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.

It�s been a week now since the Republican and Democratic primaries were held across Virginia. Given the Democrats� out-of-power status in the legislature, few paid much attention to their primaries, as they mostly were to determine nominees for safe Democratic seats and thus held little excitement.

No, last week all eyes were on the three Senate primaries where hard-core conservatives were challenging what one might call traditional, everyday conservatives: Mark Tate vs. Russ Potts; Mike Rothfield vs. John Chichester; and Paul Jost vs. Tommy Norment.

While Tate, Rothfield, and Jost were considered the more conservative candidates, it really can�t be claimed with a straight face that incumbents Potts, Chichester, and Norment are wild-eyed liberals, though some of the challengers� campaign ads swore such. A general rule of thumb is the more outlandish the claim, the less likely voters are to believe it. In these three primaries, few believed the incumbents were anything other than reasonable people who endeavor to do what they think is in the Commonwealth�s best interest.

So in each of these GOP primaries, it was the incumbent who won. Potts had the thinnest victory margin, apparently winning by just 106 votes. Chichester and Norment won in walk-away landslides.

It also should be said that it was the Jost-Norment race that was the most shrill and expensive. It�s expected that when all bills are paid, these two guys together will have spent more than $1 million for the right to run again in the November general election.

Tate, Rothfield, and Jost�s spirited challenges to the incumbents were largely rooted in honest disagreements with Potts, Chichester, and Norment�s respective stands on various issues of tax policy. It�s not that the three incumbents voted blatantly to raise taxes. They didn�t. That wasn�t their unpardonable Republican sin.

Potts had pushed legislation in 2002 to allow the City of Winchester — by way of a voter referendum — to raise its state sales tax by a penny to pay for improvements to its secondary schools. Chichester and Norment the year before had differed with then-Gov. Jim Gilmore on the prudence of continuing to phase out the hated car tax in the face of a falling economy and declining tax revenues. Instead of furthering the tax cut, the duo wanted to hold it at its current level until the economy rebounded.

While these three Senate incumbents won their high-pitch primaries, one sitting member of the House of Delegates lost his scrimmage against a fellow Republican. Prince William County�s longtime representative, Del. Jack Rollison, was defeated by upstart Jeff Frederick.

Rollison, you see, was the chief architect a year ago of the failed Northern Virginia referendum on an increased sales tax to fund transportation improvements in that traffic-clogged neck of Virginia. Just as the three Senate incumbents were challenged by anti-taxers, so was Rollison in Frederick. But in this case, the challenger won.

Rollison is a common-sense conservative who has served in the House for 18 years. He rose to head the transportation committee as well as the budget subcommittee that determines road-building dollars. He was a good legislator. A conscientious one, too.

The question that�s now being asked, however, is how these four Republican primaries — all of which centered on tax philosophy — will affect the universally agreed upon need to reform Virginia�s antiquated tax system, which the General Assembly may well take up when it reconvenes in January.

Some say that the painful primaries the senators had to endure will dissuade others in that body from taking a position on tax reform not deemed the most conservative. And with Rollison�s outright defeat, they likewise say folks in the House will think long and hard before walking out on any tax-reform limb.

Really, though, these primaries — neither the fact they were held at all nor the outcome of any of them — will be seen to have done little to change the tax-reform dynamics, at least between now and the November general election. Where we were before the primaries, politically speaking, is precisely where we are now that they�re over.

For no one expects the senators to change their positions on fiscal policy — or any policy, for that matter — in the wake of their bruising primaries. Potts is too ornery to do so, despite his close call, and Chichester and Norment will be emboldened by the huge margins they wracked up. So nothing changes in the Senate.

And in the House, which is unquestionably the more conservative body, no one has ever expected tax reform to be passed lightly. The fact that Rollison lost does nothing to change that. So nothing changes in the House.

The only thing that has changed is that a heck of a lot of money was spent unnecessarily in the Senate primaries, and a good man was lost from the House.

Someday, Republicans will learn that nothing good comes from cannibalizing your own. Let any elected or appointed official know what you think and how you feel by clicking here.

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The Bryant Archive

Cleaning up Capitol Square

Utopian Democrats

Looking beyond the higher ed summit

Virginia FREE's stubbed toe

Ireland and Virginia

Primary chances

ODU steps up to the plate

Days late and dollars short

The good and bad of higher ed rankings

Tax reform, Act IV