Vice President Joe Biden administers the Senate Oath to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. today during a mock swearing in ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, as the 113th Congress officially began. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Democrat Tim Kaine was sworn into the United States Senate today, becoming the junior senator from the state of Virginia.

Kaine was joined on the Senate floor by fellow Democrats Mark Warner, now the state’s senior senator, and Jim Webb, the man Kaine will succeed in the Capitol.

“It was a tremendous honor to be sworn in today as Virginia’s 55^th United States Senator,” Kaine said in a statement released by his office. “I am grateful to have had my family, friends, and two wonderful Virginia Senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, by my side. This new Congress must seize the opportunity to put partisanship aside and do what’s right for families in Virginia and across the country. There is too much at stake for Congress to remain paralyzed by political gridlock and I am eager to work with my new Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to tackle the difficult challenges we face through dialogue, listening, and compromise. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the people of Virginia as a city councilman, mayor, lieutenant governor, and governor. I remain optimistic that our nation’s best days are still ahead of us and as I begin this exciting new chapter, I intend to serve in a way that will make all Virginians proud.”

– Michael Sluss

U.S. Sen.-elect Tim Kaine has received his committee assignments for the 113th Congress, getting seats on the armed services, foreign relations and budget committees.

Kaine’s appointment to the Senate Armed Services Committee maintains Virginia’s long-standing presence on the panel. Departing U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, serves on the committee, and former Republican Sen. John Warner was the committee’s chairman from 1999 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2007.

“I am excited to tackle these meaningful committee assignments,” Kaine said in a statement released by his office. “Because of Virginia’s deep connections to the military, through active duty personnel, veterans, military families, and the private sector, Virginia needs a strong voice on the Armed Services committee as Congress makes decisions involving our military. As a member of the Foreign Relations committee, I hope to work with colleagues to build and maintain strong international relationships, enhancing our nation’s security and developing the global connections that lead to economic success. And as a governor who had to keep a budget balanced during the worst recession in seventy years, I believe my experience can be of value on the Budget committee as Congress wrestles with our fiscal challenges.”

– Michael Sluss
 

When he takes his oath of office as Virginia’s junior U.S. senator next month, Democrat Tim Kaine will share a distinction that has nothing to do with the state he represents.

Kaine is one of three senators elected in the 2012 cycle to graduate from the University of Missouri, according to this story in the Columbia Daily Tribune.That’s the largest number of senators to hail from a single, state-supported school, the newspaper reports.

Kaine, who grew up near Kansas City, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Missouri before going to Harvard Law School. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and New Mexico Sen.-elect Martin Heinrich, both Democrats, also have degrees from Missouri.

In case you’re wondering, the state’s soon-to-be senior senator, Democrat Mark Warner, earned a bachelor’s degree at George Washington University and a law degree from Harvard.

– Michael Sluss

A Southwest Virginia legislator is proposing that Virginia scrap its winner-take-all method of allocating presidential electoral votes, and instead apportion them by congressional district.

If state Sen. Bill Carrico’s legislation had been in effect for the 2012 election, Republican Mitt Romney would have won nine of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, and President Barack Obama would have won four.

Carrico, R-Grayson County, has introduced the bill (Senate Bill 723) for the 2013 General Assembly session, which begins Jan. 9. The bill has been referred to the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee.

Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allocate electoral votes by congressional district. In every other state, the candidate who wins the popular vote gets all of that state’s electoral votes.

Carrico said his proposal is not driven by partisan concerns. Instead, he said, he believes the winner-take-all system of allocating electoral votes dilutes rural voting strength.

“If it’s going to continue winner-take-all — it doesn’t matter which side is running — it’s going to all come down to how many people vote in the metropolitan areas and it doesn’t matter what the rural voters do,” Carrico said.

Obama won 51 percent of the statewide vote and Virginia’s 13 electoral votes with strong support in the state’s urban crescent. He won more than 60 percent of the vote in two Northern Virginia congressional districts, 79 percent of the vote in the 3rd Congressional District that extends from Hampton Roads to Richmond, and half the vote in the 2nd Congressional District.

Romney won by large margins in Western Virginia, but couldn’t overcome Obama’s strong performance in the urban crescent.

“I think if you want to continue to get people to be involved and turn out to vote for their candidate in the more rural areas, you’re going to have to even the playing field in order to have involvement,” Carrico said.

Under Carrico’s bill, the candidate with the most votes in a congressional district would receive one electoral vote. The candidate who wins a majority of the congressional districts also would receive the state’s two at-large electoral votes. If no candidate wins a majority of the congressional districts, the two at-large electoral votes would go to the winner of the statewide popular vote.

Carrico is not the first Virginia legislator to make such a proposal. Earlier this year, Del. Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax County, sponsored a bill that would allocate electoral votes as Maine and Nebraska do. In those states, the winner in each congressional district receives one electoral vote, and the winner of the statewide popular vote wins the state’s at-large votes. Watts’ bill didn’t make it past a House of Delegates subcommittee.

In the November election, Romney won the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th  congressional districts. Under Carrico’s bill, Romney would have won those seven electoral votes and the state’s two at-large votes. Obama carried the 2nd, 3rd, 8th and 11th districts.

– Michael Sluss

The Roanoke/Lynchburg market apparently got a bigger share of political ad spending than Hampton Roads, according to reports from Ralph Berrier in Sunday’s Roanoke Times and a piece in today’s Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

Berrier reviewed filings with the four major stations in the Roanoke/Lynchburg market and found they took in $27.1 million during the presidential election campaign. The market was among the top 10 nationally for political ads for much of the late summer and fall, in part because the ad rates are lower here relative to larger media markets.

