Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

Election Day 2002 in Virginia was a showdown between those who wish they had the power to decide things and those who actually do.

In Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, well-heeled coalitions of business, civic, and political leaders worked for nearly eight months – since the General Assembly adjourned in March – to persuade voters to pull the lever for higher taxes to build billions of dollars worth of new roads, bridges and tunnels, and to make significant improvements to mass transit systems.

The ballot proposal in the D.C. suburbs was to raise that region’s state sales tax by a half-cent; in Tidewater, a full penny.

The voters’ response? Stick it in your ear.

Tuesday’s referendums in the two most populous and progressive parts of Virginia served as the greatest “poll” ever taken in the state on the question of higher taxes. It stretched across a number of demographic groups – men and women; young and old; black, white, Asian, and Hispanic; urban, suburban, and even a tad rural – and the 812,497 total respondents were surprisingly crystal clear.

In Northern Virginia, where the pinstriped coalition was thought to have the best chance of success, 55 percent voted no. But that 10-point defeat was nothing compared to the nearly 2-to-1 shellacking the tax-increase proponents took in Hampton Roads.

Keeping the big boys honest in both regions was a bunch of strange bedfellows. Anti-tax, grassroots conservatives (most always Republicans) found themselves collaborating with anti-growth, grassroots environmentalists (often Democrats) to organize the opposition. Add to their mix limited-income seniors who can’t afford higher taxes and across-the-board government skeptics, and perhaps referendum proponents are now looking back and seeing how formidable their task really was.

There truly has been a lot of analyzing going on this past week, and those promoting the tax increases have been rather defensive. In every way imaginable they’ve put the results under a microscope – looking at certain bellwether precincts, going over exit polls, and wondering about the rainy weather’s dampening effect on voter turnout – to determine why people voted the way they did. And they’ve explained away their defeat by blaming it on everything from the public’s general distrust of government to the dysfunctional state transportation department to fears of sprawl to their opponents’ “misinformation” campaigns.

But there is, perhaps, a much simpler answer: Couldn’t it be that Virginians just don’t want their taxes raised?

After all, it was estimated that in Tidewater, where the proposal was to up the state sales tax from 4 ½ cents on the dollar to 5 ½ cents, the hike would have cost the average two-person household about $100 a year. Folks generally don’t rush to the polls to throw another c-note at politicians and bureaucrats.

The silk-stocking coalitions pushing the referendums in the two regions privately raised and spent several million bucks to persuade the masses to give up more of their own hard-earned money. The Northern Virginia crowd promoting the tax increase reportedly outspent its ragtag opposition about 25 to 1; in Hampton Roads, it was, amazingly, something like 40 to 1.

The referendums were possible only because the General Assembly and the governor passed and enacted a law allowing them on the ballot. Giving the voters this kind of say is not Virginia’s usual way of deciding matters of public policy, big or small. And it’ll probably be quite some time before the legislature tries this trick again. Nobody likes to be smacked once, much less twice.

But it is good every now and then for the elected to be reminded that their power rests only in the consent of those they govern. That’s a Jeffersonian principle that reflects Rousseau’s belief in a need for legislators to know the public’s “general will” so that the majority can rule.

On Tuesday the governed certainly expressed themselves to their elected representatives – loudly and clearly – and there can be little doubt that the majority ruled in favor of no new taxes.

Your thoughts?

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