Every
election, especially a referendum election, answers
a question that is deeper than what appears on the
face of the ballot. Unfortunately, the answer is
seldom obvious.
The
answer is never a simple composite of what motivated
individuals to vote as they did, but rather an
amalgam. It is the lesson for the future that the
electorate as a body has provided to politicians.
What
lesson should be learned from the defeat of the
sales tax referenda in Hampton Roads and Northern
Virginia? If we can agree on the lesson, some
things should fall in place without further debate.
The problem is that our personal biases color what
we learn.
The
complexity of the two sales tax ballot measures
makes it more difficult than usual to see what
message the electorate was sending. Each measure
involved a tax increase, a list of transportation
projects and a tax-supported bond program. The
message could be that no tax increase will be
acceptable or that the particular projects were
ill-conceived or that the bond financing approach
was wrong. The message might also be that
legislators shouldn’t resort to a referendum to
decide whether taxes should be increased.
We
might look to other matters on last Tuesday’s
ballot to determine what the rejection of the sales
tax referenda means. The higher education and parks
bond issues were approved overwhelmingly in the two
regions. All incumbents were reelected. Two
constitutional amendments were approved without much
opposition.
The
ease of victory of the other ballot measures and the
reelection of incumbents suggest that the defeat of
the sales tax referenda was not due to the
electorate’s distrust of government. That would be
an over-reading of the results. Redistricting and
other incumbent protection buffers meant that there
were no virtually competitive elections for Congress
in Virginia this year. The constitutional
amendments were non-controversial. The bond
questions were relatively straightforward and met
with little organized opposition.
And
yet in the area that will receive the largest share
of funding from the $900 million higher education
bond program — Harrisonburg-Rockingham — the
bond issue was rejected. How can that be explained?
It could be that it was the only area in Virginia
where voters were given any reason to question the
higher education bond measure.
A
one-week opposition campaign using mail, radio and
phone messages was launched in that area to counter
the aggressive, long-running and more expensive
campaign to win support for the bond measure. The
vote tally in Harrisonburg-Rockingham stands in
stark contrast to the rest of the Commonwealth where
no opposition arose.
It
may be best to reflect a while about the sales tax
referenda rather than rush to proclaim what they
mean.
The
price of learning the wrong lesson is too high.
In
the meantime, the issues raised during the campaign
should be examined in a post-election light. The
problems facing Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads
have not gone away, but they may have a different
appearance now that the intense flame of the last
few months has dimmed.
After
such divisive campaigns, it may be difficult for the
opposing sides to be magnanimous. What is needed is
a willingness to lower the volume, to explore what
can be learned from Tuesday’s election and to
propose a new course for each region. It falls to
the prevailing side to articulate the lesson of the
referenda elections and to suggest the next step.
The
debate over the future of these two regions hasn’t
ended. It has simply moved into a new and, perhaps,
more thoughtful phase.
-- November 11, 2002
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