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. 

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.

  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.

-30-

      What happens when news coverage of campaigns and state and local governments starts to dry up?

      Do people rely more on the paid media bought by the candidates? Do voters scour the Internet for thoughts and newsy items on blogs?

      When campaign spending increases and hard news coverage decreases, will the anything-goes atmosphere of the Wild, Wild West replace the solid scoops of news that contain attribution and two or more sides of a story?

      An inveterate political junkie, I read blogs almost daily yet often find anonymous or poorly sourced attacks, heavy on emotional opinion.

      The Virginia General Assembly, which has all 100 of its House of Delegates seats on ballots this fall, is less and less observed and reported on by major media this year as newspapers and stations from Tidewater to Northern Virginia trim back coverage.

      Where many TV stations once considered government and politics important beats to cover, fewer commit to political coverage today. Radio coverage of the state’s politics and government has fallen off as well in recent years. Luckily, Charlottesville residents receive far more coverage of their state and local governments than many other Virginians, yet the trend toward less has hit here as well.

      Newspaper coverage of the General Assembly is lighter everywhere, a sad fact also true in other states, as more papers are doing less in state capitals. Stories are shorter and many items once covered get brief mention or are ignored. Individual major daily newspapers are dying.

      Especially at a time when there is more and more money pouring into politics, fewer reporters are following the money. This trend bodes ill.

      Virginia has been a relatively clean state politically for at least the past 60 years, but when newspapers and major media cut back routine coverage of who is influencing our government to do what, then there is no guarantee the state will stay clean. What positive image there is of government can be replaced all too swiftly by the taint of Illinois on the James.
      Another sad trend is the tendency for media consumers to live in an age of designer information. We all can design our own information sources to reflect our likes and prejudices so much that opposing views are either missing or more demonized than understood. We can pick whole networks and other sources of views and news to tell us pretty much what we want to hear.

      Sarah Palin fans watched her on the like-minded Fox News. Barack Obama supporters preferred his coverage on MSNBC.

      By contrast, one example of how people can come together to share different views took place at an issue forum last September that drew about 350 people in Danville to hear from congressional candidates Virgil Goode and Tom Perriello. Most of the audience who attended came supporting one of the two candidates and enjoyed cheering their guy. Afterward, many people commented that they appreciated the chance to really listen for a couple of hours to the other side.

    Our state and nation are split down the middle into partisan camps that don’t often meet each other. They don’t read and watch the same news. It’s little wonder that both major party brands have lost some luster. The independent, or generic, political brand may be growing as Democrats or Republicans each are demonized in the eyes of those increasingly getting news from more partisan sources.

      Virginia is in play today for both political parties in statewide races and, as such, is about to attract more money than ever to influence who runs our state. Just in the past two weeks, more than $2 million was pumped into gubernatorial campaigns and partisan groups to tout one side or attack another.

      No matter who wins the June 9 Democratic primary for governor among three candidates, this will be a historically expensive and hard-hitting general election campaign with more money behind negative ads than in any previous Virginia governor’s contest. It’s likely that Republican Bob McDonnell will join the attack after Democrats Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran finish their nomination fight. Any dirt deemed too radioactive for a campaign to throw will be tossed by other groups that might, or might not, operate independently and yet are well funded by the parties and their big donors.

      Polls show McAuliffe, a big-money magnet with a loud and magnetic personality, is a front-runner in the primary despite never having held or sought Virginia political office before. That said, polls are not predictive and are notoriously off in the spring because no one really knows who is very likely to vote in a rare June gubernatorial Democratic primary with perhaps only 5 to 7 percent of the state’s registered voters participating. Most voters have given Nov. 3 little thought.

      McDonnell leads all three Democrats in recent polling for hypothetical Nov. 3 matchups, but Mary Sue Terry and Jerry Kilgore, who also ran for governor of Virginia after winning attorney general elections, can testify to the reversible nature of leads in early polls. 

      McDonnell, who is unopposed for the GOP nomination, has been sidling over toward the middle of the Virginia electorate from his former position on the right. McDonnell, like McAuliffe, Deeds and Moran, will be casting himself as a nice guy with a lot of leadership skills. Each will seek to cast himself as a jobs-creating governor.

