In the 1986 World Series, the Boston Red Sox were heavily favored and were within one out of winning Game 6 — and the Series. They led the New York Mets 5-3. But then the Mets came back in the bottom of the 10th and tied the game. With two outs and a runner on second, the Mets’ Mookie Wilson hit a routine ground ball that should have been an easy out for Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner. Instead, the ball rolled through Buckner’s legs. The runner scored, the Mets won the game and forced a Game 7 — which they won.
Buckner was a good player — 2,715 career hits, lifetime batting average of .289, a speedster who could steal a base — but he’s gone down in baseball history for this one bonehead play.
A few years back, The Baseball Project — a side project of some rock stars that only performs baseball-related songs — tried to take up for Buckner with the song “Buckner’s Bolero.” It goes through 10 events that, had they happened differently, might not have left Buckner in that unfortunate position. You need not understand baseball to get the gist of the song:
Bob Stanley picked a pretty bad time to uncork a wild pitch
And I’m sure he’s still thinking that you could have blocked it, Rich
Then the tying run might have not been tallied by Mitch
If one play killed the Sox, can you please tell me which?
I am reminded of that song as I read various behind-the-scenes accounts of how Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed sports arena in Alexandria ran afoul of state Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth and chair of the Senate Finance Committee. The Washington Post recently published this telling account:
Two days before Youngkin and [Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted] Leonsis went public with their announcement in December, a key group of a dozen state lawmakers met behind closed doors to give the governor a green light to pursue the deal. Because it took place before a wave of historic turnover in Richmond gave her the gavel, Lucas was not even in the room.
That’s not as bad as it sounds. Lucas was not on the panel in question — the uber-secretive Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission that must sign off on incentives for major economic development projects. However, it was always clear that the project would have to get legislative approval and it’s been known since last summer that if Democrats retained control of the state Senate, Lucas would become chair of Senate Finance. Lucas may have always had objections to the deal, but not bringing her into the governor’s confidence early on seems a political mistake. It’s easy to blame that on Youngkin’s inexperience — one criticism of him, even from some Republicans, is that he acts more like a corporate CEO than a politician who must take into account the sensitive egos of legislators who have long believed they’re the ones who really run the state.
However, in Youngkin’s defense, there are a lot of other things that had to happen to put him and the arena project in this precarious situation. In the spirit of “Buckner’s Bolero,” let’s look at eight of them.
2020: Virginia approves a redistricting commission
I could write a whole column on the harmonic convergence of political interests that led to this — broadly speaking, both parties were afraid the other would control the next legislature, so the General Assembly in 2020 sent this amendment on to voters. Voters then promptly approved it by a wide margin. The result: The majority party in the General Assembly would no longer be in control of drawing new legislative lines. Instead, the power went to a bipartisan redistricting commission. In 2021, that evenly balanced commission deadlocked, and so the power to draw lines went to the Virginia Supreme Court. The court appointed two “special masters” — one a Democrat, one a Republican — to draw lines, and they drew them without any regard for where legislators lived, something the General Assembly would never have done. The result: new legislative lines that, come 2023, put some key legislators who might have helped Youngkin in jeopardy.
June 2022: The U.S. Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade
This ruling had the effect of energizing Democratic voters in those 2023 legislative lessons, which resulted in Democrats winning control of both chambers of the General Assembly — by the narrowest of margins to be sure, but still, majorities. Before we get to those, however, we have some other things to look at.
July 2022: Youngkin pushes 15-week abortion ban
It was no surprise that, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, Youngkin embraced a ban on abortion after 15 weeks. What was more surprising is that this position — and not, say, a tax cut — became so central to the Republican campaigns for the General Assembly in 2023. Democrats would have run on abortion regardless. Would results have been different if Republicans had been running more clearly on a platform to reduce the state income tax? We’ll never know but we know what happened with the platform they did embrace: Republicans lost, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
February 2023: Janet Howell announces she’s retiring
Howell, a Democrat from Fairfax County, was co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee. We don’t know how she’d have reacted to the arena proposal but one thing is certain: By retiring, she wasn’t around when the arena deal was proposed.
June 2023: In Democratic primaries, Lucas wins and Barker loses
In that redistricting plan drawn without regard for where legislators lived, Lucas was paired with another Senate Democrat, Lionel Spruill. She dispatched him easily in the primary, but that’s not what’s most important here.
State Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax County, the other co-chair of Senate Finance, was drawn into a district that was completely unlike the one he had represented before. Only about 6% of the voters were previously in his district. He also drew a primary opponent, Stella Pekarsky, and lost. It was Howell’s retirement and Barker’s defeat (aided by that redistricting plan) that put Lucas in a position to become Senate Finance chair.
November 2023: Democrats retain the state Senate
Democrats actually lost a seat but that isn’t what matters. What matters is they emerged from the elections with a 21-19 majority, which meant that Lucas would, indeed, be Senate Finance chair. In hindsight, it’s hard to see what Republicans could have done differently. Of the five closest Senate races, they won three. The two closest were in the Richmond suburbs, where incumbent Siobhan Dunnavant lost 54.6% to 45.1% to Schuyler VanValkenburg, and in Northern Virginia, where Juan Pablo Segura lost 52.7% to 47.0% to Russet Perry. If either of those had gone the other way, the Senate would have been tied 20-20 and Lucas might not have been Senate Finance chair. They didn’t, though, and now she is.
December 2023: Lucas was not consulted early enough
’Nuff said.
February 2024: Youngkin attacks Democrats at the Mock Convention
Last month, Youngkin was one of the speakers at the Mock Convention at Washington and Lee University. He used his time to declare “Democrats today do not believe in — nor do they want — a strong America, an America with no rivals; they are content to concede, to compromise away, to abandon the very foundations that made America exceptional.” This did not strike me as remarkable; I’ve heard Republicans say things like this all my life. But Democrats in the General Assembly didn’t take it that way. Even state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, usually one of the more moderate voices, posted on Twitter/X: “This doesn’t sound like a leader that wants to work with Democrats to move Virginia forward.” Lucas was more direct, as she usually is. She circulated a clip of Youngkin’s speech and posted: “This is the speech he gives while wanting us to compromise with him and give him the Glenn Dome?!?!” What if Youngkin hadn’t delivered that line? What if he’d never gone to Lexington at all? Might there still have been a way to save the arena?
To paraphrase The Baseball Project song:
Glenn Youngkin picked a pretty bad time to uncork an election pitch
And I’m sure he’s still thinking what if seats had been redrawn without a glitch
Then the arena deal might have gone through without a hitch
If one play killed the plan, can you please tell me which?
