Henrico Hubris
By Norman Leahy | Thursday, November 10th, 2011 | Central Virginia, Politics, VirginiaThe RTD’s Jeff Schapiro can barely contain his glee at pinning the blame for the GOP’s debacle in the Henrico county Commonwealth’s Attorney contest at the feat of Rep. Eric Cantor (Jeff’s video narrative can be found here).
Is there blame to be passed around for Democrat Shannon Taylor’s victory? Absolutely. By very publicly ditching their duly-chosen candidate, Matt Geary, in favor of an independent bid from former Del. Bill Janis, the party guaranteed a split vote on election day.The consequences, aside from handing the CA posy to a Democrat for the first time in 24 years, are yet to be determined.
But does this mean that Democrats are now in a position to mount a serious challenge to Cantor? Jeff certainly has high hopes for them. But barring a major scandal or asteroid strike, Cantor’s seat, which stretches far beyond Henrico, is safe.
Does Taylor’s win mean there is a new political machine arising in Henrico, one based in the east and built upon the twin pillars of Don McEachin and Joe Morrissey? The RTD would have us believe that’s the case. And they may be on to something. The county’s western, Republican, suburbs are almost completely built-out. The east has room to grow — open territory for a budding political organization.
But it seems some aren’t quite aware of that. In an email to supporters, Bill Janis wrote:
Each of you who supported this campaign made a principled, public stand in defense of the seemingly anachronistic notion that character, integrity, temperament and trustworthiness still matter in public life, and are the paramount qualifications for a candidate for public office, especially if that candidate claims to be a Republican. While we did not garner the most votes yesterday, we nevertheless prevailed. Despite what some have said, last night was a very good night to be a Henrico REPUBLICAN!
Character does matter.
And the Henrico county GOP showed that its character is increasingly subject to hubris.
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About the author
Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Post contributor.
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3 Responses to "Henrico Hubris"
Having just moved to Hennrico I was sort of puzzled by why anybody expected the result of running two Republican candidates to be anything other than the election of the Democrat. It’s pretty easy, looking at recent elections, to know that the Democratic base vote in the county is move than 40% — Taylor got 45. Unless you thought EVERYONE was going to desert the incumbent just because the Country Republican Committee said so, the result was entirely predictable.
This has happened before in Henrico. In 1991 Don Boswell was up for re-election and the Clerk of Court came open, so Boswell tried to fix it so his wife would get the nomination so they could have that double constitutional officer income. It backfired. A disgruntled Republican who felt cheated in the nomination process ran as an independent and split the vote and the voters were so mad over it that the Sheriff lost his race for re-election. I will also note that Sheriff Boswell was chairman of the Henrico Republican Party at the time and a strong Cantor supporter. This was when Cantor first got the nomination for House of Delegates in a hotly contested nomination fight and Boswell did everything he could to favor Cantor.
It is the classic election game involving plurality. Had this been a race of one democrat versus a Republican, the Republican would have won. Janis did not believe a democrat would run and that he would easily win. Taylor was smart to jump in like she did at the last minute. She took advantage of the system to win an election in a jurisdiction where she could not win a majority of the vote.
Taylor has promised to bring in more non-white prosecutors. If she focuses on that as her primary goal, things will fast turn to $h!+ there and she will get beat badly. If she does a good job and runs a good office, she will have a 50/50 shot of winning re-election. Even after the Boswell matter, the Henrico electorate corrected the matter and brought good Republicans back and casted aside the well meaning democrats.
The Republicans were stupid to maintain two candidates in a general election. Now Henrico County has a democrat who has professed a desire to purposefully discriminate against white people in the hiring of new prosecutors. She will also probably be lax in prosecuting drug offenses, unless of course the target is a Republican. That is something the folks in Henrico will have to put up with for four years. I would say that they deserve it, but most of them did not vote for that.
I will also note that at the time of the Boswell affair in 1991 when Cantor first won the nomination and his seat in the House of Delegates, Cantor’s father was chairman of the Third District Republican Committee. This was when the Third District covered Richmond and Henrico County. The 7th District replaced the 3rd after the democrats carved up the 7th to elminate George Allen from Congress.
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