Opinion
Commentary: A murderous pedophile got a badge and gun in Virginia. How was that possible?
A Virginia man drove the width of the United States, kidnapped a 15-year-old girl, shot her mother and grandparents dead in cold blood, torched their home and then killed himself in a shootout with California police. The gun he used came with the badge he wore back in Virginia.
So many questions. And to date, not enough answers.
Cops are vested with extraordinary legal authority over us in enforcing society’s laws, up to and including the taking of lives if their training and judgment tells them it’s necessary.
There’s rigorous testing, personal vetting and physical and mental training required before they wear the blue. Hopefully, that process is careful and thorough and only the best, most fit make it through. But then there was Austin Lee Edwards.
Edwards, 28, was a trooper for nearly a year and a half before he left the Virginia State Police in late October for a sheriff’s deputy job in Washington County near Bristol. He wasn’t on that job a month before he drove to Riverside, California, and sought out the child he had met online pretending to be someone else – a despicable practice known as “catfishing.” The carnage in his wake has generated sensational headlines worldwide.
When the Mercury’s Graham Moomaw filed a public records request with VSP for administrative documents and background checks on Edwards, the agency chose to “exercise its statutory discretion” and hide the documents from taxpayer view. Pressed for a reason for withholding information about Edwards, he was told that under state law, the agency isn’t required to comment further.
The VSP will only concede the obvious: that “human error” is to blame for the agency missing an incident in Edwards’s not-too-distant past during his hiring process. The agency said that no red flags emerged during his pre-employment background checks.
The Los Angeles Times, however, revealed that the incident referenced was a 2016 mental health crisis in which Edwards threatened to kill his father and was ordered hospitalized by a court. WTVR-TV in Richmond reported last week that Edwards revealed during a pre-employment interview that he had checked himself into a mental health facility that same year. On Thursday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the Office of the State Inspector General to investigate Edwards’ hiring.
Stonewalling something like this is short-sighted and futile because of the likelihood that those details will be pried loose, if not by unhappy political leaders then in the discovery process of a wrongful death lawsuit. Even if the case doesn’t go to trial, such explosive material has been known to find the hands of enterprising journalists.
State law doesn’t require that the records of the individual in question be withheld. That was a choice. And it’s a choice that only serves to undermine the trust and confidence in law enforcement that is essential for the police to effectively do their jobs.
This columnist is not anti-police. I’ve known people at all levels of law enforcement and, for the most part, they’re dedicated professionals who do their jobs for low pay and at high risk because they’ve felt a call to serve. Some of the most genuine friends I have wear or wore the badge and I have chronicled the good work of many of them in my reporting. Edwards’ case, however, underscores that, like all of society, there are bad actors in their midst.
Law enforcement as an institution has work to do when it comes to public accountability, and it’s not just a passing political moment.
Things came to a head in America after the broad-daylight murder of George Floyd by police officers on a Minneapolis street in May 2020. A tempestuous summer of nationwide protests over deaths of Black people at the hands of police, and arrests and incarceration rates for people of color far greater than their share of the population, drove new laws mandating greater transparency by law enforcement agencies. It led to the creation of citizen review boards and requirements that police report and sometimes publish information on police use-of-force incidents.
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, 26 states have enacted law enforcement data collection and transparency laws since May of 2020, including seven – Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin — that mandate publicly accessible databases of use-of-force information. Others post reports using aggregated data on use of force by officers on patrol.
Virginia began collecting data in July 2020 under the state’s Community Policing Act. Those data show that out of more than 2 million traffic stops since then, 31% of those included Black people, who are only 20% of Virginia’s population, compared to 63% of stops that included White people, who are 68% of the state’s residents in the 2020 census. The 2020 law also banned the police use of racial profiling in deciding which drivers to pull over.
That doesn’t sit well with some policymakers. As of last week, there was already one Republican bill introduced in the House to repeal the Community Policing Act.
Gathering data on traffic stops, however, touches just one facet of law-enforcement answerability. Departments often go mute when their own are implicated in wrongdoing, and it often takes unrelenting public pressure to get a fuller accounting.