      As the money piles up in the governor’s race and in legislative contests viewed as competitive, let’s hope that many people follow the money. Neither party is being given lots of money to shrink government, so let the bloggers, the reporters and the interested public see who is trying to help or influence whom.

    WAKEFIELD

    Two big unknowns that could help determine who wins Virginia’s Nov. 3 governor’s race were unseen guests at the April 15 Shad Planking, a 61-year-old traditional Southside Virginia gathering where free beer mixes liberally with traditional good old boys and a new class of political junkies from all across Virginia.

    One is the prevalence of truly big money in more and more of the state’s political contests, starting with the huge money contest being waged for governor this year by four candidates.

    The other is the belief that each party has a lot to gain and a lot to lose by what happens in Washington during the first year of the Obama administration.

    Conservative Republicans, especially, are counting on failures by Obama and his policies to help the GOP regain the governor’s mansion after two straight losses while Democrats are hoping Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia, the first by a Democrat for president in the Old Dominion since 1964, will somehow carry over into 2009 and help lift Democrats to new gains.

    The Shad Planking is a rare annual event at which individuals can size up and talk with political figures from both parties in a civil, almost party atmosphere.

    State Sen. Steve Martin, a Chesterfield County Republican, summed up the conventional wisdom that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, a former attorney general and delegate, is the current favorite to win the governor’s mansion no matter which one of three Democrats wins their party’s primary June 9th.

    “I see this as a great chance,“ Martin said “We’ve got the most experienced top two on our ticket that we’ve had in a long time,“ he said, referring to McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who is seeking a second term.

    “I think Obama is going to continue to fall in popularity, as he has been,“ Martin said.

    McDonnell wasn’t as sure that Obama himself will become more unpopular, but said he thinks Obama’s policies are going to hurt Democrats in Virginia.

    “He is personally popular,“ McDonnell said. “He is charasmatic and I expect him to remain personally popular for a while.“ However, policies shaped and passed by Democratic majorities in Congress “will become more unpopular,“ he predicted.

    That includes energy policies that could drive up the cost of electricity, the GOP candidate said.

    McDonnell said he expects Obama to come across the Potomac at least a few times to campaign for the winner of the June 9 primary, whether the Democrat is Brian Moran, Creigh Deeds or Terry McAuliffe.

    McAuliffe is the Mister Money candidate in the race, and he flaunted that status Wesnesday at the Shad Planking by planting nearly 25,000 signs along routes to the event.

    With nearly 2,500 attendees at this year’s event, that amounts to 10 McAuliffe signs for everyone present, a new record that cost 70 cents per sign, or about $17,500 for signage plus the labor to put all the signs up and to take them all down.

    “There’s one Democratic campaign that really can hang with or go toe to toe with Bob McDonnell,“ McAuliffe campaign manager Mike Henry said of the sign prowess and big-money advantage of his candidate.

    Deeds, who was campaigning elsewhere and did not attend, and Moran, also chose not to engage in the sign wars, but McDonnell campaign manager Phil Cox said his candidate’s name was up on 6,000 signs on routes approaching the event.

    McAuliffe’s big money and sign display was a constant theme of barbs from Moran and McDonnell.

    Moran’s campaign gave away hundreds of plastic beer cups that tweaked McAuliffe with the printed slogan, “Money Isn’t Everything. Fighting for Virginia Is.“

    McDonnell told the crowd, “I really want to thank Terry for the $2.6 million he’s pumped into the Virginia economy over the past few months.“

    “He’s created 100 jobs,“ the Republican nominee said of the rich Democrat’s large staff. He then derided McAuliffe’s union ties and Hillary and Bill Clinton connections by joking that McAuliffe “belongs to Clinton Local 456.“

    McAuliffe served as Bill Clinton’s national Democratic Party chairman and as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager last year. The Clintons have given him $10,000 for his campaign and two top Clinton contributors have contributed half a million to a campaign that brought in $4.2 million during the first three months of this year, about $2 million more than second place McDonnell. Deeds and Moran collected the vast majority of their contributions from Virginians while 82 percent of the huge McAuliffe warchest and most of McDonnell’s first-quarter contributions this year were from out-of-state.

    Moran joked that McAuliffe was really so new to the Shad Planking that down among the traditional beer trucks “he started setting up a martini bar.“

    Jokes aside, the impact of McAuliffe’s new stratosphere of campaign cash is one of the big open questions of this year.

