THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604030016
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By JOHN GOOLRICK
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Prospective 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole might make a campaign appearance in Virginia, but there is little need to do so. The truth is if Dole can't win Virginia and Bill Clinton can, then the election is all over anyway.
All of which means Virginia activists are going to be focused largely on a contest for U.S. Senate, a few vigorously contested congressional races. Many will be looking forward to the statewide races of 1997.
Which points toward a problem - the Virginia system of an election every year.
Democrats will never allow it to happen so long as they are in semi-control of the General Assembly, but voter participation in Virginia would probably increase dramatically if the state constitution were changed to allow two things:
Having biennial elections instead of annual elections.
Letting a governor run for a second consecutive four-year term.
There is something wrong with a system that with one election-year cycle in process constantly asks voters to turn their attention and their pocketbooks to another election that is nearly two years away.
I went to a mass meeting recently, and among speakers there were candidates and surrogates for people running for lieutenant governor and attorney general next year. Not only that, but I get a constant flow of mail solicitations for people who want to run for statewide office in the general election of November 1997.
I realize the machine Democrats of yore wanted to avoid mixing federal and state elections so that their influence would not be diminished. It is obvious that if state legislators were chosen at the same time as presidents, the Virginia General Assembly would have long ago fallen into Republican hands.
But beyond partisan considerations, the state's election-every-year system wearies the electorate because politics, unlike baseball or football, is always in season.
The mechanics of changing the state constitution might be very difficult, but call in A.E. Dick Howard and other experts and have elections only in even-numbered years. Arrange it so that people running for governor don't have to run at the same time as a presidential election. Thus when statewide officers were chosen you would choose state senators and delegates and members of Congress, and in presidential-election years choose delegates and members of Congress. U.S. senators would still be elected for six-year terms, of course.
Letting governors succeed themselves for at least one term would give a sharper focus to the issues and end the present situation in which a governor is largely ignored as a lame duck during the last year of the term.
None of the above is likely to happen anytime soon, but if it did it might result in a more-interested electorate and therefore a better-informed electorate. MEMO: John Goolrick, a former political reporter, is now an aide to 1st
District Rep. Herbert Bateman. Opinions expressed are his own. by CNB