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.

It’s early November in Virginia, a beautiful time. The fall leaves are now about two weeks into their colors, and the morning air is crisp and cool.

It’s also a time when political campaigns are nearing their end, what with the first Tuesday in the penultimate month always being Election Day in the Old Dominion. Yard signs are up, scattered here and there, demonstrating our political preferences as they add even more brightly to fall’s colors, and the commercial airwaves are more politically charged than any other time.

This campaign season, though, has been a tad different than seasons past. It’s a little more subdued. Election Day itself promises to be as unseasonably warm even as the competition statewide among General Assembly candidates has been unseasonably cool. Pols and pundits alike have commented for months on the remarkably low number of truly competitive – or even interesting – races for the House of Delegates and Senate.

The value of such commentary, however, depends on your perspective. Those seemingly most put off by the low percentage of challenged state races – only about a third of House and Senate incumbents are contested, leaving about two-thirds with free passes to another term – are the political analysts who make their living talking about this stuff.

The general allegation here is that the political system is broken or rigged, and that the out-of-power party (Democrats) doesn’t have a chance since the dominant party (Republicans) gerrymandered the districts to their liking a couple of years ago. We’ve even had down-in-the-mouth Democrats calling for a “bipartisan commission” to take over the decennial reapportionment function that the state constitution specifically delegates to the General Assembly – something Democrats never seriously suggested when they were in charge of the political mapmaking.

But let’s explore the allegation anyway, just for the heck of it. Is the system an unfair one to the minority party? Is the low number of competitive races this year due to an overly-dominant party redrawing district lines with a heavy-handed zeal and an ominously dark-leaded pencil? Will Virginia Democrats ever again mount a serious challenge the Virginia GOP?

Well, the answers are no, no, and possibly.

The reapportionment system is not unfair to the minority party. The dearth of challenged races is not necessarily a result of Republican gerrymandering. And state Democrats have not forfeited any opportunities to challenge state Republicans. For evidence, one only has to look back at the 25-year GOP ascendancy to see how the current system works – and how it can be worked.

Virginia Republicans began growing in the 1970s and 1980s. Linwood Holton was the first GOP governor elected in the state’s modern political history. Mills Godwin ran for governor as a Republican and won. And John Dalton was the Republican governor who brought the GOP into the ’80s. In addition, the late Dick Obenshain had fired up the conservative rank-and-file in the mid- to late ’70s, and Republican legislative candidates began winning over the next decade or so in numbers, though still paltry, never before realized. Their brood pouch was full, and it was growing.

The majority-party Democrats took note of the GOP ascendancy, and they then took full advantage of the opportunities constitutionally afforded them in the once-a-decade reapportionment process. In the early ’80s and early ’90s, with new census numbers in hand and a knife freshly sharpened, they stuck it to the burgeoning Republicans, and they did so with glee. Incumbent Republicans saw their districts carved and transformed into Democratic-leaning ones, if their districts did not disappear altogether. For every few steps the GOP had taken forward, the Democrats seemingly knocked them back at least two.

Sisyphus being but a fairytale to hardheaded Republicans, party elders were forever regrouping, redoubling their efforts, and refueling their determination. Undeterred after even the most depressing ’80s and ’90s gerrymandering, the GOP kept grinding away. Candidates for the House and Senate spent tons of their own money, risking what little fortunes they might’ve had, all because they believed in the Republican message and the possibility of victory. And they often did so against the toughest odds underpinned by decades of Democratic history and dominance.

That 25-year battle paid off, when in 1999, in the midst of a beautiful Virginia fall not unlike this one, the GOP won historic victories and achieved majorities for the first time ever in both the House and Senate – and that was accomplished in districts drawn by Democrats. Today, there’s a two-to-one Republican margin in the House, and a slimmer but still comfortable one in the Senate.

So to those who entirely blame (or credit) the Republican-controlled redistricting process a couple of years ago for the abnormally low number of contested legislative races this year, well, they’re failing to recall what the GOP accomplished with fortitude and gumption. State Republicans didn’t fault the Democrats’ gerrymandering – they adapted and overcame its effects.

This is not to say that today’s minority-party Democrats will achieve the same successes by merely digging in their heels and working hard. That which makes the odds they must overcome arguably more difficult than those trumped by Republicans over the past two decades is that middle-class rural and suburban Virginians are themselves increasingly conservative.

The low number of contested races is due only in part to recent reapportionment. The greater reason lies in the Democrats’ failure to develop a message that’ll not be scoffed at by everyday Virginians. And without a message that resonates, you’ll never find good candidates willing to risk their fortunes and sacred honor to go out and preach it.

Expect years of Republican dominance.

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