    No one knows what effects a big infusion of cash and a huge staff can have in a June Democratic Party primary in which perhaps 7 to maybe 9 percent of the state’s registered voters can be expected to participate.

    “Anybody who talks with authority doesn’t know what’s going to happen,“ said George Allen, a Republican former governor and U.S. senator who received a warm welcome from the crowd and was the subject of a campaign sign someone planted supporting him for president in 2012. “It’s hard to determine.“

    Recent polls have shown Moran running slightly ahead of McAuliffe, who was running slightly ahead of Deeds. McDonnell fared well in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.

    As for the impact of Obama’s popularity on this year’s statewide elections, Allen said, “It depends on the decisions he makes between now and then.“ He said Obama was clearly very popular last year and if the presidential election were “held today he’ll probably do alright.“

    McDonnell appears to be the early favorite. Perhaps McAuliffe is attempting to create the image of a towering figure with a towering campaign bank account. He appeared to hold his own as a speaker countering the jokes and tweaks from McDonnell and Moran and touting his ability to create new jobs as a successful businessman.

    But McAuliffe’s electabilty in Virginia, or anywhere, is untested. A campaign run as if it had a sense of inevitability about it did not work for Hillary Clinton when he ran her effort last year.

    Perhaps Obama’s impact on the race will be the biggest unknown. It could come down to how well the American and world economies perform during the next six months. That could be a factor bigger than McAuliffe’s pile of cash or even Obama’s ability to shape world events.

    It’s even possible that pirates from Somalia could have an influence thousands of miles away and with absolutely no regard for how world events play out in Virginia’s elections. 

    The Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia will host an Issues Forum with the three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for governor in the June 9 primary: Creigh Deeds, Brian Moran, and Terry McAuliffe.

    This event will be held in Danville on Tuesday evening April 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.

    The event will be moderated by me and by former Danville Mayor Linwood Wright.

    WVTF Public Radio in Roanoke, Blacksburg and Charlottesville is actively exploring the possibility of a live broadcast of the forum. A full podcast will be made available on the Sorensen Newsroom http://www.sorenseninstitute.org following the event.

    This issues forum will be free and open to the public. It will be co-sponsored by the Danville Register & Bee.
 
    GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell was invited but declined the Danville event with the three Democrats but is invited to appear at a separate Sorensen event in May, also in Danville.

    In addition to the gubernatorial event on April 28, all four candidates for lieutenant governor in the June 9 primary have agreed to a forum at the University of VIrginia on Sunday, March 29.

    Democrats Jody Wagner, Michael Signer, Pat Edmonson and Jon Bowerbank will appear at the forum in Clark Hall from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Sunday, which I will moderate for the University of Virginia Young Democrats.

    The YD forum is free and open to the public.

  Virginia’s political traditions are changing faster than the late Sen. Harry Flood Byrd Sr. could have imagined or tolerated.

  Byrd ruled Virginia’s dominant political organization with a tight fist from the 1920s to the 1960s.

  The Old Dominion, once pregnant with presidents and barren since Woodrow Wilson left the state a few ticks before the Civil War, has its first Roman Catholic governor in Tim Kaine, who was elected nearly four years ago.

  Now three of the four men vying to succeed Kaine are Catholic: leaving only Creigh Deeds, a Presbyterian like Wilson, the only non-Catholic in the contest.

  What’s the big deal with that, a young Virginia voter might ask.

  Not that much these days, which is a bit of a change. Religion still matters to many voters, but not in the ways it did several decades back when Catholics and any number of other minorities could count more ways they were excluded than included in top political and social circles.

  Virginia each year more resembles a Mid-Atlantic state than a traditional Southern state. The political center of the state has moved north and east as population shifts have added relatively more voters to Northern Virginia and Tidewater.

  While Buckingham County remains the geographic center of Virginia, Fredericksburg is more like the population center.

  The issues of the old South appealing to racial, ethnic and religious prejudices sound foreign and contrived to increasing majorities of Virginians.

  The heavy suburbanization of Virginia has left Fairfax County and every locality touching it the political colossus of the state, while vast portions of the remainder of Virginia resemble the sprawling Lord Fairfax more and more.

  Voting patterns also begin to mimic Fairfax somewhat while more and more non-native Virginians seek and are accepted in meaningful community leadership roles.

