ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604100028
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GOOLRICK
PRESIDENT BUSH made a couple of campaign stops in Virginia in 1992 even though there was little doubt he had the state wrapped up.
Prospective 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole might make a campaign appearance in Virginia, but there is little need to do so.
The truth is, if Dole can't win Virginia and Bill Clinton can, then the election is all over anyway. It has been, after all, 32 years since the state went Democratic in a presidential election, and the 1964 results were an aberration caused by the successful branding of GOP nominee Barry Goldwater as an extremist.
Ross Perot may well be on the ballot again in the Old Dominion this year, but any luster he had has largely worn off and he isn't likely to do very well in the state.
All of which means that while there will be spirited campaign doings in many hotly contested states, Virginia won't be much of a battleground and activists are going to be focused largely on a contest for U.S. Senate, a few vigorously contested congressional races and the statewide races of 1997.
Democrats will never allow it to happen so long as they are in semi-control of the General Assembly, but voter participation in Virginia would probably increase dramatically if the constitution were changed to allow:
* Biennial elections, instead of annual elections.
* A governor to run for a second consecutive four-year term.
There is something wrong with a system that, with one election-year cycle in process, constantly asks voters to turn their attention and their pocketbooks to another election nearly two years away.
I went to a mass meeting recently and among speakers there were candidates and surrogates for people running for lieutenant governor and attorney general next year. Not only that, but I get a constant flow of mail solicitations for people who want to run for statewide office in the general election of November 1997.
I realize the machine Democrats of yore wanted to avoid mixing federal and state elections so their influence would not be diminished. It is obvious that if state legislators were chosen at the same time as presidents, the Virginia General Assembly would have long ago fallen into Republican hands.
But beyond partisan considerations, the state's election-every-year system wearies the electorate because politics, unlike baseball or football, is always in season.
The mechanics of changing the Constitution might be very difficult, but call in A.E. Dick Howard and have elections only in even-numbered years. Arrange it so that people running for governor don't have to run at the same time as a presidential election. Thus, when statewide officers were chosen you would choose state senators and delegates and members of Congress; in presidential-election years, delegates and members of the U.S. House. U.S. senators are elected for six-year terms.
Letting governors succeed themselves for at least one term would give a sharper focus to the issues and end the present situation in which a governor is largely ignored as a lame duck during the last year of the term.
None of the above is likely to happen any time soon. But if it did, it might result in a more interested electorate and therefore a better-informed electorate.
John Goolrick, a former political reporter, is now an aide to 1st District Rep. Herbert Bateman.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB