roanoke.com Real Politics / 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 good thing about our political system is that any upstanding citizen can run for public office. The greenest novice can win, and the most experienced incumbent can lose. That's the way it should be.

The Virginia Republican Party now controls both the House of Delegates and Senate. The state GOP worked diligently for majorities in both houses for nearly two decades before achieving them. While Republicans had been under the thumb of Democrats for more than a century, it wasn't until the mid- to late-1980s that a come-hell-or-high-water determination was found and a game plan for majority status set.

That determination and game plan was personified largely in Vance Wilkins, the Amherst County delegate who after about a dozen years in office sold his family business and dedicated his life to achieving a Republican majority in the House. He got that majority in 1999. Many of the candidates he recruited over the years did indeed win, and after spending some time in the House they often ran successfully for the Senate. So in many respects, Wilkins also helped create the eventual majority in that body, too. This is the same Wilkins, of course, who went on to become House speaker in 2000 only to forfeit his prized gains a couple years later when he resigned in the face of sexual harassment charges.

The Republican majority in the House is now two-to-one, a margin few ever thought would be seen. In the Senate, the Republican majority is thinner. It's currently only a handful of seats, but it's expected to widen in the November elections.

The Republican Party's nomination is now a hot commodity in many parts of the state. In a lot of places, simply getting the nomination is tantamount to winning the office, as the nominated Democrat - if there is one at all - is little more than a name on the ballot for voters to ignore.

The GOP is today's dominant political party in Virginia, and the party's embarrassment of riches is now beginning to bring, well, embarrassments. Republicans are now seeing that which was rarely seen before - primary fights for the party nomination even when a Republican already holds the seat.

But what is it that a majority party risks when senior, well-placed incumbents are challenged in primaries because some don't like a vote or position the incumbent may once have taken?

Let's look at what's going on in a few spots around the state.

Prince William County is increasingly a Republican stronghold. Del. Jack Rollison has been a conservative stalwart in the House for more than 15 years. This soft-spoken delegate is now chairman of the Transportation Committee as well as the budget subcommittee that handles all road- and bridge-building funding. This makes Rollison a pretty powerful guy, and Prince William County is lucky to have him representing them.

Yet because Rollison got behind last year's referendum in Northern Virginia to raise that region's sales tax by a penny to help fund much-needed road improvements, he's now being challenged by a fellow Republican for his seat. Some local Republicans are risking the loss of a guy who knows more about transportation issues than most any other legislator. Will the county or region be better off if Rollison is bumped from office? Not hardly. And is it possible that a Democrat could win the seat if they put up a well-known candidate against a Republican that's not the popular Rollison? Sure it is.

Just down the road from Prince William County is where John Chichester lives. He's the longtime Stafford County state senator who is now his body's president pro-tempore as well as chairman of its Finance Committee. Chichester is undoubtedly the most powerful senator serving today.

But he's being challenged for his seat by a Republican who doesn't think Chichester - a one-time GOP nominee for lieutenant governor - is Republican enough. You see, a couple of years ago, the budget-writing Chichester questioned the propriety of taking the car-tax phase-out to the next level given an economic slump resulting in sharply reduced tax receipts. Fredericksburg area Republicans now supporting Chichester's opponent seemingly don't mind sticking it to a guy who more than 20 years ago was standing up for Republican principles when it was hardly popular to do so. And in the process, they apparently don't mind possibly losing a senator who's in a premier position to boost their region.

Then there's the Republican senator on the Peninsula, Tommy Norment, who not only joined Chichester in questioning another round of car-tax cuts in the face of declining revenues, but who also supported a regional sales tax increase to build new roads in traffic-clogged Tidewater, just has Rollison had done in Northern Virginia.

Norment is now being challenged for the party nomination by Paul Jost, a guy who's as rich as he is conservative. Jost, you might recall, is the fellow who about four years ago put a million bucks of his own money into an effort to win the Republican nomination for the First District congressional seat. He failed in that bid.

But what if Jost wins now? He'll have succeeded in removing from office a member of the Senate Finance Committee and the Republican floor leader. If Norment is bounced in this primary, is it guaranteed that Jost will win against a Democrat in November? No, especially since he's already been rejected once by area voters. Jost will only have succeeded in depriving the Williamsburg area of having a pretty savvy legislator representing them.

It's in the Senate, mind you, where Democrats are arguably within striking distance of regaining the majority. The House is way beyond Democrats' reach, but in the Senate they only need to win a few races.

Republicans sometimes do dumb things. But chucking out safe incumbents in primaries and risking losing the seat to a Democrat is about the dumbest.

This is not to say there should never be a party primary. And it's not to say party accountability is a bad thing. Party primaries are most useful when there's an open seat, when there's no incumbent at all. That's when hearty Republicans should get in the ring and slug it out for the right to later slug it out with a Democrat.

Vance Wilkins - who many think is the father of the modern Republican Party in Virginia - believed in winning. He also believed in protecting incumbents. He may not have agreed with every vote or stand taken by every Republican legislator, but he never wanted to risk an incumbent Republican's loss.

Why? Because every seat held by a Republican is one less seat held by a Democrat.

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