02/29/12: A shift back to the center

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

SOME SANITY has returned to the Virginia General Assembly.

At the beginning of this legislative session, I thought the budget would dominate the conversation. Never did I expect that socially conservative bills would become the national face of the commonwealth.

Even our governor thought it too much, although I suspect he also was watching his vice presidential aspirations evaporate. A conservative, Gov. Bob McDonnell has governed mostly from the middle, which has made him a national figure.

Last week, though, the governor asked that the ultrasound bill be amended, declaring, “Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state.” The House of Delegates complied with the request, and the revised bill passed the chamber on a party-line vote.

It passed with further amendment in the Senate, which generally has become the place of reason in the legislature. The Senate sent the so-called “personhood” bill back to committee, effectively killing it for the year. Monday, the bill to repeal the HPV vaccine requirement met the same fate.

Neither of those actions could have been taken without bipartisan support, which is as it should be.

There is a reason Virginia remains in the toss-up category for national elections. Our electorate mirrors that of the nation, which Charles Dunn referred to in an op-ed column Tuesday as “ideologically in the center.” We are not Mississippi, which has been ranked the most conservative state in the nation.

One need only look to our U.S. senators to see that. Although elected as Democrats, neither Jim Webb nor Mark Warner can be pegged as far left. Both have been the subject of scorn from members of each party. Both were elected with the support of members of both parties.

The replacement for Webb, a first-termer not seeking reelection, will be similar. Let me be the first to offer condolences to the candidates in both parties who don’t fall into this category.

The election of an evenly divided Virginia Senate is further proof. The upper chamber of the legislature at the national and state level is, by design, the more deliberative body. It isn’t a surprise that the Senate’s votes better reflect the feelings of the electorate.

It was not the Virginia Senate that made the national news the past few days; rather, it was a video of Del. David Albo, a Fairfax Republican telling what amounts to an off-color story about the lack of relations with his wife that went viral.

No doubt t he delegate thought the story funny, and I guess it was — if you were in a frat house. Such behavior seems inappropriate on the hallowed floor of the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World.

So it is members of the Senate who will have to continue to be the grownups. A group of Northern Virginia business leaders urged the governor to protect its ranking as the most business-friendly state in the nation by rejecting the “extreme proposals governing social issues on which Americans are passionately divided.” The path to do so runs through the evenly divided Senate.

And while they are at it, the Senate can show some more sanity by passing the budget.