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IRAQ MAY BE SLOWLY moving toward pluralism, but in some segments of the area's Republican Party, the Shiites are on a merry purge of the ideologically impure. Stafford state Sen. John Chichester, who has more time in office than some of the purifiers have out of trainer pants, suddenly finds himself lumped with Democratic infidels as a soft-on-abortion big spender. Do tell.
The revelations about Mr. Chichester, who sinisterly disguises his liberalism with a conservative voting record, come from primary challenger Mike Rothfeld. Mr. Rothfeld, whose mailers describe him as an officer at his church, knows he can't unseat a popular incumbent senator by pelting him with posies, but it's clear from his campaign literature that Deacon Rothfeld doesn't consider forbearance or fair-mindedness divine virtues. Take Mr. Chichester's "record" of "opposing pro-life legislation," as one Rothfeld booster put it in a mass-mailed letter.
In truth, Mr. Chichester doesn't have a perfect pro-life voting record as gauged by the Virginia Society for Human Life, but it's one that if adopted by all legislatures and courts would make abortion much less common. A VSHL report on key Senate votes between 1978 and 2003 reveals that Mr. Chichester voted for abortion restrictions 90 percent of the time, in 18 out of 20 cases.
The two "wrong" votes came in 1994 and involved tweakings of a George Allen-backed bill requiring notification of parents whose minor daughters were contemplating abortion. Sen. Chichester's demurrals were over the age at which the legislation would be triggered and whether other family members might sometimes be notified in lieu of parents. That year on the main issue--whether girls in trouble and "helpful" clinicians had a right to set up an abortion all by themselves--Mr. Chichester voted for a notification law in a 20-20 Senate split. This forced then-Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer to save the day for 13-year-olds' sexual liberty with a tie-breaking "nay."
In the Senate Education & Health Committee, on which Mr. Chichester sat for 24 years, he voted in line with the VSHL 11 out of 13 times from 1992 to 2003. The exceptions? One (in 1999) concerned abortion-clinic licensing; the other (in 2000) required doctors to report complications from abortions. It's legitimate for Mr. Rothfeld to challenge him on these votes--or, indeed, any others.
However, the society's report shows that never was Mr. Chichester's vote, in the full Senate or committee, a lethal one for pro-life legislation. That is, even had he voted the "right" way in the aforementioned cases, the pro-life measures would have failed. Conversely, in four instances--the 1994 "basic" parental-notification vote and three committee votes (two on parental notification, one on informed consent)--Mr. Chichester's vote was crucial in advancing abortion-trimming bills. In sum, when pro-life Virginia needed John Chichester, he was there.
With an asterisk. Mr. Rothfeld is targeting Mr. Chichester's February 2002 failure to oblige the request of Rep. Dick Black, R-Loudoun, that the senator send a proxy to save a parental-consent bill then before an evenly split Education & Health Committee. The bill died. Mr. Chichester's response is (1) legislative rules forbade him to send a proxy to a committee meeting before which he had not yet physically appeared and (2) as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he was heavily engaged in a House-Senate conference trying to produce a state budget in the legislative session's 11th hour. Again, you may argue that the senator--in one of those anguishing situations when human beings envy amoebas--made a wrong call. You cannot argue that he's King Herod.
Sen. Chichester, states the VSHL tally, has voted consistently against state funding of abortion, against gruesome partial-birth abortion, and, when he's been there to cast a vote, for parental-consent requirements. He has voted for all parental-notification measures during the last nine years. Copies available for the Rothfeld campaign's next mail drop.
