politics@roanoke.com / Preston Bryant

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

The fall elections are over, but not the politics. Both major state parties are now organizing themselves in preparation for the 2004 General Assembly session.

It’s in January that Republicans and Democrats (and a couple of conservative independents) will ride into Richmond knowing that the two front-burner issues facing them will be restructuring a century-old tax code and cobbling together a new biennial budget.

Gov. Mark Warner is likewise preparing for legislators’ arrival, and he soon will be laying out his thoughts on the two big issues. His tax reform plan will be made public in another week or so and his budget proposal will be revealed in mid-December.

Both initiatives will require Warner, a Democrat, to reach out to a Republican-controlled House of Delegates and Senate. His success, quite frankly, will depend on his diplomacy.

And it’s diplomacy he knows. Just look at the way he went about this past round of elections. Warner raised more than a million bucks to support his candidates for the House and Senate. He poured money into races he calculated to be winnable (and even a few he knew weren’t winnable, but wanted to gig the Republicans in them anyway) and invested quite modestly in races that were long shots. And rarely did he engage in red-meat rhetoric. Doing so in the face of unattractive odds, he knew, would’ve done little more than inflame an opposition he’ll need to woo come January.

So imagine how Warner must’ve flinched a couple of days ago when his new state party chief demonstrated anything but diplomacy in his first speech before Democratic leaders.

Warner recently tapped former Alexandria mayor Kerry Donley to be the new chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia – as governor, it’s Warner’s virtual right to do so – and on Saturday Donley officially took office following an approving vote from the party’s ruling committee. Donely replaces Larry Framme, who, in a bizarre move, resigned as captain of state Democrats’ listing ship in order to jump on presidential hopeful John Kerry’s sinking one.

In his Saturday speech, Donley suggested his new political mission in life will be answering with each new sunrise one simple question: “How can I nail a Republican today?”

Huh?

“How can I nail a Republican today?”

Is this Donley’s grand plan to resuscitate a nearly breathless Democratic Party? Is this the way he plans to resculpture its aging face? Is this the tenor and tone he’ll be setting for a constructive public debate on the challenges facing Virginia?

“How can I nail a Republican today?”

Such is just the kind of intemperate, over-the-top blubber Warner has avoided the past handful of months. And to now have his top party guy spewing it merely blurs the pastoral political landscape the governor wants many to envision.

Realistically, Donley is expected to engage is some of this stuff. After all, it’s his job. But his timing is poor.

Diplomacy in keeping with Warner’s would have led Donley to stand before the assembled faithful and pledge to work for the best interests of the governor who’d just placed so much faith in him. Such diplomacy also would’ve led Donley to think twice about announcing, as he apparently did, that he’ll be targeting House Republicans in the next election cycle. It’s the House GOP, you see, that’ll largely define Warner’s legislative success over the next two years, so poking them in the eye wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

At first glance, one would’ve thought that Donely, an attractive, sometimes articulate fellow, would make a good Democratic Party spokesman. But his first steps have actually been stumbles.

Contrasting Donley’s performance last week were those of GOP House Speaker Bill Howell and Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. Howell, of Stafford County, laid out thoughtfully and respectfully his tax-reform suggestions, which center on economic growth through job creation and public school construction via a better revenue-sharing relationship between the state and local governments. Kilgore, the all-but-certain Republican candidate for governor in two years, started a public dialogue about a billion-dollar bond sale to build and renovate public schools.

So while these Republican leaders were engaged in serious policy discussions, what did the Democrats’ new leader do? Well, he wondered aloud, “How can I nail a Republican today?”

Now, doesn’t that just tell all?

Is there any wondering why the Republican Party is the leading one in Virginia today?

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