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

Virginia Republicans have long had something of an affinity for Doug Wilder. For the most part, they’ve enjoyed sitting back and watching him give fits to his own party.

Wilder gave Democrats fits in late 1984 when he turned back rivals preferred by party bosses for their nomination for lieutenant governor. He stuck it to Democrats again in 1988 when he successfully outmaneuvered others more favored for the gubernatorial nomination. Wilder was forever having to get past high-ranking party generals who feared what a black man’s presence on their statewide ticket would do to other Democrats on the ballot, not to mention what his candidacies would do to the party itself in the long run. Wilder, of course, won both statewide offices.

After he was sworn in as governor in 1990, he spent the next four years in the powerful post showing up – and paying back? – many of those who’d tried to keep him down for most of the previous decade.

And truth be told, in the years since Wilder left the governor’s office, he’s continued to look for most any opportunity to needle the party some would say even today offers only tepid recognition of him and his historic victories. Wilder is rarely quick to endorse Democratic nominees for statewide offices. He strung out Chuck Robb in both his ’94 and 2000 reelection campaigns before offering up last-minute endorsements; he sat out altogether Don Beyer’s lackluster bid for governor in ’97; and he made even his friend Mark Warner sit on ice for a while in 2001 before eventually endorsing him.

Yeah, if you’re a Virginia Democrat and you choose to hook up with Doug Wilder, life immediately becomes one big roll of the dice. Anything can happen.

So imagine everyone’s surprise when Warner – only three days in office and facing a bleak budget forecast – named the maverick Wilder to head his Commission on Efficiency and Effectiveness, a high-profile panel charged with rooting out wasteful government spending, streamlining state agencies’ operations, and making better use of technology for procurement and service delivery.

When Warner named Wilder to this post in mid-January, it is doubtful that even Warner fully appreciated just how consequential the commission’s work would become. What at the time of Warner’s swearing-in was an uncomfortable but manageable revenue shortfall has become a rolling deficit that now has mounted to more than $5 billion.

Wilder, now, is just where he likes to be. He’s in the catbird’s seat. He’s in charge of a front-page, high-stakes panel whose recommendations for remaking an entrenched state bureaucracy will be broad, deep, and certainly controversial. The headline-grabbing Wilder would have it no other way. He’s already suggested somewhat unilaterally a number of reforms he says will save more than a half-billion dollars.

Warner, after having one public bump-and-scrape with Wilder over the direction of the commission, has signaled a willingness to accept deep cuts and sweeping consolidations that can be readily justified. There most certainly will be layoffs. Other preliminary recommendations include shutting down the Center for Innovative Technology, privatizing the state’s chain of liquor stores, and merging a couple of cabinet secretariats and numerous agencies and departments. The final list of recommendations is due soon to Warner so that he can consider them in time for budget amendments he’ll announce in December.

Warner will have no choice but to accept many, if not most, of Wilder’s recommendations, no matter how controversial they might be. If he doesn’t, Wilder will dismiss Warner as being unwilling to make tough decisions. Wilder will pull no punches in his criticisms. He never has.

The many partisan Republicans who’ve long enjoyed watching Wilder shred fellow Democrats would just as soon it play out this way. It is doubtful, however, that it will. The odds are that Warner will move in short order to adopt most of Wilder’s recommendations. And the sooner he does, the better, especially as criticisms are increasingly being aired around the Capitol – even among many Democratic legislators – that Warner is taking too long in announcing cuts.

Republicans who’ve had that historic affinity for Wilder for so many politically delicious reasons really should be cheering legitimately for him now. For Wilder, ironically, may end up doing what many conservatives have long wanted – dramatically shrink the size and scope of government.

Warner rolled the dice in giving the unpredictable Wilder such a prominent role in his young administration. It makes you wonder whether the often skittish Warner, knowing what he knows now – that the budget crisis has turned out to be as severe as it is – would again place so much in Wilder’s hands.

As it’s beginning to look like it’ll be Warner’s budget management skills that will define his legacy, it’s curious that much of his success in this regard – if he is to be successful at all – might well be traced back to a man that so many Democrats tried to keep down for so long.

Your thoughts?

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