  Half of Virginians were born outside the state, many in states from Maryland to New York and New England. They often bring partisan predispositions with them that reflect the region from which they moved.

  One in 10 Virginians was born outside the country, a fivefold increase in the proportion of immigrants since 1970.

  An impressive 40 percent of these foreign-born Virginians are from Asia now and 36 percent are from Latin America.

  This trend is especially strong in Northern Virginia and in Charlottesville, where the University of Virginia accepts thousands of out-of-state students and Asian and Hispanic students from around the country and across the world, many of whom stay on in Virginia.

  The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported March 4 that UVa has surveyed the class of 2003 and found that up to one in five non-Virginians stays on to become a long-term resident.

  The university, which has about 31 percent of its students come from other states, found that 14 percent who graduated with baccalaureate degrees still lived in the state five years later.

  A full 20 percent of graduate-degreed non-Virginia natives made the state their home five years later.

  New Virginians have accelerated the state’s trend from Southern conservative to two-party competitive. 

  Now half of the voting population, Virginians born elsewhere are not as anti-immigration as the state once was, nor are they as interested in where someone goes to church or where they were born. Having three out of four Catholic candidates for governor means little to them, just as having the same three gubernatorial candidates running as men born in other states doesn’t bother them.

  One sure sign that Byrd would be lost in today’s Virginia is Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s legislative victory allowing him March 9 to sign a bill banning smoking in Virginia’s restaurants on Dec. 1 unless they have an enclosed and separately ventilated room.

  Virginia, a former tobacco and agricultural state, is now one of the nation’s ten wealthiest states with a service and information-based economy.

  Virginia is the first Southern state to adopt a restaurant smoking ban. Tobacco no longer rules and can’t even get a seat at the lunch table.

  Virginians are growing more diverse than in previous decades.

  Political candidates at all levels are adopting new inclusiveness in their language as voters want to see government do what works, what is practical and what does not offend the newer voters of the Old Dominion.

    First, there were the Ten Commandments. A serious list. Instructive. Godly.
    Several millennia later, there was David Letterman’s Top Ten. Sly. Insulting. Ungodly.
    List making, once the province of grocery shoppers and Myers-Briggs personalities whose types end in J, has spread like wildfire through social networks—from the columns of newspapers to the cyber diaries of teens. 

    As lists go, Facebook’s “25 Random Things About Myself” has got millions of Americans typing. Revealing. Appealing. Redressing Ego.

    Virginia’s vibrant political culture, which once listed right and now writes lists, has discovered a central list of a few dozen flagrant factoids.
    This 25-point compendium of Commonwealth commonalities is not carved in stone but was instead found taped to the heel of George Washington’s right boot in the middle of Thomas Jefferson’s restored State Capitol. (I can’t say why my list was taped there and fully disclaim all responsibility for listing 25 so obvious things.)
    1.  Rampant hubris, once a cash crop of Wall Street elites, is now smoked in Virginia’s political parlors. Once inhaled, this potent drug of “I know best and you know so much less” promotes memory loss and pork consumption.

    2.  Humility, its powerful antidote, sits unconsumed in surplus warehouses.

    3.  Speaking of smokes, Richmond feels disoriented at having to turn its back on a cigarette pack in restaurants. A town built on tobacco finds that quitting cold turkey can induce a splitting headache.

    4.  Richmond needs a patch. Perhaps a large green corporate-sponsored patch with a diamond would be the kind of civic place to bring baseball back to a town whose largest monuments are former tobacco warehouses and abandoned baseball stadiums. 

    5.  Politicians can be bad for baseball. Their attempts to lure teams with offers of taxpayer-enhanced stadiums turn off fans before falling far shy of shovel-ready stimulus status.

    6.  Virginia is so ready for a real, shovel-ready stimulus that a dash of bipartisanship could restore some faith that what flows out of Washington can taste better than Potomac swill. 

    7.  Entitlement is practiced far less in the housing industry and far more in the corridors of power. Politicians feel entitled to promulgate their types of stimulus. See No. 1.

    8. The media would cover “Promulgate” if it were a scandal involving sex at a high school prom.

    9. Bipartisanship is the most widely subscribed-to trend in politics.

    10.  Despite being given tons of lip service, bipartisanship remains vastly under-practiced. If everyone who praised bipartisan cooperation in policy discussions actually practiced the art, much more good would flow from government.

