Our new attorney general is trying to make a name for himself.  Adopting the play of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and attorneys general across the nation,  Jason Miyares cultivates the “stop the steal” crowd with his proposal for an “election integrity commission,” and seeks to build a “tough on crime” image by undermining locally elected commonwealth’s attorneys and their “prosecutorial discretion” to charge and punish wrongdoers in their communities. [Read more…]

From the Radio IQ website:

“When Glenn Youngkin was elected governor last year, some people were surprised. Democrats had been winning statewide elections for years, and they had concluded Virginia was a blue state. In fact, Democrat David Toscano – a former mayor of Charlottesville and a delegate for 14 years – knew otherwise.

`It’s hard for the party in power to win the governorship in Virginia and the reason for that is there’s usually a kind of backlash in Virginia in the first election after the presidential, so you had a backlash against Biden occurring,’ he says.

That observation is one of many in Toscano’s new book, Bellwether – a political history of the commonwealth”… (continue on the Radio IQ WVTF website).

The culture wars around abortion rights have been rumbling in the Virginia legislature since I first became a Delegate. Below is an excerpt from Bellwether: Virginia’s Political Transformation, 2006-2020 and a link to an article I just posted in Slate:

I distinctly remember my first days as a Delegate, entering the majestic hall of the Virginia House of Delegates for our daily sessions. Consistent with tradition, each meeting began with the raising of our hands and a recitation of the pledge of allegiance. It was a solemn recognition of our support for the constitution and our country.  But one day, I began to notice something strange occurring during this morning ritual. Emanating from the Republican side of the aisle as we finished the Pledge was a soft murmur with words not easily identifiable and difficult to assign to any specific individual. This went on for several weeks, and I incorrectly believed that the phrase being uttered was some kind of playful joke, akin to the “play ball” recitation you would hear at the conclusion of the Pledge at a sports event. But this was no joke.  Instead, they were adding to the last phrase “with liberty and justice for all” the words “the born and unborn.” The culture wars were alive and well in the Virginia House of Delegates, the longest serving democratic body in the Western world….”

Four States Where the Legal Status of Abortion Is on a Knife’s Edge

The Supreme Court’s undoing of Roe was, in some ways, like watching a car crash in slow motion. You could see the disaster coming but either felt powerless to stop it or simply looked away in hopes it would not occur. Read the full article in Slate.

The change of one seat in the state Senate could make Virginia abortion policies look like Texas or Oklahoma. Elections matter!