Last summer, Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith called a press conference to make the fantastical claim that his department had discovered and disrupted a plot to carry out a mass shooting at Byrd Park in the city during July 4th festivities. Two days earlier, an assault-style rifle was used to kill six people and injure 30 who watched an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, so Smith’s tale had global resonance.
Challenged repeatedly by journalists to provide evidence to buttress his claim, Smith resisted. As his yarn began to unravel, he bristled, insisting that his conclusion, based on his experience, was right and suggesting that the media were trying to impugn his officers, though they bore no role in Smith’s fiction. Already on thin ice and with his story discredited, he resigned last month and the record was belatedly set straight.
Smith’s folly is trivial alongside the murderous depravity of Edwards. Here was a walking time bomb who left red-flag clues to his psychological instability, and it staggers the mind as to how they could be overlooked. He desecrated the oath he swore, right down to firing his service weapon at unarmed people and fellow officers before he turned it on himself and committed the last of his life’s many cowardly acts.
So, VSP, if this harsh assessment looks bad and smells bad, too bad. If we’re off base, release Edwards’s records and prove us wrong.
by Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury
Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.
Opinion
Commentary: Vape Shop regulations – Discriminatory or Failure to Act?
I read in a recent local publication (NVDaily: “Front Royal Council Discusses Vape Shop Boom,” March 17th) that Front Royal is struggling to explain the proliferation of vape shops within the town limits. The current shop count as indicated by the source was a total of 11 retail outlets. Recent concern expressed by Mayor Cockrell as a result of an abundance of negative social media outpouring, compelled the mayor to address this issue in a recent Town Council work session. In attendance was Laura Kopishke, Director of Planning and Zoning for Front Royal. Kopishke is quoted as saying:
“We are not soliciting but we are also not discriminating against them either so vape stores fall under retail uses — they are selling a product,” Kopishke said. “We cannot discriminate against that product that they sell.”
Additionally, Council Member Amber Morris is also quoted as concurring with the opinion rendered by Kopishke by stating that:
“The problem that we ran into was the only thing we could do was tighten our zoning regulations because, as a pretty conservative council who also enjoys free enterprise, at what point do we start regulating businesses and … at what point do you say ‘we just don’t like your type of business’ and it’s discriminatory,” Morris said.
As a town property owner and layman in government affairs, I cannot accept these statements at face value. The Commonwealth of Virginia, based upon moral ground, quality of life, and in protecting the good of the Commonwealth, has and does restrict business activity that could be deemed as corruptive or detrimental to the moral turpitude of the community. You will not find gambling establishments, title loans, internet cafes, private liquor stores, houses of ill repute, Strip Clubs, bars (where food does not count for 51% of revenue) and recreational marijuana dispensaries — yet. Somehow, the state has found that restrictions of these establishments is not discriminatory.
Furthermore, the Town of Front Royal’s Zoning Chapter 171-1(A)(B) provides town leadership the authority to classify districts in order to “regulate, restrict, permit, prohibit and determine the following: The use of land, buildings, structures and other premises for agricultural, business, industrial, residential, floodplain and other specific uses”.
Upon review of the Town of Front Royal’s Zoning Code, the Community Business District (C-1), which encompasses most if not all of the commercial corridors through town, does indeed list retail establishment uses as By-Right. Of course, Vape Shops fall under this retail guideline. There are about 40-plus/minus uses that are approved without requiring a Special Use Permit, and then another 20 uses approved via Special Use permitting. What is interesting are the retail “exceptions” further explained in Section 175-39.C of the Zoning Code. Retail establishments are not permitted to engage in transactions that are: “inclusive of coal, wood, oil, and lumberyards, accessory uses, adult bookstores (stores engaged in the sale of magazines and other publications of sexually-oriented nature), massage parlors and stores engaged in the sale of sexual aids, devices and merchandise.” – (Amended 7-25-05, 7-28-08 and 6-22-15-Effective Upon Passage)
This seems odd. Under current Council’s and Administration’s logic, these exclusions would be discriminatory to entrepreneurs that desire to engage is such business activity. While some of these industries may seem unsavory and operating contrary to the common good, why can’t vape/tobacco/THC shops be inclusive/included on this list, or at the bare minimum be removed from the retail category? Why can’t council change their zoning ordinances to place Vape Shops under a C-1 Commercial category where a Special Use Permit can/must be sought? Or better yet, create a special zoning district called the Cannabis Business District (CBD—No Pun intended). This would give Council the leverage it needs to control the influx and eventually control the districts where marijuana would be permitted to be sold. Once Cannabis licenses are granted — and it is currently planned that the State issue just 400 retail licenses statewide to sell marijuana — it is my opinion that competitive forces will force non-cannabis licensed vape shop owners out of business.
