophy of small government, states' rights and segregation.
The shift began in 1952 when Dixie states started splitting their votes in presidential races. It accelerated in the mid-1960s when the poll tax was declared unconstitutional and millions of blacks flocked to the poll for the first time. The Democratic Party openly courted blacks and liberalized its national agenda. Many old-line conservative white voters, particularly in the rural South, began their allegiance to Republicans in national elections.
Since 1964, Republicans have carried the South in all but one presidential contest. Today, the GOP occupies 67 of Dixie's 125 congressional seats.
The second reason involves the massive population growth in the South over the past 45 years that has stripped away much of the region's rural identity. Most of the new voters in the South have settled in suburbs and tend to be moderate to conservative politically.
Virginia's recent political history echoes that of the South's. For more than the first half of the century, state government was dominated by a conservative and segregationist Democratic machine that drew its strength from rural support. The leader of the machine - the late U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd Sr. - began breaking with the national party by refusing to support Democratic presidential nominees in 1952, 1956 and 1960. Virginia voted Republican in each election.
Virginia's poll tax was declared unconstitutional in 1966. Blacks registered to vote in huge numbers and Norfolk lawyer Henry Howell became the leader of a liberalized state Democratic Party. Many old-line conservatives left the party and registered their protest in 1969 by electing Linwood Holton as the first Republican governor in state history; two more Republican governors followed before Democrats reclaimed the governor's mansion again in 1981 and held onto it until George Allen's election in 1993.
Virginia also has experienced staggering suburban growth. Since 1950, the state's population has doubled to 6.5 million people. Almost 85 percent of the growth has been in a so-called urban crescent from Northern Virginia through Richmond and down through Hampton Roads.
Two of three state voters live in the crescent. The affluent, mostly white suburbs have become a spawning ground for the new Republicans winning seats in the General Assembly.
Because of the trends, many experts say it is not so much a question of whether Republicans will gain control of the General Assembly but when. "It's inevitable, even if it doesn't happen this year," says James Sweeney, a historian at Old Dominion University. "The Democratic Party doesn't have a monopoly on power anymore."
That doesn't mean the Democrats are doomed. Unlike their national brethren, state Democrats can boast of a legacy of lean government and low taxes. "In the future, I can see the balance of power passing back and forth between the two parties," Sweeney says.
Voters hope that competition will be based on issues, not gamesmanship. In the words of David Simmons, a retiree from Roanoke County: "I think all the candidates should be asked, `When are we going to stop the rubber stamping of Republican and Democrat and get on with the program of addressing the issues that face Virginia as a whole?'"
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB