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Summer is just starting and
all seems at least temporarily quiet on the Virginia political front.
But as always, a fall election looms in which all 40 seats in the state Senate and 100 seats in the House of Delegates are at stake.
Yet much of the drama may already have occurred with the failure of Republican social conservatives to oust any of the three senators they targeted in a recent primary as too liberal for their taste.
In one case, that of incumbent Sen. Russ Potts of Winchester against challenger Mark Tate of Loudoun, they came close but no cigar. In two other instances, Sen. John Chichester of Stafford, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, and Tommy Norment of Williamsburg, the challengers went down in flames.
All three of the senators who survived primary challenges are members of the Finance Committee. They fell into disfavor with Gov. Jim Gilmore and the extremely conservative element when they resisted efforts in 2001 to proceed further with Gilmore’s car tax elimination.
Although all said they favored phasing out the unpopular tax, they felt with an economy rapidly heading south, any further reductions should be held until the economic picture brightened.
Gilmore and the House of Delegates firmly resisted the idea and the phase out contin
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