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Sen. Chichester does it his way

January 25, 2004 1:14 am

D aniel Chichester says the only person his brother John ever truly obeyed was their mother.

Otherwise, John Chichester--also known as state Sen. Chichester, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chichester and Senate President Pro Tempore Chichester--has always marched to his own drummer.

That could explain why he's now a Republican proposing a tax-increase plan even larger than the Democratic governor's.

"All through his political career, he has said what he believed and let the chips fall where they may. He's always had that streak of independence," said Daniel, the Stafford County commonwealth's attorney and the youngest of the three Chichester boys.

"He's very open-minded. He'll listen to you, but then he's going to do what he thinks is right."

These days, what's "right" for Chichester is a tax package that would generate an extra $2.5 billion a year in state revenues by increasing the gas, sales and cigarette taxes as well as income taxes for the state's wealthiest residents.

Chichester's package also reduces taxes on food and personal vehicles, and raises income-tax deductions for lower- and middle-income families.

By introducing his tax plan, Chichester is once again bucking a wing of his own party.

Chichester is fairly representative of the form of Republicanism that rules the Senate, and many of his fellow senators are likely to support his tax plan, at least in part.

But House Republicans are by and large leery of tax hikes. Many of them have signed pledges swearing they won't vote for a tax increase. They've been elected on those promises. And they're not looking kindly on Sen. Chichester right now.

But Chichester, 66, doesn't care. He's already got 26 other senators to co-sponsor his tax package.

Even those who hate his current position on taxes acknowledge that he truly believes raising revenues is the only way to right Virginia's messy finances.

"There is no question at all that he is completely sincere about it, and my guess is he's in his last term," said University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato. "He doesn't have to worry about the right wing of the Republican Party anymore. He's got a solid majority in the state Senate. He's in a good position to do what he thinks is right."

Chichester also believes it's his responsibility as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to do it.

"Being chairman of the committee and the sense of duty that it compels is why I have gone into this tax situation. If I didn't do it, who?" Chichester asked in an interview this week. "I'd have a terrible time shaving in the morning, looking at myself in the mirror."

The senator from Stafford wasn't always in the seat of power. Since first being elected in 1978, he's been a member of the minority party and lost a statewide race for lieutenant governor. There was a time, before lobbyists and legislators accosted him every time he walked through the Capitol halls, that even Chichester was a backbencher.

Back then, only one Republican sat on Senate Finance, despite slowly increasing numbers of Republicans in the Senate at large.

Finally, in 1992, then-chairman Hunter Andrews chose three Republicans for Finance seats: Bob Russell, William Wampler and John Chichester.

Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, was devastated.

"I remember being so jealous, just so put out that my own group, my own folks, would put John on there ahead of me," Houck said. "I knew the practical effect."

That practical effect was that Fredericksburg-area groups would go to Chichester for budget help instead of Houck.

"I was flying high on the local thing about budgeting," Houck said. "[I thought] they're going to be going to him and he's going to bring home the bacon. Now I look back and think, how petty."

Houck says he didn't blame Chichester. And now Houck is one who sings Chichester's praises, noting that if Chichester hadn't been put on Finance then, he wouldn't be chairman now.

"I give John all the credit in the world for rising above party politics and doing the policy of Virginia above all else," Houck said. "That's perhaps his strongest attribute. He puts policy of Virginia above party politics. That's a rare commodity in this day and age."

Chichester grew up on a farm in Stafford County, where his parents emphasized the importance of hard work and honesty. R.H.L. Chichester Jr. was the Stafford commonwealth's attorney. His wife, Van Massey Chichester, was the executive secretary of the regional Tuberculosis Association.

Their standards, said Daniel Chichester, helped mold their middle son into a statesman, not a politician.

"If you're raised on a farm, I think that sort of influences the way you conduct yourself later on in life. If you shovel enough cow manure, there's some built-in humility," he said. "As a matter of integrity, which is John's stock in trade, our father and our mother were, in that area, no-nonsense. God help you if you did anything untoward in school. You'd hope the teacher would beat the tar out of you, but, Lord, please don't tell my mother. Lying was out of the question. If you ever got caught lying, she'd hang your skin up on a coat rack."

Consequently, John Chichester generally says what he means and means what he says, his brother said.

"Some people, they'll say anything to get a vote. They'll say one thing to one crowd and another thing to another crowd," he said. "There's none of that with him."

Those who know him best say he's never been much of a follower and is far more likely to go with his gut than with any established party line.

In 1969, Chichester mounted his first campaign for office, running as a conservative Democrat against what he claimed were liberal forces looking to undermine the party's traditional values.

After losing the Democratic primary to incumbent Del. George C. Rawlings, Chichester became a Republican in spite of his family's longtime involvement in the state Democratic Party.

"His family were Byrd conservatives," Sabato said. "He is a traditional moderate conservative Republican, because that's what the Byrd people became. They did not become fundamentalist Christian hard-right Republicans. They took the very same philosophy they had in the Democratic Party and moved it to the Republican Party."

In 1985, after seven years in the Senate, Chichester ran against Doug Wilder for the lieutenant governor's seat. Members of his party and his own campaign manager urged Chichester to run a series of ads attacking Wilder's character.

Chichester refused. Wilder won the election and, four years later, became the nation's first elected black governor.

Wyatt Durrette, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 1985, said Chichester might have won had he mounted a more aggressive campaign.

"But that's not him," said Durrette, a lawyer in Richmond and a former House delegate. "I think he finds that difficult to do even if it would be politically advantageous to do it. He's not going to sacrifice the core of who he is to do that.

