By Peter Galuszka
Virginia’s Republicans failed to replicate their national party’s success in last year’s mid-term national elections and barely squeaked by to win both houses of the state General Assembly.
The 20-20 split in the state Senate hung on a spare 222 votes in a Spotsylvania County race. By conceding his election race Democratic State Sen. R. Edward Houck does give Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling the opportunity to cast the deciding vote on critical issues in the Senate.
Overall, however, Tuesday voting results are hardly a mandate for the GOP, despite how much pro-GOP commentators such as the publisher of this blog and Wall Street Journal columnists wish it to be so. The key is how the Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and other GOP leaders intend to use their new power in the legislature.
Possible agendas are not promising. McDonnell probably wants to change the state worker retirement system in ways that screw state workers and dump more costs back on them. He’s already raided the system indirectly by deferring payments the state is obliged to make in a smoke and mirrors attempt to present the state with budget that is in the black. Doing so lets him cast himself as a hotshot new Republican governor so he can pursue national ambitions.
He’s going to try to somehow change public schools, but he has already cut critical education spending and Virginia children are suffering the results with their worsening performance on national tests.
He might try to revive, once again, his efforts to privatize ABC stores but even with the seven new Republican state senators that’s going to be a battle since many GOP legislators abandoned McDonnell in his earlier efforts.
What is likely is more of the same corporate pork barrel we’ve seen for big corporations and Hollywood moguls like Steven Spielberg and West Coast defense industries. Spielberg got millions from the state film office to make a Lincoln movie in Richmond where the payback to the state seems to be limited to actress Sally Fields patronizing cute downtown and Cary Street restaurants in the capital. As far as corporate welfare, expect a new charge to lift the ban on uranium mining by a group of rich Southside farmers and Canadian businessmen who have already been taking legislators on suspicious, all-expenses-paid trips to uranium mining hotspots such as Paris.
In other areas, there’s not much McDonnell can hope to accomplish. His dream of erecting dozens of oil derricks off the Virginia caps to make Virginia “The Energy Capital of the East Coast” have come to naught. The U.S. Department of the Interior left Virginia off the list for new leases for at least a few more years.
The way appeals courts are running against right-wing Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli’s efforts to block Obamacare, McDonnell will be hard-pressed to do much to further challenge the law which faces the ultimate constitutionality test in the U.S. Supreme Court. The ball here is no longer in Virginia’s court.
Lastly, despite McDonnell’s efforts to make himself over from staunch social conservative to moderate, the election results Tuesday have a conspicuous nut factor. Corey Stewart, the Prince William County politician who wants to make Virginia the next Alabama in terms of racist anti-immigrant laws, won. Loudoun County has a completely GOP board, including homophobe Eugene Delgaudio. And, ultra-nut Dick Black is heading for the Senate.
True, the Democrats did poorly and Obama is weak. But the real message is they are not as weak as the Republicans wished.
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