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Virginia C apitol C onnections, Fall 2016
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General Assembly
Experience may not help
Rookie Congressmen
By Richard Meagher
Observers of politics have long noted
one of the many ironies of the United
State Congress: everyone seems to hate the
institution, and yet it’s nearly impossible for
a member not to get re-elected. In 2014, as
Gallup’s approval rating measure hit an all-
time low of 9%, nearly 95% of incumbents
were returned to Congress.
Still, if there’s one state that has bucked
this incumbency trend, it’s Virginia. Thanks
to the cumulative effects of a number of
events, both routine and historical, the
Virginia Congressional delegation has been dramatically reshaped
over the past few elections. The most seismic of these events, of
course, was the 2014 election of (my former colleague) Dave Brat in
the Virginia 7th. Brat’s upset of sitting House Minority Leader Eric
Cantor in the 2014 Republican primary turned out to be the first of
many changes to the VA delegation. To wit:
• The 2014 election also saw two major retirements, with the
replacement of longtime representatives Jim Moran (8th district)
and Frank Wolf (10th) by Don Beyer and Barbara Comstock,
respectively.
• Earlier this year, both the 2nd district’s Scott Rigell and 5th’s Robert
Hurt announced their own retirements.
• Court-ordered redistricting also led to Randy Forbes’ ill-fated
attempt to switch districts in 2016, leaving Forbes’ 4th district open
as well.
• Rob Wittman may be comfortably ensconced in the 1st district this
year, but he hopes to leave that seat for the Governor’s office next
year.
• Tim Kaine’s Vice Presidential nod adds even more uncertainty, as
Bobby Scott (3rd district) is one of the names most mentioned to fill
Kaine’s Senate seat should the Democrats win the Presidency this
fall. And who knows which, if any, members of Congress from the
Republican side might run for that Senate seat in not one, but two
upcoming elections in 2017 and 2018?
The end result is a massive amount of turnover in our state’s
House delegation. It would not be out of the question for Virginia to
head into 2018 with Republican Bob Goodlatte in the 6th (serving
since 1993) as the only member of the state’s delegation with more
than 10 years of Congressional experience.
What does this mean for Virginia? Less experience in office
means less experience playing the game of politics in Washington.
The resulting lack of clout means that Virginians might not get
appointments to key committees. This was Randy Forbes’ argument
in switching to a new district; Virginians, he claimed, needed the
power he had as Chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces
Subcommittee to help defend Norfolk and Virginia Beach against
cuts in defense spending. (Voters in his new district seemed to think
that his chairmanship mattered less than his carpetbagging.)
Congress may have eliminated official earmarks—line items
that direct money to specific projects in legislators’ districts—but
that doesn’t mean that “pork barrel” politics have gone away. Savvy
politicians can still find ways to direct funding towards home or, as
Forbes claims to have done, at least protect the funding that is still
there. It might be unpopular to publicly defend traditional pork barrel
spending in the age of the Tea Party. But even conservative politicians
have been happy to take credit for highway funding and public works
projects, economic development, and targeted loans and grants.
This year’s crop of new representatives may need to find
successes like these to stay popular with constituents back home, but
they may also have a distinct advantage: familiarity with legislative
politics. Three favored candidates for Congress this fall are currently
members of the Virginia General Assembly:
• In the 2nd district, Scott Taylor stunned Forbes in the GOP primary
and is heavily favored against Democrat Shaun Brown; Taylor is in
his second term as a Delegate fromVirginia Beach.
• Long-time Democratic State Senator Don McEachin is facing a
tougher battle against Henrico Sherriff MikeWade in the 4th district,
but is still favored to win. (Larry Sabato has been rating this district
as “safe Democratic” for most of the summer.)
• Tom Garrett, who just started his second term as State Senator,
is taking on Jane Dittmar in the 5th; the Buckingham County
Republican is solidly favored (despite concerns that even “safe”
GOP districts might be dragged down if Trump loses badly in the
fall).
Assuming the favorites win out, that would be threeVirginia state
representatives now moving up to the big leagues. They would join
Barbara Comstock, who served as a Delegate for five years before
moving toWashington.
State-level politics is different from the national level in many
ways, but of course the general principle is the same. Rookies like
McEachin and Garrett would have a sharp learning curve in terms
of institutional knowledge—how Congress itself operates—but
presumably they already have a considerable amount of political
knowledge. Unlike outsiders or even those who come from other kinds
of offices (attorneys general, say, or state cabinet secretaries), these
rookies would at least have familiarity with legislative policymaking:
how to make deals, work with others, and get bills passed.
McEachin particularly has long been a player in state politics,
and a position in Congress would make him one of the most powerful
Democrats in the state (if he isn’t one already). He seems most poised
to take advantage of his experience. Garrett and Taylor are fresher
faces, and landing in Congress would be the latest step in rapid rises to
power propelled in part by their staunch conservatism. The question
for them as rookies will be how much to work with GOP leadership
or, like their soon-to-be colleague Brat, whether to buck the powers
that be. Brat’s maverick style has helped keep him popular in his
district, but some conservatives (particularly writers at Virginia’s
Bearing Drift blog) take him to task for his lack of accomplishment.
Unlike Brat, Garrett and Taylor have been legislators, and might know
a thing or two more than him about dealmaking—while pleasing
constituents at the same time.
Comstock might be a better model for rookies than Brat. She
has so far been successful in voting with her constituents, even as it
has somewhat reduced her conservative credibility. (Citizens Against
Government Waste rates her as merely “Friendly” as opposed to a
“Taxpayer Hero” like Brat.) And she has managed to land the chair of
a subcommittee favorable to NoVA’s technology sector.
Still, Washington is a very large and very new pond, with lots of
fish swimming in it. No matter what, it will take time for the newbies
to make an impression and find their place—and that’s assuming
they even stick around for more than a term or two. Legislators are
often most vulnerable to challenge after their first victory—just ask
Glenn Nye—so there are no guarantees they will even stay in office,
let alone become the next Frank Wolf, who served for 34 years. In
fact, the only guarantee is that with so many fresh faces, the Virginia
delegation will have a long way to go before it moves back up the
pecking order in Congress.
Richard Meagher is Associate Professor of Political Science at
Randolph-Macon College. His writing about Virginia state and
local politics is featured on the Washington Post’s All Opinions are
Local page, WRIC’s #RVALife site, and his own RVA Politics blog
).V