Someone’s poll numbers must be looking awful bad for this to happen:
“His swift action to sidestep the legislative and democratic processes on the issue of marriage raises the question: What’s next?” asked Del. C. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, in an opinion column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
“Will Attorney General Herring defend Virginia’s right-to-work laws from challenges by out-of-state labor unions? Will he defend Virginia’s constitutional informed-consent statutes that promote a culture of life?”
In an interview in his car last week, as Herring toured Virginia to meet with local officials and hear their public safety concerns, the attorney general dismissed accusations of judicial activism.
“If it may appear to some — because it happened so early in my term — that maybe this was going to happen frequently, (but) these situations, where an attorney general comes across a case that after an independent review he concludes that a state law is unconstitutional, come along very rarely,” he said.
Whoops.
The apologia that follows is amusing at best, reading more as a “hey — I’m not that radical!” rather than a real defense of the good government.
Someone, it seems, read a poll… and it didn’t bode well for Herring’s future bid for governor. After all, it’s a very difficult sale to ask Virginians to take that oath of office when you have zero intent on upholding same.
