Patrick McSweeney



 

Ambiguous Message

The defeat of the sales tax referenda in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads could mean a number of things. It may be too early to draw firm conclusions.


 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

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