I agree with statements by Morris suggesting that vape shops are simply establishing locational dominance to aid in their business activities if they apply and are awarded a recreational THC license. However, I do not agree with the fact that Front Royal’s hands are completely tied or even tied at all in dealing with this influx.
As new or newly legal products and technologies enter the market, the Town must stay ahead of this curve to plan for future impacts. I am afraid it may be too late for the 11 existing businesses, but now is the time to end the influx, better control it, and direct where you will allow the future Marijuana shops to operate. This is not discriminatory. — This is planning. You have the tools. Use them. People don’t plan to fail, but they do fail to plan.
By Gregory A. Harold
(Editor’s note: Harold is a former member of the re-formed FR-WC EDA Board of Directors.)
Opinion
It’s not complicated
At the March 7, 2023, Board of Supervisors meeting, it was reported that homeowners of Warren County did a “good job” and “successfully” appealed over-assessments totaling $30.6M. And the knife twist: None of the under-assessed objected to their great good fortune.
A $30.6M error is not “a good job” by homeowners. It is the failure of the Board to ensure an accurate, uniform, consistent, and equitable valuation based on fact as required of the licensed mass assessor they contracted and oversee. The knee-jerk reaction to glaring inconsistency and inexplicable numeric discrepancies was to go to ground “on the advice of an attorney.”
Stop looking at the evidence!
It was easy to speak eloquently about the worrisome impact of a 40% increase in property assessments on demographics of a certain age, but where the rubber meets the road, “Your three minutes are up.” The video is available online. It is a must-see master class in spin and obfuscation.
Tax rates based on inconsistent, grossly inaccurate assessments can not be fair and impartial. It’s not complicated.
C.A. Wulf
Warren County
Editor note: There is a link to the video in the story below.
Opinion
Commentary: The Big Chill
Running the gauntlet of life
I’m reminded of a time when Graham Nash (of the musical band Crosby, Stills and Nash) visited Winchester Cathedral at Hampshire, England. He noticed a gravestone that caused him to ponder a bit and wrote down what eventually became lyrics to the song, ‘Winchester Cathedral,’
“I was standing on the grave of a soldier that died in 1799, and the date he died was a birthday, and I noticed it was mine. My head didn’t know just who I was, and I was spinning back in time.” I’ll stop there but suffice it to say this song will catch your attention. The grave at Graham’s feet was that of a young lieutenant killed in battle a couple hundred years before. This young officer had a long and promising life in front of him but collided with a bullet that changed all that. Essentially, the grave marker is all that remains of this person and countless others just like him – to include you and I one day.
This song’s tempo is rather slow but does get in a hurry now and again. My team of soldiers and I used to increase the volume during the high tempo parts of the song and speed down the streets of Kunduz and Kandahar to minimize the chances of getting shot. I kept thinking, I wonder if this officer had the same adventuresome life experiences that I had replete with romantic trysts, the sting of battle and other adrenaline filled excursions before he went down? No one alive today has any idea of that lieutenant’s life experiences, nor will they know any of mine. All that he experienced and knew and all the knowledge he accumulated died with him. I was quite sure I was going to end up just like him on several occasions in various conflict zones. A frequent musing went something like this, “Why didn’t I choose a different path in life – perhaps one down a more lead-free lane.”
I tried to be normal but the alternative lifestyle of being a normal person and driving back and forth to work amongst the masses was not appealing either, so what do you do? If you hold on too tight, you’ll have a dismal existence, so you may as well come to grips with your mortality and just go for it. It’s not the years in your life but the life in your years I keep telling myself. Everyone you know will cease to exist one day soon, so enjoy the ride while you can. That is the reality for all of us.
