ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 9, 1996 TAG: 9612090089
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAWRENCE L. SCHACK
ALAN ROSENTHAL, a highly regarded professor and observer of state politics, writes: "When the opposition controls the legislature, governors have a better chance with their priorities if the issues are not used in a campaign for partisan purposes. That threatens legislators where they live, imperiling their seats and their majorities. If governors refrain from exploiting issues for electoral purposes, their chances of achieving results in a legislature controlled by the opposition party improve."
Those who agree believe the politics of cooperation benefits both the governor and the state.
The competing strategy, the politics of conflict, forgoes the opportunity for present legislative progress in the hopes of driving a wedge between the governor and the legislature, thereby promoting partisan electoral gains and the promise of future policy successes.
Prior to the 1995 state legislative elections, Virginia Gov. George Allen championed the politics of conflict. This was most evident in the fall of 1994 when Allen, ignoring the advice of two icons of Virginia's fiscally conservative heritage, former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. and former U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr., put out the word that he would introduce a five-year plan to slash business and personal income taxes by a combined $2.15 billion.
This surprising move set the stage for a showdown during the 1995 legislative session between Allen and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. In the end, Democratic lawmakers - reinvigorated by Allen's blatant challenge and joined by some Republican lawmakers - dismembered virtually all of Allen's legislative proposals, beginning with the tax-cut showpiece and ending with a complete restoration of all his proposed spending cuts.
In the aftermath, Allen's opponents accused him of using his position as governor to further his own political ambitions rather than the good of the citizenry of the commonwealth. The governor's supporters argued that Allen had given the people of Virginia a clear choice - they could vote for a Democratic legislative majority made up of what the governor called "obstructionists, fat cats, monarchists and dinosaurs," or Allen's own Republicans, fighters for hard-working, tax-paying Virginians.
Judging by the 1995 election results, the Democrats had the better argument, albeit by a small margin - maintaining their 52 to 47 advantage in the House of Delegates and securing a tie in the state Senate. Thus, in spite of Allen's legislative maneuvering and his impassioned call for an end to a 112-year-old Democratic dynasty in Virginia's General Assembly, the electorate failed to deliver the outright Republican legislative majority Allen sought.
Now another election-year legislative session is fast approaching, and with it another opportunity for Gov. Allen to champion cooperation or conflict.
Many of his gubernatorial counterparts are skillful legislative facilitators who inform legislative leaders of their intentions, welcome their counsel on strategy, tactics and substance, and seek to substantively involve them throughout the legislative process - essential steps in cooperative politics. But Gov. Allen has thus far failed to consistently show that he truly accepts the legislature as a co-equal in policymaking.
Instead, this governor has been reluctant to allow the legislature to share both leadership in and credit for what is accomplished, a stance that fails to acknowledge the inherent pitfall of divided government: While governors can easily make the legislature look bad, the legislature can certainly keep the governor from looking good.
During the 1996 legislative session, Allen - either by choice or necessity - moderated both his approach and his agenda. Holding out an olive branch to General Assembly Democrats, Allen was able to forge bipartisan governing coalitions that enabled him to gain the passage of the large majority of his legislative proposals.
As tends to be the case, while both the legislative and executive branches benefited, it was the governor who reaped the majority of the accolades. Gov. Allen would do well to remember that lesson in 1997.
Lawrence L. Schack is a project director at Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Public Policy and an instructor in political science and public administration.
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