Today’s controversial opinion: Gov. Glenn Youngkin is making the case for why Virginia governors should be allowed to run for a second term.
Mind you, I’m not saying Youngkin deserves a second term. I’m not saying he doesn’t, either. I’m not even saying Virginia should allow governors to seek reelection.
However, I am saying that we should think about all this. Regular readers know that I like to explore ideas, so here’s the one for today: Should Virginia governors be allowed to run for a second term?
Virginia is the only state that limits its governor to a single term. More technically, Virginia doesn’t allow consecutive terms. Mills Godwin served twice — elected in 1965 as a Democrat and elected again in 1973 as a Republican. Terry McAuliffe tried to serve twice, but voters had other ideas.
Thirteen states don’t have any term limits for their governors. There seems to be no pattern to these states — some are liberal (Massachusetts and New York), some are conservative (Texas and Utah).
Another 36 states limit their governors to two consecutive terms, although there are some interesting variations. Most just specify that a governor can serve only two terms in a row. Others impose a lifetime limit. Nine of those states say a governor can only serve two terms ever — no serving two terms, sitting out a spell, then coming back. Indiana and Oregon limit governors to eight years (two terms) in 12 years. Wyoming says eight years over a 16-year span.
There’s a reason why the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that states were laboratories of democracy.
Over the years there have been suggestions that Virginia allow governors to seek reelection, or sometimes that they serve a single, six-year term. Obviously none of those have gone anywhere.
The argument for a one-term limit is that, freed of reelection concerns, a governor has the freedom to do whatever he or she thinks is best for the state.
The argument against is that a term-limited governor in Virginia is a lame duck from Day 1. There’s also the argument that it takes anyone a while to learn how to be a governor, and by the time the governor figures it out, they’re seen as short-timers.
That’s where we turn to Youngkin. He came into office with plenty of executive experience in the private sector but was a newbie in state government. Some — primarily Democrats, but sometimes Republicans if their names aren’t attached — say it shows.
These complaints have come into full bloom after the events of the past few months. First came the Alexandria arena debacle: What if Youngkin had picked up the phone last fall, when the negotiations for the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards first became serious, and called state Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, to take her into his confidence? It was clear then that she’d become Senate Finance chair if Democrats won the Senate. What if he’d done so on the morning after the November election that confirmed Democrats would control the Senate (and the House, too)? Maybe Youngkin — who is a charming, affable fellow — might not have won over Lucas, but maybe he’d have been able to soften her opposition to the project to the point that she’d at least have allowed it to come to a vote. There were certainly strong reasons to oppose the project (and support it, as well), but how much of Lucas’ opposition was driven by her feeling left out of the process?
Youngkin went through all the correct steps procedurally — he briefed the Major Employment and Investments Project Approval Commission before the deal went public. This seems a case of knowing the written rules, but not the unwritten ones, such as: Make sure the Senate Finance chair, especially one from the opposing party, is in the loop.
The other thing that’s prompted bipartisan complaints is Youngkin’s handling of the bill to legalize so-called electronic skill games. Youngkin had supported the concept of these games but had concerns about the specific bill that the General Assembly sent him. Fair enough. That kind of thing often happens. However, as Cardinal’s Markus Schmidt reported last month, Youngkin’s chief of staff called the bill’s sponsor the Friday before a Monday deadline and convened a group of legislators to work over the weekend on revisions. Politically, it’s wise to involve legislators. Then Youngkin (and it’s unclear how much of this is him and how much is staff) did something politically unwise. The governor rejected all but one of the proposals those legislators came up with — and surprised them with what amounted to a wholesale rewrite of the legislation. Those amendments drew exclusion zones around existing gaming facilities, as well as around churches, schools and day care centers.
You can argue about the philosophy but as a practical matter, some skill game advocates were grudgingly prepared to accept some exclusion zones. The ones the governor proposed, though, covered virtually the entire state. It looked as if someone had what they thought was a good idea but hadn’t thought through the practical impacts. When it reconvened, the state Senate promptly voted down those amendments with a large and bipartisan majority. The governor has yet to act on the bill — he has until May 17 to sign it without those amendments or veto it — although there’s widespread speculation that a revised skill game bill will get incorporated into the budget that the General Assembly will take up in a special session next week. That’s usually criticized as “legislating through the budget,” but it often happens.