Getting back to our soldier at the Cathedral for a moment. Aside from a gravestone, there is no record that his family, or his friends ever existed or any memory of the sunny days or cool things they witnessed. One simply lives and dies, and the world turns, and it will continue to do so with no regard to how self-centered and concerned about the here and now that we may be.
Join me for a quick mind melt. For example, if you are 50 years old today, it is unlikely that anyone will speak your name 50 years from now, nor will they speak the name of anyone you associated with 75 years from now. Fifty years ago, is only 1973. Think about it for a minute. How often do you think about any of your relatives or friends that died over 50 years ago? First, you must be about 60 years old to even have known them at all. If their closest friends aren’t thinking about them – who is? It’s a rhetorical question. The year 1799 was 220 years ago. Countless generations of people have walked the earth before and after. One day 200 years from now, in the year 2223 someone will look at your gravestone and wonder the same. In short, it really comes down to “Out with the old and in with the new and what you do during your brief excursion on earth is largely up to you.”
As Stephen Jobs once said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
Hunter S. Thompson sort of reflects the road I’ve taken, although my parents oriented me along a proper azimuth with a healthy dose of Sunday School during my developmental years. Nowadays, my friends tell me I have more lives than a cat and some say, “God must be watching over you.” So, I’ve got that going for me – which is nice. Many of the people around me were not so fortunate though. Death is always close. The end of “your run” is always just a foot away. Ponder that the next time you are traveling down Route 340 at night.
While in Afghanistan in 2011, the Taliban blew up the front gate of our compound and poured through the breach throwing grenades and shooting people. The initial explosion knocked out all the power and scattered body parts all over the place. I had been out running around the compound for physical training earlier that morning and was getting dressed when the explosion occurred. As I dropped down to the floor in the dark to find my eyeglasses, a stream of bullets stitched across the walls of my room. Had I been standing – I wouldn’t be writing this. That’s the difference in life and death. Most of it is chance. There’s an old saying, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Often luck will save a man. It did that day.
In another instance, I missed the doomed ‘Lockerbie flight’ on 21 December 1988 because of delayed dry-cleaning in the little town of Swaebisch Gmuend, Germany. With nothing to wear on my two-week journey home, I changed my flight to the following day. Otherwise, my originally scheduled connecting flight from London Heathrow to JFK in New York was the flight that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Picture from YouTube. Sky Limited. June 30, 2019
In fact, my friends in Charlotte, NC saw my name amongst the list of dead in the USA Today paper on Christmas Eve and called my house to offer condolences. They were rather elated when I answered the phone. Countless families and acquaintances of those killed experienced a horrible Christmas in December 1988. The gauntlet of life is strewn with potholes and chance. Sometimes the ride is relatively easy and other times – it’s incredibly remarkable and sometimes it’s short. Sometimes your run gets interrupted prematurely and sometimes you can sustain life for 5 score.
One last story regarding the gauntlet of life. I was introduced to members of the Kaiserslautern Ski Club over Veterans Day weekend in the year 2000. We were all there to go skiing on a glacier in the little town of Kaprun, Austria – one of few places in Europe with skiing that early in the season. On Friday, the 10th of November I met a father and his son who were members of the ski club. We were playing water polo in the lodge pool that evening. They were celebrating his son’s birthday. His mother and other siblings were unable to come along. The following morning (November 11th), we were in a cue boarding the monorail-like train for an ascent into the mountain tunnel to the glacier at the top. At the last moment, my shoestring came untied and I stopped to tie it. That 10 second pause caused me to miss the train. They were the last ones on the train as it reached capacity, and I was forced to wait for a follow-on train.
