Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears has been going through a rough patch in her campaign, but her problems have come from fellow Republicans, not Democrats.
Two former state legislators — former state Sen. Amanda Chase and former Del. David LaRock — have both said they want to run for the Republican nomination as well, and had some unkind things to say about Earle-Sears in the process. Just because they want to run doesn’t mean they actually can: Time is running short to collect enough signatures to make the primary ballot. The deadline is April 3 to come up with 10,000 signatures, with at least 400 in each of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts. That may not seem like a lot — until you’ve actually tried to do it. Over the years, some presidential candidates have failed to make primary ballots in Virginia because they couldn’t meet the threshold; last year, an initial field of 11 Republicans looking to run for the U.S. Senate was whittled down to five who actually made the ballot. I am not ready to say we’ll see a Republican gubernatorial primary until the State Board of Elections tells us that one or both of these prospective challengers has actually made the ballot (although Chase says she’s “on target”).
Nonetheless, LaRock, in particular, recently gave Earle-Sears a good workover on a key conservative radio talk show — the John Fredericks Show, whose host has also been somewhat down on the presumptive Republican nominee.
Some key quotes from LaRock:
So you say she has a record? I’ve never seen it.
So the difference here is I’m taking action on important issues, and she’s been campaigning for the last three years effectively. That’s a distinct difference.
She’s been in office for three years. She has a bully pulpit of the lieutenant governor’s office, and I haven’t seen any action from her on these really critical issues.
Here’s where I would normally say “let’s take a look.” And we will, just not in the usual way. Here’s my starting point: What kind of record do you expect a lieutenant governor to have?
The Constitution of Virginia does not give the lieutenant governor a lot to do. The main duty is to preside over the state Senate and break tie votes, something which doesn’t happen very often — although Democrats this year engineered a few tie votes just to have Earle-Sears cast a tiebreaker that they think will be unhelpful to her in the fall. This is not exactly a major policymaking position, no matter who wields the gavel. I once had a former legislator, who had a peculiar fondness for parliamentary procedure, jokingly tell me that he wanted to run for lieutenant governor on a platform that he’d preside over the state Senate and do nothing else.
LaRock correctly points out that the lieutenant governor has “a bully pulpit,” and Republicans can judge for themselves how well Earle-Sears has met their expectations there, but that’s more about rhetoric than a record. LaRock says he hasn’t seen “any action” from Earle-Sears on certain issues, but about the only action a lieutenant governor can take is to rule a senator out of order or give a speech. Beyond a few tie-breaking votes, what record can you realistically expect any lieutenant governor to have? That’s rarely stopped Virginians from elevating lieutenant governors to the top spot. Some lieutenant governors have failed to win a party nomination, but for those who have been nominated, only one Virginia lieutenant governor has lost an election for governor: Democrat Don Beyer in 1997.
That leads me to a different question: Why do we need a lieutenant governor at all?
The House of Delegates chooses its own presiding officer; the Senate could as well. Presiding over the Senate seems akin to a “make-work” job for a lieutenant governor. Five states don’t have a lieutenant governor at all and somehow they seem to function: Arizona, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Wyoming. Two others, Tennessee and West Virginia, simply make a Senate leader the lieutenant governor.
The lieutenant governor is in line to become governor if the chief executive dies or resigns. Virginia hasn’t had that happen since Henry Wells, an appointed military governor in Reconstruction-era Virginia, resigned in 1869 so his elected successor could take office sooner than expected. The last Virginia governor to die in office was George William Smith in 1811, who initially escaped the Richmond Theatre fire but then ran back in to find his son. All those states without a lieutenant governor have a different line of succession in place in case of tragedy: the secretary of state in Arizona, Oregon and Wyoming, the president of the state Senate in Oregon and Maine.