    11. People say they want good news from politics. And they want practical answers from government.

    12. People expect bad news.  They know partisan gridlock and the permanent campaign can block any progress.

    13. People get less than they deserve.  Voters would like more compromise and results, not rigidity.

    14. Despite Nos. 1-7, politicians tend to be good people.

    15. Politicians get a bad rap from far fewer than 10 percent of their ilk.

    16. The well more than 90 percent of ethical politicians often find themselves stymied by the poisons of the permanent campaign.

    17. Ethics, which is obedience to the unenforceable, is enjoying a timely revival.

    18. Commandments I-X still inform ethics.

    19. A revival of ethical and practical politics is under way on both sides of the aisle.

    20. Republicans and Democrats actually do work well together more often than people realize or than the media reports. Outbreaks of good news tend to be lost somewhere behind sports.

    21. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There is a time to be partisan, usually around election time.

    22. “Now the time has come. There are things to realize,“ to quote The Chambers Brothers. “The rules have changed today.“

    23. The economy is in enough of a mess to try a time to break down and a time to build up.

    24. As Jefferson said 214 years ago, “Our citizens are divided into two political sects. One which fears the people most, the other the government.“ Fear of economic collapse could again break down old lines and reorder priorities enough to recharge the pursuit of happiness.

  25. Most politicians pay their taxes like regular folks, and when they don’t they deserve a non-cash stimulus to do better.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced today that he will resign from that office effective Feb. 20.

McDonnell, the Republican nominee for governor in the Nov. 3 election, is my guest on WVTF public radio’s Evening Edition program tonight from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

If you have a question for the Republican nominee for governor, give a listen to WVTF (88.5 FM in Charlottesville) and give a call to the program after it starts.

McDonnell’s top deputy, former state senator Bill Mims of Loudoun County, is expected to be appointed by the General Assembly to succeed McDonnell.

McDonnell will face the winner of a three-way Democratic Party primary on June 9 featuring Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran.

WVTF can be Heard Across Central/Western/and Southwestern Virginia on the following FM frequencies:
89.1 –89.1 Roanoke & Lynchburg
88.5 - Charlottesville
89.3 - Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton
95.9 Orange
101.9 - Lexington
91.9 - Marion, Wytheville & Galax
90.1 - Abingdon, Bristol & Big Stone Gap
90.3 - Clintwood
90.9 - St. Paul
90.5 Wise & Coeburn
91.7 - Norton
91.3 - Pound

Robert Saunier “R.S.“ Hornsby’s death near Crozet was a true loss.
Follow one of the links to a great R.S. Hornsby and Bruce Hornsby tribute to the Dead’s Garcia at William and Mary Hall.
Thanks to Bringier McConnell for the following news piece:

http://www.wydaily.com/read_article.php?article=1677

R.S. Hornsby

R.S. Hornsby Killed in Car Accident
WYDaily Staff  
Posted: Today

Musician R.S. Hornsby was killed Thursday in a single-car accident not far from his Charlottesville home. He was the son of Bobby and Ann Hornsby.

The 28-year-old guitarist was alone in the car when it crashed into a tree around 11:30 p.m. Police said he had been wearing a seatbelt but was killed on impact.

Hornsby, who would’ve turned 29 Jan. 24, frequently joined his uncle Bruce during performances. A December 2005 performance at William and Mary Hall, with Bruce on piano and vocals and R.S. on guitar, produced a plaintive, soaring version of the Grateful Dead’s “Standing on the Moon.“ Bruce Hornsby called the song a tribute to a “fallen friend,“ the Dead’s Jerry Garcia, who had died 10 years earlier.

The Hornsby family paid tribute to R.S. on his website, saying they believed “that now is a time not to gratify the theft of death but to celebrate the joy of life. All of you who loved R.S. Hornsby are encouraged to share love, hope, joy and music with each other far and wide.“

On his website, Bruce Hornsby left this message: “R.S. was such a great person, so bright and funny, and a beautiful, soulful musician who moved so many. It’s a huge, deep loss for our family.“

Funeral arrangements have not yet been finalized.

Charitable donations in memory of R.S. Hornsby may be made to the Boston Red Sox’s Jimmy Fund or to Episcopal High School.