I was the only one in my little group that didn’t get on that train. Within 10 minutes, 155 people on that train were dead. An unauthorized kerosene heater had leaked over time in the driver’s compartment and somehow caught fire after the train entered the mountain tunnel. Fire rapidly spread through the polyurethane-lined train. The skiers were trapped in the tunnel and were incinerated or died of smoke inhalation. Later that evening, I had the painful experience of informing the wife that her husband and son were killed in what became known as the Kaprun Ski Disaster. [Caption by; BBC News. Europe] For her family, that day will live in infamy and their family will never be the same. For me, after more than 20 years since Kaprun, I’m still navigating my way through the gauntlet of life hoping to arrive in the grave worn out and reveling in all the unreal experiences a full life has afforded me. But as alluded to earlier, no one will have any idea of those experiences fifty years from now. Just a tombstone with the remnants of a dead soldier below it. As the French say, C’est la vie…..(such is life)
Opinion
Questions about recent assessments
When you hear, “It’s complicated,” in answer to your questions on the recent property reassessment, ask who walked the property, and check the DPOR website to see if they have a residential real estate appraiser’s license.
When I asked those questions, I got two different names; neither were licensed appraisers. The guy I met to appeal the assessment was not licensed either. That explained what I see as a convoluted mishmash of under and over-valued properties without basis, in fact. It has resulted in inequitable taxation and a database of inaccurate assessments used by mortgage and insurance companies.
Do not take my word for it. Anyone can access the database by Googling the Virginia Mass Appraisal website, finding the assessed value of just the building, and calculating the dollars per square foot of living space. Comparing that same number to the average $/sf for properties actually sold in the County, to neighbors with similar properties, and to our elected official’s homes was a real wake-up call. Assessors do not enter homes, so finished basements ought to increase, not decrease, the price per square foot that you’ve just found by this comparison method.
No need to trust my judgment. You can assign this as homework to your age-appropriate children. Or, you can pay your assigned property tax for another four years without question.
C.A. Wulf
Warren County
Opinion
Commentary: Can carriage houses and granny flats ease the housing crisis?
Whether carriage houses, in-law suites, English basements, or granny flats, what all accessory dwelling units (ADUs) have in common – the reason their backers love them and why few folks think of them as a possible solution to the housing crisis – is that they blend in with the neighborhood.
A garage-to-accessory dwelling unit conversion in Richmond. (Wyatt Gordon)
A bill patroned by Del. Sally Hudson, D-Charlottesville, this year would have expanded permission to build such supplemental housing across the commonwealth, but the proposal was killed on a party-line vote in a Republican-controlled House subcommittee last month. If ADUs are as unobtrusive as their supporters say, then why won’t Virginia legislators make it easier to build them?
An ADU for who?
As defined according to Hudson’s HB 2100, an ADU is “an independent dwelling unit on a single-family dwelling lot with its own living, bathroom, and kitchen space. An ADU may be within or attached to a single-family dwelling or in a detached structure on a lot containing a single-family dwelling.” In short, no matter what form it takes, adding an ADU to a single-family parcel enables two households to live on a lot that would otherwise be home to just one.
Doubling housing density without significantly altering the neighborhood character can prove especially appealing in cities like Charlottesville, where demand is plentiful, and vacant lots are not. As retirees, tech professionals, and folks affiliated with the University of Virginia have poured into town over the last few decades, the housing supply has remained stagnant.
Unable to find a place to call home in Charlottesville, ever more people who work in the city are forced to live further out, causing congestion and long commutes. With an abundance of garages, barns, and carriage houses in the region, relatively quick upgrades to ADUs could yield big results for Hudson’s district.
“If you’re looking for ways to put more missing middle housing into really hot housing markets like ours, ADUs can be a great option,” she said. “Sometimes folks build them to have a rental income stream, to age in place, to help someone recovering from an injury or illness, or to house multiple generations on the same property.”
If it had passed, Hudson’s proposal would have set consistent standards for ADUs across the commonwealth on everything from setbacks to owner occupancy requirements, ending the current patchwork of rules and regulations that often make ADUs technically legal but practically unfeasible.
While critics often decry the Dillon Rule for hindering localities’ ability to tailor the public policy to their needs, in this instance, Hudson hoped to use its power to streamline ADUs standards and make it easier to build the additional housing her constituents require.
“This is an example where the local authority is sometimes used to stop homeowners and businesses from constructing ADUs which are good for their bottom line as well as our housing supply,” she said. “These are units that the building industry would love to be able to build for homeowners if the regulations would get out of the way of the people who want them.”