If some enterprising Virginia politician wanted to take a Department of Government Efficiency-like approach to state government, they could propose doing away with the lieutenant governorship. Nobody’s likely to do that, though, because it’s a traditional route to the governorship, especially for non-lawyers who can’t run for attorney general. Instead, let’s compare the Virginia lieutenant governorship with the same position in those 44 other states that have the office.
Virginia law (as opposed to the constitution) assigns the lieutenant governor to serve on at least eight boards, the most significant of which is the Virginia Economic Development Partnership Authority. That seems a serious post, one that acquaints a lieutenant governor with the kind of deal-making in economic development we expect out of a governor. Other notable boards the lieutenant governor serves on are the Virginia Tourism Authority, the Center for Rural Virginia and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.
Some other states, though, give their lieutenant governors a lot more to do.
Alabama’s lieutenant governor gets to appoint more than 400 people to 167 boards and commissions. Personnel is policy, so the Alabama lieutenant governor gets to set that policy in 400 ways.
Alaska’s lieutenant governor supervises the Division of Elections.
Hawaii’s lieutenant governor doubles as secretary of state, the equivalent of our secretary of the commonwealth, which handles a lot of administrative functions of state government.
Indiana’s lieutenant governor is also secretary of agriculture and rural development.
In Massachusetts, the lieutenant governor chairs the body that approves judicial nominations.
Mississippi’s lieutenant governor is a member of the legislative budget committee and chairs it every other year. If Virginia had this system, and if Earle-Sears’ turn at the chair had been last year, she might have been able to advance Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposal for a sports arena in Alexandria that would have housed the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington Capitals. Instead, Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who thought the deal was a bad idea, wouldn’t even allow it to be voted on.
Utah designates its lieutenant governor as the state’s “chief election officer.”
In eight states — Georgia, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and West Virginia — the lieutenant governor has the power to appoint state Senate committees. Two of those states, Tennessee and West Virginia, may not count, because their practice is to designate the president of the state Senate as lieutenant governor. If Virginia did that, then Lucas, the killer of Youngkin’s proposed arena, would be lieutenant governor. Still, there are six remaining states where the lieutenant governor has appointment power, and that can often be used to shape committees to advance or stifle a particular agenda, as the case may be. That’s real power, as the arena deal last year showed.
On the other hand, 18 states don’t have their lieutenant governors presiding over the state Senate at all. Add in the five states that don’t have lieutenant governors, and that’s half the states where the lieutenant governor presides and half where they don’t. By that measure, Virginia’s lieutenant governor has more power than others. By another measure, though, ours doesn’t: Half the states have an archaic provision that allows the lieutenant governor to be acting governor whenever the real governor is out of the state. That might have been necessary in horseback times, but not in the age of global communications.
Whether all these various duties are a good idea or a bad idea is a difference of opinion, but it does show how states — “the laboratories of democracy” — have evolved different mechanisms. Some of them seem wrong to me, but the platypus seems poorly designed to me, as well. Having a lieutenant governor double as a cabinet secretary seems a particularly bad idea. A governor ought to be able to dismiss a cabinet secretary, if necessary, but you can’t fire a lieutenant governor.
None of this speaks to whether Earle-Sears has been a good or bad lieutenant governor. That’s ultimately a matter of political taste, but it seems wrong to expect much of a record from anyone holding that post because that’s not what the job is designed for. We can look at those tie-breaking votes and her general pronouncements to understand where she stands politically; there will be plenty of time for that before this election is done, whether that’s in June or November. In the meantime, is it too much to ask for Virginians to take just a little time to ponder why we have a lieutenant governor in the first place?
Meet the ‘other’ Lafayette from the American Revolution. He was a spy.
Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. To prepare for that, Virginia has been telling some of the lesser-known stories about Virginia’s role in independence. This month’s installment features the story of James Armistead Lafayette, an enslaved man who served as a spy for the famous French general and took his name but was later denied his freedom until the Frenchman intervened. You can sign up for our monthly Cardinal 250 newsletter (as well as our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital) below:
