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Elections in name only

Now, Mr. McDonnell, on to redistricting?

Date published: 11/15/2009

AMONG DELEGATES returning to the General Assembly, we have never had the pleasure of meeting Riley E. Ingram (R-Hopewell), who may, for all we know, be a direct linear descendant of Pericles; or Rosalyn R. Dance (D-Petersburg), possibly in wisdom and stature a latter-day Queen Elizabeth; or Jimmie P. Massie III (R-Henrico), who, if he says "SHAZAM!" may turn into Delegate Marvel. Yet it is more likely that they, and the 50 other delegates elected Nov. 3 without serious opposition, benefited less from the touch of greatness than from anti-democratic gerrymandering.

Elections are popularly thought to be political contests, A versus B. But partisan redistricting, whereby politicians herd sympathetic voters into corrals of bizarre dimensions, tries to preclude such vulgarity. Thus, an analysis of this month's state House "races" reveals that in 33 of 100 districts, the winners were the only horses in the field: Dels. Ingram, Dance, Massie, and 30 others, including Mark Cole (R-Spotsylvania) and Bobby Orrock (R-Caroline), competed solely against Write In.

But the shoo-ins don't stop with the matchless 33. Thirteen other winners, including House Speaker Bill Howell (R-Stafford), faced only third-party opposition--Greens, Constitutionalists, and so on, who, lacking serious party resources, were never really in the fray.

And to the unopposed and scarcely opposed, one might add a third category of runaway victors--those who live in such safe districts that, even against a major-party foe, they racked up 70 percent or more of the popular vote. Of such fortunates, there were seven.

Arguably, then, 53 of 100 House winners were lead-pipe cinches to go to Richmond as long as they avoided the kind of lurid pratfall that did in Del. Phil Hamilton (R-Newport News), who helped secure special funds for a college with which he was angling for a job in what smelled like a rancid quid pro quo.

Do all these noncompetitive elections suggest anything like healthy self-government in the commonwealth? Does this stacked-deck system partake more of Jefferson and Madison or of Papa Doc Duvalier and Nicolae Ceausescu?

GOP HARVEST

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Date published: 11/15/2009

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