"We didn't always agree in 1985 about strategy," said Durrette. "While he listened to advice, ultimately he was going to call the shots. For anyone, some shots are going to be good and some bad. That's what being human is. You're never going to get it right all the time."

Sabato said Chichester's own personality may have hurt him in the lieutenant governor's race.

"He's certainly someone who does not grandstand. That's one of the reasons he lost his race to Doug Wilder," Sabato said. "He just is not interested in doing that. What weakens you on the campaign trail actually strengthens you in the legislature. You are punished in the legislature for grandstanding."

Chichester has referred to his loss to Wilder as a "low point." But he seems to have gotten over it.

"Maybe that was a predestined thing," Chichester said. "You sure have more input as chair of Senate Finance than you do as lieutenant governor."

That's an understatement.

As Senate Finance chairman, Chichester wields power that in some ways rivals that of the governor.

Chichester has had years to learn the minutiae of state finances. Unlike other members of his committee, who focus their efforts on a single area of the budget through subcommittee work, Chichester must understand it all, from the smallest details to the big picture.

"I learned from the experience of not having been on there that none of us had any institutional knowledge of Virginia's finances other than what we could glean on our own," Chichester said. "It had to be a very steep learning curve for me. I had to know as much as I could absorb."

The night before every committee meeting during the legislative session, Chichester has the committee staff brief him on the bills that will come up the next day. They tell him how each bill will affect the budget, and he goes to the sponsors of bills he dislikes to tell them why he's going to shoot their legislation down--or, as he often terms it, "allow this bill to rest in the bosom of the committee."

"You have to have a more ecumenical view," Chichester said. "Not just your district but a statewide view."

Chichester knows the budget so well now that he gets frustrated when others don't see the problems and solutions that he does.

"I sometimes feel I fail to teach, because I explain something that to me is perfectly logical and you offer a remedy and the remedy is denied," he said.

The senator's willingness to take the less popular view may be an inherited trait, say those familiar with the Chichester family history.

In 1789 one of his ancestors, Richard Chichester of Fairfax, sided with George Mason in an argument with George Washington over the wording of the U.S. Constitution, irking the future president and the majority who agreed with him.

Daniel Chichester says his brother isn't trying to run afoul of party leadership. He's just trying to do his job.

"It's a matter of putting the people of Virginia first with my brother," he said. "Party affiliation is important and necessary, but we have to remember why we're public servants. We're not servants for the party. We're servants for the people we work for."

The way Chichester sees it, his job as servant of the people is to protect Virginia's fiscal integrity.

The way opponents of his plan see it, being a servant of the people means protecting them from tax increases.

Chichester is about to have a fight on his hands like he hasn't seen since 2001, when he led the Senate in opposing an increase in the car-tax cut favored by the House of Delegates and then-Gov. Jim Gilmore.

That dispute dragged on for months, as lawmakers returned to Richmond week after week after the session adjourned, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to reach an agreement.

Chichester spurred that impasse by refusing to allow Gilmore's pet car-tax cut to move up to a higher percentage, saying that the law did not allow the tax cut to move forward.

Numerous efforts to sway him and other senators--which included a phone campaign waged by Gilmore--failed. By the end, relations between senators and delegates were downright hostile.

This year, "another 2001" is shorthand for the fear that Chichester's position on taxes, and the opposition in the House, will lead to another lengthy House-vs.-Senate standoff.

"Much like 2001, we're in a position today where the two houses are very far apart," Wampler said.

House Speaker Bill Howell--Chichester's longtime friend, but the embodiment of House opposition to tax increases--hopes his friendship with Chichester will help avert another 2001 this year.

"John truly believes that this increase is needed," Howell said. "I think we both know we're going to have to come to grips with it."

Some Republicans question why a man like Chichester--who has never been an advocate of higher taxes in the past--would take such a drastic step now.

Chichester's opponent in last year's Republican primary, Mike Rothfeld, charged that the longtime lawmaker had abandoned "core Republican values," including a commitment to lower taxes.

Chichester certainly didn't mention plans for this tax package last spring when he was fending off Rothfeld.

But the senator's supporters say that's hogwash.

"He's as tight as the bark on a tree," Wampler said, adding that raising taxes is a solution of last resort.

Chichester said a list of potential cuts from the House Appropriations Committee proves his point.

"We can do that. We can emasculate our services. I think Moody's will give us our just reward," Chichester said, referring to credit agency Moody's threat to yank Virginia's treasured triple-A bond rating if the state doesn't fix an imbalance between spending and revenue.

Durrette said he hasn't seen the state budget and is "open" to the idea of increased taxes, especially since Chichester, once considered the most conservative member of the Senate, is proposing them.

"This is not a guy who has a history of believing that every problem can be solved by government or by spending money. He has obviously concluded there are essential needs and not the money to meet them," he said. "I'm confident he's doing what he thinks is right. I have a high regard for his judgment. I'm influenced by the fact that he has come to this conclusion."

Said Chichester's brother: "To suggest he's a big tax-and-spend person, only a person politically motivated would make that statement. John's tight as a tick. If you think he's a spendthrift, you're insane. He's tighter with the taxpayers' money than he is with his own, and God knows he's tight with his own."

Chichester's friends say those who accuse him of abandoning fiscal conservatism are merely playing politics.

"The true conservative is someone like John, who manages finances very carefully but at the same time understands you have to make some investments to have a superior product," Houck said.

"The thing I admire most about him is he's a person of principle," Durrette said. "I think he does what he thinks is right. I don't know what more you can ask from a person."

To reach CHELYEN DAVIS: 804/782-9362 cdavis@freelancestar.com