Many legislators — again, mostly Democrats, but not entirely Democrats — are already looking past Youngkin to what the next governor might do. I had thought Democrats might have been more interested in negotiating with Youngkin over his proposed tax cuts if they thought they could have gotten something they value in return — legalized retail cannabis, a higher minimum wage, something like that. Instead, they weren’t. One Democratic legislator explained it to me this way: Why compromise on something when “we can just wait until Abigail Spanberger is governor and get it passed then.”
Yes, yes, I realize they’re working on what might be a faulty premise that Spanberger will defeat whoever Republicans put up next year. But much of politics is about perception, and that’s how Democrats perceive the political lay of the land. There’s also this hard reality: Every member of the state Senate knows he or she will be in Richmond after Youngkin is gone. In Virginia, legislators believe that they, not the governor, are the ones who really run the state. “Governors come and go but the legislature is forever,” as the saying goes.
Here’s how this all fits into my original question. If those legislators thought there was a chance Youngkin might be back for a second term, they might react differently. Maybe that would be good, maybe it wouldn’t — ultimately, that’s a matter of political taste. However, things would undoubtedly be different.
Youngkin may be having trouble right now adjusting to a Democratic legislature, but he remains popular across the state. His approval rating has consistently been above 50%, an impressive feat for a Republican in a state that has been otherwise trending Democratic. The most recent Roanoke College poll put Youngkin’s approval rating at 53%; a more recent Morning Consult poll came up with the same number.
With numbers like that, Youngkin would be a strong candidate for reelection, if he could seek it. He’d be at the mercy of events beyond his control, but he’d start in an enviable position. Among those events beyond his control: who wins the presidential election. Based on what happened the last time Donald Trump was president, if Trump wins in November, Republicans will get punished by Virginia voters next year. Virginia Republicans would be better off next year if President Joe Biden is reelected and they can use him as a foil.
In any case, the point is that if the governor could seek reelection, the political dynamics in Richmond would be quite different. Here’s another thought experiment: Would Youngkin, in a hypothetical second term, know more about the ways of Richmond than he has so far? This isn’t a Youngkin-specific question, either. There used to be a very specific pathway to the Virginia governorship: It went through U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd Sr. Virtually every one of those Byrd Machine governors had previously served in the General Assembly. They were the ultimate insiders who knew how both the formal and informal levers of power worked. As Virginia has changed and become more diverse, so, too, has the route to the executive mansion. Five of our past seven governors (from Jim Gilmore in the 1990s onward) never served in the General Assembly — Bob McDonnell and Ralph Northam were the exceptions. Two of those non-legislative governors at least served in close proximity to lawmaking — Gilmore had been attorney general, Tim Kaine had been lieutenant governor. But for three of them — Mark Warner, McAuliffe and Youngkin — governor was their entry-level position to elected office. Warner, at least, had been around state politics in other ways while McAuliffe had been around national politics, but Youngkin was a complete newbie (and critics say it shows). We’re in a phase where being an “outsider” is considered a political advantage; government may be the only field where having no experience is considered a plus.
It’s only natural that there’s a learning curve for any job, especially something as complicated as a governor who has to deal with 140 legislators who think they’re really the ones in charge. The odds are that Virginia will continue to elect governors who have come up in what once have been considered a nonconventional way; our proximity to Washington virtually guarantees that a lot of federally focused pols are going to look around for an opportunity and decide that it lies in Richmond. If Spanberger really is our next governor (Republicans will challenge this notion, of course), she won’t have a background in state government, either. Is that an argument for a two-term governor — that our newbies need one term to learn how the job works, and then another to actually do it?
In this week’s West of the Capital newsletter
I write a free weekly political newsletter that goes out each Friday at 3 p.m. You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters on our sign-up page. If you’re really into politics, I recommend our Cardinal 250 newsletter, a monthly newsletter on the little-known stories of Virginia’s role leading up to the Declaration of Independence. Part of our monthly package includes a column by me where I write about the politics of that era the same way we’d write about them today. As for more contemporary politics, here’s what’s in this week’s West of the Capital:
- A look at some of the latest polling, including an internal poll that purports to show John McGuire leading Rep. Bob Good in the 5th District Republican contest. I’ll also include a consumer advisory on how to judge polls.
- More candidates for the Democratic nomination for attorney general.
- Some legislator rankings.