Virginia Democrats Overreach
Comity, we hardly knew ye.
A week into the 2018 General Assembly session, one that had inklings of being a little more bipartisan and a touch more collegial than in previous years, comity has fallen by the wayside.
New Gov. Ralph Northam (D) mortally offended Republicans in his Monday-night speech to a joint House-Senate session. According to The Post’s Gregory Schneider and Laura Vozzella, Republicans had a response prepared to Northam’s address but “tore it up once they saw his actual words.”
The sticking points were both familiar to anyone who has followed Capitol Square politics in recent years: guns and Medicaid.
Senate Republicans made short work of the bulk of the Democratic gun agenda Monday. That should not have been a surprise, but it did earn a rebuke from Northam, who called the Courts of Justice committee’s rejection of a universal background check proposal “disappointing.”
Hardly fighting words.
Republican outrage stood on firmer ground when Senate Democrats tried to apply the strong arm to Sen. Bill Stanley (R-Franklin).
Stanley backed an emergency measure to extend for a year the license of the shuttered Pioneer Community Hospital in Patrick County. As an emergency bill, it would go into effect as soon as the governor signed it instead of the customary July 1. Stanley needed 32 votes to win Senate passage. Nine Democrats said “no” — enough to defeat the bill.
They made it clear they wanted to use the hospital license as a bargaining chip to push Stanley to support Medicaid expansion. Embrace expansion, get the license.
The effort backfired — spectacularly. The Roanoke Times editorial board called the Democrats’ effort an “ugly vote against rural Virginia,” as well as “an admission that they can’t persuade Republicans on the merits of the proposal; they have to resort to extortion and potentially blocking the re-opening of a rural hospital.”
That rebuke hurt and may explain why a Senate committee voted 11-0 to revive Stanley’s bill.
