By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger

    Virginians who pay attention to politics are not likely to be disappointed this year if they like competitive elections.
    The Old Dominion, once a place of one-party predictability, is now blessed with a most pleasant sufficiency of contests, unlike each of the past two state cycles for legislative offices.

    Two years ago, 59 percent of House of Delegates elections featured only one candidate. This year, only 32 percent of House elections are uncontested.

    If competition is a good thing in politics as well as in the marketplace, then the good news is voter choice has expanded as Virginia has grown more competitive in statewide and legislative elections.

    Voters face the possibility of more close General Assembly contests as well as the certainty of more contested elections this year than two and four years ago.

    Of course, with the numbers of potentially tight races, Virginians will witness more expensive campaigns and record amounts of cash given to candidates from in-state and out-of-state donors.

    In Virginia, there are no limits on campaign contributions, so the sky and the moon may appear closer than the stacks of cash that campaigns hope to burn through from June to Nov. 3.

    A competitive race for governor between Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell is the marquis multi-million-dollar contest certain to draw the most money, national attention and votes.

    Both parties have geographic diversity on their statewide tickets and a pair of Northern Virginia legislators facing off for attorney general in what promises to be a hard-fought race between GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Steve Shannon.

    Deeds, a resident of Bath County near the West Virginia line, and his lieutenant governor running mate Jody Wagner of Virginia Beach live on the west and the east sides of the state.

    McDonnell got his political start in Virginia Beach as well and moved to suburban Richmond four years ago when he became attorney general while GOP running mate Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling started off and stayed in politics from Hanover County.

    But the real geographic diversity and surprising increase in competition this year is in the 68 contested House of Delegates elections all across the commonwealth.

    In 2007, only 41 of the 100 House elections were contested.

    In 2005, only 49 of the 100 House seats featured elections with at least two candidates.

    Now, places in Southwest Virginia and from Danville to Dumfries and Delaplane to Dayton have two-party competition.

    In all, it appears from campaign finance reports that 85 Republicans, 72 Democrats and 24 independents or members of smaller parties are seeking House seats on Nov. 3.

    Of course, the Nov. 3 election does not have to be the last word on who will sit in the House of Delegates, or even the Virginia Senate if Deeds and/or Cuccinelli manage to win statewide office.

    In fact, Charlottesville area Democrats are seriously discussing the possibilities for having a pair of special elections for General Assembly seats run into the second week of January if Deeds beats McDonnell for governor.

    The scenario many imagine involves a Deeds win and a quick special election near the end of December during which Delegate David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, is a leading candidate to succeed Deeds in the 25th Senate District.

      If Toscano were to run and win, a second local special election could be held in early January for the 57th House District seat that suddenly would be vacated by the former Charlottesville mayor.

      Toscano is considered very likely to seek the Senate if Deeds were to win on Nov. 3, and it is not certain what types of opposition he might face. Delegate Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, is considered much more likely to wait for a future statewide bid for attorney general than to seek the Deeds seat in a Democratic-leading Senate district.

      Toscano could be an early and strong favorite for the Senate if such an opening develops and a win by him could leave many people eyeing a strong Democratic seat in a House district that includes all eight precincts in Charlottesville plus eight nearby in Albemarle County.

      Democratic Party leaders suggest that Mayor Dave Norris and former Mayor Blake Caravati are only two of a larger number of Charlottesville Democrats whom party leaders count as likely to eye the House seat if it were suddenly to open up late this year.

      Republicans note that Democrats may be counting chickens before the eggs hatch, but in an era when House and Senate seats involve campaigns with price tags shooting skyward Democrats contend it may be the early mayor who catches the prize before others even squirm. 

      With Democrats needing to pick up six seats from their current 45 to gain a majority in the 100-seat House, holding onto one in Charlottesville possibly could make a difference in which party gains a majority, or even parity, in the legislature that will convene Jan. 13. Republicans doubt the prospect of losing their majority while Democrats contend their party is still on a roll in Virginia. A dozen competitive House races could determine which party heads into the 2011 redistricting year holding a majority. 

TJ certainly was one smart man!

Thanks to the fine folks at Monticello for the following 10 pieces of timeless wisdom from Thomas Jefferson, a man ready for Facebook and for email 200 years early!

“A man of habit and discipline, Jefferson compiled a list of ten rules of comportment for his namesake Thomas Jefferson Smith. It is a list any of us would be well advised to heed,“ the folks at his home say.