An ADU with alley access in Richmond’s Fan neighborhood. (Wyatt Gordon)
Localities lean no
Nothing is currently stopping localities in Virginia from streamlining ADU standards and adopting a more permissive approach to supplemental dwellings. In light of such existing authority, many of the commonwealth’s cities and counties viewed Hudson’s bill as a state-level overstep that would diminish their discretion over land use rules and regulations. That’s why Joe Lerch, director of local government policy for the Virginia Association of Counties, opposed the proposal.
“Many counties exercise their authority to allow for the inclusion of ADUs within their zoning ordinances,” Lerch wrote in an email. “In doing so, they determine the context of where ADUs can be reasonably accommodated to meet the needs of residents and homeowners. A one-size-fits-all mandate to authorize an ADU wherever a single-family dwelling exists excludes input from citizens and communities on how ADUs can fit within existing and proposed residential developments.”
Other groups, like the Coalition for Smarter Growth, support ADUs in principle but had concerns that a statewide override of localities’ permitting processes could inadvertently cause more sprawl.
“It’s important that affordable places to live are located closer to existing services, public transit, and jobs,” said Stewart Schwartz, the Coalition’s executive director. “More and more people who live farther out choke our transportation systems with car drivers, and that means a greater loss of farms and forests as well as more greenhouse gas emissions. There is an awful lot of demand to live in walkable, urban neighborhoods, but often there aren’t any options. ADUs are a good option.”
Such concerns may have easily been assuaged with more time and stronger stakeholder engagement. The vast majority of suburban sprawl comes from the expansion of single-family home subdivisions, not the infill construction which typifies ADUs.
“Based on the work that I have done, I think I would be aware of a lot of new greenfield ADUs being built, but I just haven’t heard of that happening,” said Emily Hamilton, a researcher with the Mercatus Institute, an economic markets research center at George Mason University. “For ADUs to lead to more sprawl than the status quo, they would have to be changing developers’ calculations on subdivisions, and that seems highly unlikely to me.”
“Not nearly enough housing”
In response to the opposition, Hudson ultimately proposed a substitute version of HB 2100 that watered down the bill to include no requirements on localities. Instead, the proposal would have formed a state-level advisory panel to merely offer guidance on how to encourage the development of ADUs across the commonwealth.
Even in California, where a slew of bills have made it easier for homeowners to build tens of thousands of new ADUs in recent years, attic apartments and carriage houses are not significant solutions to the housing crisis.
“It’s not nearly enough housing to meet the need,” explained Hamilton. “ADUs are simply a smart first step that gives homeowners more rights to put their homes to a slightly more marginally intensive use when it makes sense to them.”
Hudson had hoped that her calls to reduce regulations on homeowners and builders might garner her ADU bill bipartisan support, especially given Gov. Youngkin’s recent remarks railing against localities’ exclusionary land use rules.
“Bills like this are a direct response to the governor’s call for some cross-partisan work on housing affordability,” Hudson said. “Anybody who is listening to Virginians knows that cost of living tops the list of things keeping people up at night, and housing is the biggest slice of anybody’s paycheck. This is a very practical thing we can do to put more units on properties where the owners want them.”
by Wyatt Gordon, Virginia Mercury
Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.
Opinion
Commentary: Farewell and adieu – Possible pitfalls and historical context of pending legislative retirements
I was something of a young pup in the Virginia Capitol press corps, at least in terms of tenure on the beat, if not age, in 2001 when an astonishing number of exits from the Senate and House of Delegates shook Capitol Square.
Almost all of the 12 delegates who announced their exits ahead of the 2001 elections for the 100 House seats were Democrats. Many of them, just a few years earlier when their party held the majority, pretty much ran things. Among the retirees were the immediate past House speaker, Tom Moss, and the former majority leader, C. Richard “Dickie” Cranwell.
The reason was redistricting.
