Henrico Democrat CA guts senior ranks in a push for “diversity”

By Norman Leahy | Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 | Central Virginia, Politics, Virginia

Shannon Taylor, Henrico county’s incoming commonwealth’s attorney, was touted as the spark that Democrats needed — in the county and statewide — to rebuild their political fortunes.

If her early staff moves are any guide, though, that spark may have already burned out:

Incoming Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor will remove the top echelon of prosecutors in the office and bring in three new attorneys for her management team, one from Goochland County and two from Richmond.

The moves announced by the newly elected prosecutor yesterday wipe out more than 150 years of cumulative experience in the office, not including veteran Commonwealth’s Attorney Wade A. Kizer, who did not run for re-election and joined the office in 1986.

Cleaning house and putting one’s imprint on an organization is nothing new. But it gets a bit dicey when the people being tossed overboard are in the middle of high-profile cases, as Bill McKelway illustrates in his piece. It’s even more suspect when at least one member of the new legal team, Thomas L. Johnson Jr, has a checkered past:

Johnson volunteered in an interview this week that his law license was suspended for four years beginning in 2004. State Bar documents show that he had improperly accepted money as a court-appointed defense attorney in a drug case and then promised another defendant to “more zealously represent” him for an increased fee.

“It was the lowest point of my life,” Johnson said in a telephone interview, praising those who were willing to give him a second chance after the suspension.

Second chances can be a good thing (just ask disbarred Democrat Joe Morrissey, who found his second chance in the House of Delegates and who, along with Sen. Don McEachin, was one of those who not only convinced Taylor to run for commonwealth’s attorney, but helped engineer her win).

Some second chances, though, just look awful.

Staffing is policy, and Taylor’s choices so far indicate her policies may not sit well with county voters interested in law and order. And if she sticks by her intention of bringing diversity to the office, rather than good legal sense, her political career may be over before it officially begins.

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