Thomas Jefferson’s Ten Rules:

1. Never put off tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have earned it.
4. Never buy what you don’t want because it is cheap.
5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We seldom repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain the evils have cost us that never happened.
9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak, if very angry, count a hundred.

By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger

  It’s fun, every once in a while, to wander back and read a 5-year-old column and see how fresh it still feels. Here’s one that ran Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004, as my Political Notebook. It isn’t as stale as I feared. Perhaps Virginia still changes at the pace of dear old sea slugs. The headline then read:

Little bills, big impact on mores

RICHMOND—

    The boys are back in town, so a raft of creative little bills to regulate the reproductive mores and sexual rights of individuals are back on the table.

    The male-dominated and conservative atmosphere of the General Assembly remains conducive to protecting the right to bear arms and bear children. Virginia’s men look out for their women in peculiar ways.

    The best little bill in the 2004 session of the General Assembly is a small morality measure that could temporarily spare the life of a few convicted criminals.

    Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, introduced the measure to ban the execution of anyone who is pregnant.

Halting executions?

    This extremely limited moratorium on capital punishment is less a baby step toward elimination of the death penalty than perhaps an attempt to enshrine in the state code certain rights afforded a small number of the unborn.

    Marshall’s legislative creativity knows no rival in Richmond.

    A bill-drafting giant, he is smart, principled and owns a sizable sense of humor, but the unintended consequences of his anti-death penalty measure are hard to imagine and may exceed even Marshall’s ability to foresee.

    The value of sperm samples on death row could skyrocket. Who is to say when a female inmate there is not pregnant? After All, Marshall considers a woman pregnant before a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus.

    In Virginia’s not-too-distant past, female lawbreakers and troublemakers could easily find themselves sterilized involuntarily, but the commonwealth abandoned such barbarity several decades ago.

    Death-penalty advocates could call for emergency contraception, or “morning after” pills on death row.

Promoting pregnancies?

    “All we are doing is encouraging sex in prison,“ said one legislative aide unsure if Marshall has anticipated fully the unforeseen effects of keeping pregnant women on death row locked up until they give birth.

    Inmate F2005 could be told to give a first and last kiss to her healthy, soon-to-be-motherless baby girl. The infant could become a poster child for banning executions.

    Expensive devices to detect and guard against contraband sperm may be needed on a more sterile death row where better-paid female guards would remain vigilant.

    Marshall’s other bills include a few that could curb abortion, which presumably would not be desired by a pregnant death row inmate unless she became depressed and suddenly wanted to speed her executiion.

    One bill to restrict abortions would require the procedure to be performed in a hospital “or in a medical facility or clinic located no more than 15 highway miles from a hospital emergency room.“

    Marshall’s legislative package includes more than life and death measures. The Manassas delegate also intends to protect the sanctity of heterosexual marriage from out-of-state gay couples who might enter into a civil union and then move to Virginia and seek some sort of official recognition of their status.

    His House Bill 727 is not named after an airplane bringing gay couples to relocate in Virginia, of all places, but is titled “Same sex marriage; impeachment of judge.“

    Just as Marshall does not trust governors to do the right thing by pregnant death-row gun molls, he isn’t too sure Virginia judges are to be trusted when civil unions are considered. His bill “provides that any judge who rules Virginia’s prohibition against marriage by persons of the same sex unconstitutional is deemed to have committed malfeasance in office and may be subject ti impeachment under the Virginia Constitution.“

    If threatening to impeach judges doesn’t do the trick to protect the sanctity of marriage, Marshall has another couple of bills, dubbed the Affirmation of Marriage Act, one of them an emergency measure. That act would provide that Virginia is under no legal obligation to recognize a marriage, civil union or partnership contract “or other arrangement purporting to bestow any of the privileges of obligations of marriage under the laws of another state ... unless such marriage conforms to the laws of this commonwealth.“

    One of the bills quotes former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in its text as saying “that in terms of legal rights there is no practical difference between same-sex civil unions and marriages.“ Marshall asserts in the legislation that “neither status is needed for the exercise or enjoyment of civil rights by citizens with same sex attractions.“

    Marshall truly enjoys his status as the creative conservative gadfly of the House.

    “He is very dedicated to his cause and is always looking for new ways to promulgate legislation in the areas that are important to him,“ said Sen. Jeannemarie A. Delovites, R-Vienna.

    His efforts to enshrine his Roman Catholic beliefs about sex and marriage are becoming more and more the talk of the House.

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