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old boys” ran Virginia for years from the courthouse to the statehouse, will take another licking.
Northern Virginia, that sprawling land of traffic-gridlock from Fredericksburg north once considered barely a part of the state by the ruling elite, stands to be the major gainer. Tidewater, an amorphous, watery region from somewhere south of Williamsburg to the Great Dismal Swamp, will also emerge with considerably more influence.
That could be bad news for staunch conservatives like Dickinson and Ball, struggling to keep the legislature under their party’s conservative wraps.
New Democrats elected after redistricting are more likely to be of moderate to liberal persuasion while new conservatives coming to Richmond are more apt to be Republicans.
Conservative leaders like Andrews and Philpott can probably maintain most of their influence for the forseeable future, but after they leave, future Democratic leaders will have to be those who are more moderate — perhaps with even some liberal tendencies — in order to win and survive.
Redistricting, in short, may amount to a poison pill for conservative Democrats, even if they elect the next governor. It may well accelerate the realignment of party politics in the state, with Republicans seeking more gains in expanding affluent suburbs, and Democratic legislators increasingly taking on the center-left philosophy of their national party.
John Goolrick, now an aide to 7th District Congressman D. French Slaughter Jr., is a former reporter who covered the state legislature and Virginia politics for nearly 25 years and was cofounder of the Virginia Capital Correspondents Association.
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