Were he a betting man, Del. Alfonso Lopez told a gathering of seasoned Arlington Democrats this week, he’d wager that the courts will rule that Virginia has to hold yet another House of Delegates campaign in 2022, this one under the lines that eventually will be redrawn to accommodate census data.
(Of course, were he truly a betting man, Del. Lopez might be in the poorhouse today; he was pretty sure that Terry McAuliffe was going to win the governorship, I can report … without revealing my sources, naturally.)
Former Del. David Ramadan, who was part of an Arlington Committee of 100 post-election post-mortem on Wednesday, predicted essentially the same thing — it’s probable that the courts will require another House of Delegates election in 2022, followed by the regular one in 2023.
Time to pause for a little prayer. Oh, Lord, I don’t ask for many favors. You don’t need to make me taller. You don’t need to make me more adorable (as if such a thing were possible). But please, spare all 8 million of us Virginians an extraneous House of Delegates campaign season.
(For the record, I’m not asking the big guy upstairs to smite proponents of this idea, although smiting is very Old Testament-like, and what’s not to love about the Old Testament? Nope, don’t hurt anybody; just throw a little sanity into the process.)
I’d be making this plea no matter which side had won the majority this time around (and it appears to be Republicans). Democrats running the lower house of the legislature, Republicans running it, whatever; just not three delegate elections in a row, please-please-please.
This situation actually played out, albeit before my time, in the early 1980s. Was Virginia better off for having experienced it? One is dubious.
Anyway, we’ll see what transpires. And even were it to happen and Democrats to win back the House of Delegates majority next November, it wouldn’t matter much as we’ll have a Republican in the Governor’s Mansion through early 2026 at least.
Divided government, as noted in this week’s editorial, is a good thing.
EXHIBITING SOME CLASS IS ALWAYS WORTH CELEBATING: At the aforementioned Arlington Committee of 100 gathering on Wednesday, Arlington County Democratic Committee chair Jill Caiazzo reached across the aisle, figuratively speaking, to congratulate Winsome Sears on her election as the first female lieutenant governor and the first woman of color in any statewide office in Virginia.
Democrats, of course, were hoping that their candidate, Hala Ayala, would have broken through those two glass ceilings, but it was not to be. Nice of Caiazzo to offer good wishes.
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: Buried deep in the entrails of this week’s Falls Church News-Press newspaper was a news brief in which the paper’s owner/publisher/editor/columnist (and cartoonist emeritus), Nick Benton, “issued an apology to anyone offended by his remarks during a brief incident outside the Falls Church Community Center polling place on Election Day.”
(“An apology to anyone offended…” Ah, the classic non-apology-apology. A staple of our modern era.)
The item noted that Benton’s remarks were precipitated by a second-hand report that “a pollworker was slandering the News-Press by claiming the newspaper is a ‘Lyndon LaRouche publication’.” But it does not note what Benton said in reply.
Inquiring minds really, really want to know 🙂
- Scott McCaffrey