Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502270011
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
What an upset - this session of the General Assembly.
Gov. George Allen grabbed a commanding lead, dominating the debate and dumbfounding the Democrats with his budget-cutting, tax-cutting proposal before the session even started.
Totally confused, their game plan a mess, the Democrats somehow regrouped and came roaring back to stuff the ball right in Allen's face in the closing weeks of the session.
With people's jobs and the state's prospects on the table, the rivalry didn't reflect particularly well on either side - the jeering, the instinct for the jugular shown by the Cranwells and Mosses, the partisan name-calling by Allen spokesmen too young to have learned humility.
Maybe you need the instinct of a junk-yard dog to win in an arena as competitive as state politics.
Certainly, the issues in this year's budget scrimmage were worth fighting for - especially in the New River Valley. This area has so much at stake when the tug-of-war for state dollars begins.
Consider:
Montgomery County has a higher concentration of state employees than Richmond
With a budget of $1 billion, most of it in state funds, higher education is the largest industry in the five-county New Century Council region, including the New River and Roanoke valleys
Virginia Tech is the largest employer in Western Virginia
Job creation is increasingly tied to higher education
An unvarnished snapshot of Western Virginia shows a region "in trouble, with less education, higher unemployment, lower per capita income and less political influence," than other parts of the state, according to Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr., who heads up the New Century Council.
For Allen's supporters, this year's legislative session was a chance to end business as usual, to reduce the tax burden on citizens and implement a conservative philosophy of state government that has energized the Republican Party and thousands of Virginia voters.
The final grudge match will come next year. And the winner will be decided not by the wit or cunning or commitment of legislators or the Allen administration but by us, the voters.
The issues in this fall's legislative elections should be clear cut. Here in the New River Valley, we'll choose between Democrats such as Jim Shuler and Madison Marye, outspoken in this year's fight to restore funding to numerous state programs, including Virginia Tech's Cooperative Extension, and Republican challengers such as Larry Linkous and Garrett Weddle, who cast themselves as fiscal and philosophical conservatives.
The good news is that the debate should focus on the issues. No hysterical headlines about whether Madison Marye inhaled.
Voters will have a chance to choose the type of state government they want. The question is whether voters "wants" are so contradictory that it will be hard to get a coherent message from them.
Seventy percent of Wythe County voters pulled the lever for George Allen two years ago - voting for longer sentences and more prisons. But, oooops, they didn't want that prison ANYWHERE NEAR their county.
Allen carried Montgomery County by almost 3,000 votes. Was that a mandate to cut funding for higher education and extension? Some might answer yes; others will be more wary this fall of voting for a revolution.
The complexities of today's world don't lend themselves to political rhetoric or to a political sledgehammer - yet we haven't come up with a better form of political dialogue.
Ironically, companies have found the best way to re-engineer themselves is by building consensus with employees and customers. In the political arena we seem to be heading in the opposite direction - becoming shriller, more polarized.
Locally, citizens will have to become increasingly active to see that the battle between political philosophies is not waged on our home turf, endangering the future of what one business leader described as the state's "crown jewel" of high technology, its powerhouse of new ideas - Virginia Tech.
Elizabeth Obenshain is the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River editor.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB