Virginia Dems Snub Virginia Beach

Feeling unimportant? You should if you live in Virginia’s largest city.

For the first time in decades, not a single politician from Virginia Beach serves on either of the two most powerful State Senate committees: Finance and Commerce and Labor.

It’s almost as if the Resort City doesn’t matter. And clearly it doesn’t. To Virginia’s Senate Democrats, anyway.

That’s what we get for electing Republican senators, I suppose. Or for supporting the Second Amendment. Unclear exactly what has caused the Beach to fall out of favor with Democratic potentates in Richmond.

In the past, Republican State Sen. Frank Wagner served on both of those committees and chaired Labor and Commerce. With Wagner’s retirement after 19 years in the General Assembly and the New Democratic majority, the committee assignments were sprinkled among pols from Fairfax, Richmond, Roanoke, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Harrisonburg and Williamsburg and other hamlets around the commonwealth.

But not Virginia Beach.

(Nitpickers might point out that Sen. Lynwood Lewis of the Eastern Shore who’s on Commerce and Labor represents a few inches of Virginia Beach, given the peculiar shape of his district, but he's not considered a Beach representative.)

Last week Virginia Beach State Sen. Bill DeSteph complained about the snub on the floor of the Senate. The Republican said he understood that “To the victor go the spoils,” but insisted that when the GOP handed out committee assignments, geography mattered.

“The Beach doesn’t have a seat at the table,” DeSteph told me yesterday. “They’re telling members of the business community in Virginia Beach that they don’t matter. They’re saying that the state’s largest tourist industry doesn’t matter…This is geographical discrimination.”

On Facebook, Freshman Sen. Jen Kiggans of Virginia Beach expressed surprise over the unbalanced committee assignments:

Of the eleven committees in the Senate, each is chaired by a Democrat and has a majority of Democrat members. The Committee leadership is heavy from Northern Virginia and leaves Virginia Beach especially under represented. Most concerning is that the most influential committees of Commerce and Labor (which represents business interests) has 12 Dems and 3 Reps and Finance and Appropriations (which controls the money) has 11 Dems and 5 Reps. Rules committee (which voted to ban guns in the Capitol building yesterday) has 12 Dems and 3 Reps. Keep in mind Republicans make up 48% of the Senate and Democrats 52%. As a new member, I am irritated that fair representation for Virginians is not a priority during this 2020 session. 

Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer told me he was “outraged” that the city was locked out of the prestigious committees.

“We’re trying to build bridges, not burn them,” Dyer said yesterday, noting that he’s headed to Richmond on Wednesday to meet with the local delegation.

A quick perusal of committee assignments shows a lack of Beach representation on another important committee: Senate Judiciary.

But guess who did nab a seat on that body? Democrat Joe Morrissey of Richmond.

Then again, Morrissey has more experience with the judicial system than most politicians. In 2015, when he was a member of the House of Delegates, “Fighting’ Joe” became the only member of the General Assembly to commute to the Capitol from a jail cell.

Morrissey was on work release while serving a 90-day sentence for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Hmmmm. Maybe that’s what a Beach politician needs in his or her background to land a plum committee assignment.