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Bolling: As Institutional Knowledge is Lost in Virginia GA, Will Partisan Political Rancor Take Over?

Here’s a great column from my friend and colleague, Mark Rozell, Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University: Rozell: Redistricting could further divide VA legislature (richmond.com) [1]. In it, he discusses the impact of the 2022 Virginia Supreme Court redistricting process on the composition of the Virginia General Assembly.

As a result of this process, an historically large number of incumbent Senators and Delegates were paired with each other in new legislative districts. This has resulted in an historic number of retirements from some very experienced and effective legislators on both sides of the political aisle.

The result: the 2024 General Assembly will have a lot of new faces, and a lot of institutional knowledge of state government will be lost. More concerning, these new legislators will be more strident political partisans than the legislators they replace, and this will make it more difficult for the General Assembly to accomplish its work.

For years we have talked about “The Virginia Way.” This reflected the fact that our state legislature was not locked down by the partisan political rancor that we see in many states.

Unfortunately, I fear the “The Virginia Way” may be short lived.