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

Virginia is one of those relatively few states that has an election of some sort every year, whether local, state or federal, or a combination thereof, which is one of the reasons our electorate tends to grow a tad weary of politics.

This year, we have most every sort of decision imaginable on the ballots across the state. U.S. Sen. John Warner is looking for a fifth term, and he’s certain to get it since he’s got no Democratic opponent. All 11 of our congressmen are up for reelection – four aren’t opposed and the seven who are will win pretty easily. There also are two General Assembly special elections to fill vacancies, one in the House of Delegates and one in the Senate. And depending on where you live, you may even have local elections or issues to think about.

Beyond this, there will be two proposed state constitutional amendments to vote on as well as two referendums for approving more than a billion dollars in debt spending.

And oh, yeah, there also are the referendums in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to raise the state sales tax in those areas to build more roads, bridges, and tunnels and to improve modes of mass transit.

In the eyes of national pundits, Virginia’s elections this year are yawners. Our uncompetitive congressional and Senate races are of little consequence against what otherwise is an exciting national electoral landscape. Up for grabs are all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate. Control is at stake in both bodies, as Republicans have a slim 14-seat majority in the house and the Democrats have but a one-seat edge in the senate. There also are 36 races for governor across the country. Conventional wisdom now is that the GOP will keep its majority in the house, but the senate is a toss-up. Republicans now have a majority of the governors’ offices, but it’s debatable whether they will after Election Day. Polls taken over the past few days indicate that there are more than 20 congressional, Senate, and gubernatorial races across the land that are too close to call and will go right down to the wire.

In Virginia, though, all eyes are on the transportation referendums in the two most populous parts of the state. Northern Virginians will be deciding whether to raise that region’s state sales tax by a half-cent; those in Hampton Roads will be deciding on a full penny increase.

At stake in these two regional tax increase decisions are a few things. First, their outcome obviously will determine whether those traffic-clogged areas will get a rush of new money to put down more pavement and rail and buy more buses and such. Each region stands to realize billions in new transportation dollars.

If one or both passes, there also will be an unprecedented new dimension added to transportation funding policy in this state. It’ll become more difficult for policy-makers to think of transportation as a statewide issue, and debate on how road money is divvied up will be put more and more – that is, even more than it is currently – in terms of the haves and the have-nots.

More important, though, the results of the referendums will signal just how much political capital Gov. Mark Warner will have for the remaining three years of his term. These two ballot initiatives – especially the one in Northern Virginia, which was a major issue during his bid for governor last year – will become the new measure of his reach from the bully pulpit.

Warner, a Democrat in an increasingly Republican state, knows what all is on the line. He has campaigned heavily for passage of both the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads referendums. He has helped set up multimillion-dollar grassroots organizations in both regions to pitch woo to voters, and he has brought in from the pasture a few warhorses from his gubernatorial campaign and even tasked some of his present staff to help ride herd on it all.

It’s pretty much out of the question that either will pass by a large margin, and it’s entirely possible that one or both will fail. It all depends on voter turnout. If turnout is light – as it is expected to be – the highly motivated anti-tax voters will register disproportionately high. The more turnout pushes past 40 percent, the better the odds each will pass.

Warner obviously wants a large turnout. If one referendum fails, he’s wounded but will limp along. If both go down, well, his goose is cooked. The only way Warner comes out a winner is with landslide approvals by the voters in both regions – and nobody thinks that’s going to happen. Any way you cut it, it’s not a good political situation for the governor.

In addition to state pundits and regional stakeholders watching these two ballot initiatives, there’s one other fellow who’s got his eye on them: George Allen, whose senate seat it’s speculated Warner wants.

Allen, a Fairfax County resident who announced only a few days ago his intention to vote against the Northern Virginia tax hike, already has enough kindling to roast Warner as a lover of higher taxes. A hotly contested Allen-Warner U.S. Senate election – as such a match certainly would be – would draw a much higher voter turnout statewide than is predicted this year, meaning vastly more voters in a fiscally conservative electorate would get to speak their minds on the Warner-backed tax increases.

Warner needs blowout victories. If he only marginally wins one or both of the regional tax increases, Allen will tag him. If the governor loses one or both of the hikes, the voters will have tagged him. Again, not an enviable situation for a guy with ambitions for higher political office.

This is the first time Virginians in such large numbers will have registered their votes on a specific question of tax policy. That in itself will be academically interesting and good for the political scientists.

But it’ll be the pols and hacks who will analyze and spin the results for years to come. In one way or another, Election Day 2002 promises to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Your thoughts?

The Bryant Archive

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Gilmore and Sullivan

Warner's judges

Eastern stars

The wreck of old No. 39

It'll be Goode in the Fifth

The Wilder gamble

The politics of water

On Labor Day, coal miners and being a Republican

Shadow responsibilities

A time for all Virginians to pull together

The people versus the powerful in Northern Virginia

A media double standard?

Warner's California Ways

Bill Howell: the Un-Wesson