V
irginia
C
apitol
C
onnections
, S
ummer
2014
5
trammel
Democrat
CARR
Libertarian
Republican
brat
Mark Warner carried the district with almost
60% of the vote in his 2008 Senate victory.
Nevertheless, having fought a tough primary
battle, Brat should be able to effectively raise
money and build an organization.
Still, the fact that the seat is open and is
contested by political neophytes should keep
the race competitive and interesting. Mending
fences with GOP leaders remains a challenge
for Brat. Many elected Republican leaders
supported Cantor in the primary, and the
7th District Congressional Committee voted
in July to send $300,000 to the Republican
National Committee and to the National
Republican Congressional Committee rather
than spend the money on field organizing
in the district. The Brat campaign received
just the $5,000 allowed by law from the
7th District Committee. Moreover, while
national attention has generated a good
number of small donations from individuals
to both candidates, the national Republican or
Democratic parties appear unlikely to make
the race a priority. In addition, there are signs
that both campaigns have struggled to find
their footing with the Brat campaign now on
its third campaign manager (the second since
primary election night), and the Trammell
campaign only putting together its staff in
mid-July.
As the next congressman from the 7th
district will almost certainly be a Randolph-
Macon College faculty member (barring a
surprise from the Libertarian Party candidate
on the ballot), we predict that whichever
colleague takes office in January will
experience a degree of culture shock on
Capitol Hill. While colleagues from other
campuses have observed that Randolph-Macon faculty meetings this
fall should be very interesting (anticipating political debates to rage
during our monthly 90 minutes together) we suspect that our newly-
elected colleague might wish that Congress worked more like a faculty
meeting. In our facultymeetings, debate is usually thoughtful, sometimes
impassioned, and almost always cordial. Parliamentary shenanigans are
rarely attempted and usually fail given most faculty members’ modest
understanding of such procedures (the political science faculty excepted,
of course). In that sense, we suspect that faculty meetings will prove to
have been poor training for what lies ahead for Dr. Brat or Dr. Trammell.
Lauren Cohen Bell is Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of
Political Science, Randolph-Macon College.
Brian Turner is the Chair of the Political Science Department
and a professor at Randolph-Macon College.
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