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appears to put personal success in the back seat to driving legislative agendas. He suggests that “If you want fame, you should go to Hollywood or practice harder on the basketball court,” and that “former governors are barely recognized on the street.”
Fact is, this year Beyer was the driving force behind 26 pieces of legislation, 25 of which passed, and he has presided over more Senate sessions than any other Lt. Governor in the history of the Commonwealth. That he’s likable through this highly motivated effort speaks more to innate personality characteristics than selfconscious charisma.
While there is not politician alive who doesn’t make education his or her top goal, Beyer has specific and, in his view, imperative, commitments to public education, that with sound legislation he believes, will improve education while lowering the crime rate.
Given a chance, Beyer is quick to spout the statistics that prove his view of public education. “Virginia has a 25 percent high school dropout rate, one in four kids never finishes high school. These are the kids we send to prison; 80 percent of Virginia’s prison population never finished high school. If you get a high school diploma, it is almost a guarantee you won’t go to prison.”
He is not concerned that his interest in prisoners will be perceived as soft on crime. “I think Virginians are too smart, too sophisticated to fall for the “soft on crime labels.” I don’t want to let any bad people of our of jail. I created two strikes and you’re out for sex offenders. Last year my legislation created the presumption of no bail for child molesters, for rapists and for other violent offenders. And I created the sex offender registry.
“But you don’t have to be soft on crime to be smart on crime, which to me begins with doing everything we can to stem the tide of teen-age pregnancy and teen-age births in Virginia. Last year 25,000 babies were bom to unwed teen-agers. And they’re going to be the next generation of kids in prison, the next generation of kids who are teen-age mothers.”
This, he believes, is cause and effect practicality, not merely pro family rhetoric.
Ask him about personal agendas, these are the kinds of answers one gets. Far cry from the 1989 Beyer who was learning the ropes, the 1989 Beyer
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