In 2001, for the first time in Virginia history, Republicans dictated the decennial reapportionment by virtue of House and Senate majorities they won in 1999. In so doing, aided by quantum advances in digitized demography and computer technology, they redrew the lines to the Democrats’ maximum disadvantage. So surgically precise was the digital remapping that Republicans were able to select the exact block on which Cranwell resided and place it into a Republican-voting district where his chances at reelection ranged from nil to nada.
As of last Friday, the number of announced House retirements had reached 14, eclipsing 2001’s high water mark, according to a tabulation by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan tracker of money in state politics. Add in six senators’ retirements, many with decades of tenure, and 20 pending departures that represent the aggregate loss of 325 years of legislative experience. Six of the announced farewells are from lawmakers with 20 or more years of experience, and they account for 204 of those years, or 63% of the cumulative institutional memory loss.
Another 12 delegates and one senator are also leaving their seats to seek another office rather than seek reelection — many of them are delegates avoiding a primary clash with another sitting delegate. The senator, Jennifer McClellan, D- Richmond, left to fill the vacant congressional seat of the late Rep. Don McEachin.
The reason, again: redistricting. But this time it wasn’t partisan.
Four years ago, Virginians approved a statewide referendum establishing a nonpartisan commission to take over the nakedly partisan process that the Legislature had always handled. After the commission’s abject failure to do its one job, the task was taken over by the Virginia Supreme Court. This yielded dramatically reconfigured legislative and Congressional lines which, refreshingly, showed no regard for incumbency.
In the House, there are 22 districts in which two or more incumbents reside, including 20 that pair sitting delegates of the same party.
In the Senate, eight of the 40 districts pit two incumbents against each other, including six in which sitting senators are of the same party. Those include the districts of retiring Sens. Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, and Tommy Norment, R-Williamsburg, who have swapped the powerful title of majority leader back and forth for most of the past decade, depending on whose party held the slim majority.
How the departures will affect the partisan balance of power in the General Assembly that will take its seat next January is hard to predict. A gauntlet of primaries — many of them sure to be bruising — cloud this fall’s general election contests.
The infusion of new blood into the process is healthy and inevitable. Bob Holsworth, a longtime Richmond-area political analyst and retired dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, calls Virginia’s new nonpartisan redistricting system “a backdoor term limits law” for the number of incumbents it has pushed from the stage.
“If you like term limits, then you think this is fantastic. If not, then it’s problematic,” he said.
New lawmakers come to Richmond with new perspectives. They are less bound to the hoary traditions of the House and Senate or the norms of political deportment and increasingly act as mavericks. They’ve also, in recent years, tended to be more doctrinaire – Democrats who tend to be more liberal and Republicans who are more conservative or “Trumpy” — which confounds the lost legislative art of compromise.
Another consequence of losing so much collective experience, particularly in the Senate, is an indirect shift of power away from elected lawmakers, Holsworth said.
“That’s going to be a challenge,” he said. Newbies who replace veteran leaders who bring decades of institutional knowledge to their powerful roles overseeing critical policy areas of government will face a time-consuming learning curve. Until the replacements learn the ropes, the process seeks out others to fill the expertise gap.
“The challenge is that power doesn’t go away. That power goes to the staffs and to the lobbyists,” Holsworth said. “That power will still be there, but a lot of it won’t be in the hands of legislators until they catch up.”
Lobbyists and legislative staff in Virginia already enjoy outsized importance and input by virtue of one of the most abbreviated annual legislative calendars in America. Our General Assembly has routinely busted its deadlines for finishing essential work within those truncated timelines throughout the 21st century.
“The other person who will benefit from this will be the governor. He has a large staff and advisers to help him,” he added.
Finally, there’s a wistfulness at seeing these legislators who have been fixtures on Capitol Square for generations leave. Like them or not, these are the personalities that animate the staid, unchanging, dry-as-dust legislative process. The friendships they forge over those decades of service can’t just be turned off on the way out the door.
But for every one of the long legislative careers that end this year — some of which, like Saslaw’s and that of Del. Ken Plum, D-Fairfax, exceed 40 years — there was that scary first day of their freshman terms when they were at the bottom looking up and asking directions to the restrooms.
Even in an institution with historical roots, more than 400 years old, change remains the only constant.
by Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury
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