The Virginian-Pilot analysis of political ad sales to the four Hampton Roads stations found that the commercials amounted to more than 260 hours of air time. That doesn’t include the barrage of nationally broadcast ads bought directly from networks or cable outlets.

The stations collectively took in more than $21 million for airing more than 31,300 spots – most of them 30-second commercials – according to the analysis of political ad sales reported to the Federal Communications Commission.

Updated at 2:55 p.m. with comments from the governor’s office.

Two Democratic state senators are requesting Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to call a special session of the General Assembly to establish a state-based health insurance exchange.

As part of the federal health care overhaul – which seems to have been secured by a United States Supreme Court ruling last summer and the re-election of President Barack Obama earlier this month – Virginia must decide whether to a establish a state exchange or default to a federally run exchange. The exchange would serve as a database where individuals and small businesses could shop for insurance coverage.

McDonnell said in the days following the election that the state still lacks sufficient information about a federal insurance exchange to determine which option is better for Virginia. Without that information, he said, Virginia initially will default to a federal exchange and leave open the possibility of setting up its own system.

Initially, the Obama administration has set a Nov.16 deadline to make that decision. Late last week, however, it extended the deadline to Dec. 14.

Today, Virginia Sens. Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax County, and Donald McEachin, D-Henrico County, said the governor needs to call the special session to establish a state-based exchange.

“Virginians deserve an exchange that suits their specific needs, not a one-size-fits-all solution from the federal government,” Saslaw said in a news release. “I can’t understand how the self-proclaimed party of limited government would allow the federal government to impose a generic exchange on Virginians.”

McEachin said, “Gov. McDonnell should follow the recommendation of his own expert panel and call the legislature back into session. Virginians have different needs than Texans or Minnesotans, and they deserve an exchange that suits those specific needs.”

McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin said Saslaw and McEachin’s news release amounts to “unfortunate theatrics” and said a hastily called special session would amount to “nothing more than a very expensive public relations exercise.”

“There is absolutely no need for a special session,” Martin said. “We are just weeks away from the start of the regular General Assembly session, during which the issue of health care exchanges will be addressed. More importantly, the states are still awaiting critical additional guidance and regulations from the federal government about the financing and implementation of health exchanges, and we are hopeful that we will have that in the next month.”

Virginia received a $1 million federal grant to plan for its own exchange, and a McDonnell-appointed advisory council concluded that an exchange should not be left to the federal government.

But McDonnell said earlier this month there were too many unknowns.

Virginia Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Roanoke County, expressed similar concerns in a phone call today.

“I don’t think the governor or anyone else on my side of the aisle is saying we’re not going to do it,” Smith said. “I think we’re saying give us more information. His responsibility and our responsibility is to get the best bill we can.”

Smith dismissed the call from Saslaw and McEachin as “grandstanding.”

“The regulations are still unfolding,” Smith said. “Sometimes it’s safer to do nothing when you don’t know what the outcome’s going to be. It doesn’t matter how fast you run if you don’t know where you’re going.”

You can read the full release from Saslaw and McEachin after the jump, as well as the full statement from McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin:

– Mason Adams

Read more »

Bob Goodlatte

Amid the ongoing debate over the direction of the Republican Party after this month’s elections, Virginia’s 6th District Republican Committee is adding its voice with letters to Congressman Bob Goodlatte and leadership in the House of Representatives.

In a letter that was sent out as a news release on Thursday afternoon, the committee takes issue with current House Speaker John Boehner and instructs Goodlatte to oppose his re-election for the next Congress.

The letter criticizes Boehner for “his unwillingness to lead the effort to de-fund Obama’s healthcare,” and “his capitulation on the issue of amnesty and his agreement to raise taxes,” calling those stances “nothing short of treasonous to our interests and our security.”

The letter to Goodlatte concludes:

“Therefore, we are writing to notify you of our unwillingness to accept such representation; to demand that you oppose the selection of Mr. Boehner as speaker for the next session; that you only select a representative who is willing to engage fully in battle against Obamacare and the many other imprudent and unconstitutional efforts of the Obama administration, and that our future support for you is contingent upon your efforts to lead the fight to deny President Obama every unconstitutional measure, and that this
must be done without excuse.”

The letter was passed unanimously by members of the committee during a meeting on Nov. 10, the weekend that followed the election.

We’ve requested an interview or statement from Goodlatte’s congressional office but haven’t yet heard anything back. We’ll be sure to update this post when we do.

Sixth District GOP Committee Chairman Wendell Walker said, “We’re concerned about standing up for conservative principles, including fiscal issues. We understand President Obama has no fiscal discipline, especially when it comes to the debt.

“Speaker Boehner, certainly while he talks a tough game, I think the Republicans in Congress are not staying strong enough to fight against the president. The president is running pretty much the whole show. Even though we have the house, I think there are concerns.”

Walker acknowledged the GOP is going through some soul-searching and called for conservatives to pull together with Tea Party and Libertarian-leaning wings to stand up against President Obama.

“The party is going through a lot of evaluation of this last election,” Walker said. “We have to take a hard look at it and how to regain the confidence and support of all Republicans. The conservatives out here as well as the Ron Paul and Tea Party folks, we’ve got to get together to build a strong team to fight against the president.”

Bath County Republican Committee Chairman Dan Moxley echoed those remarks.

“There’s a great divide in the Republican Party between what we refer to as the establishment people and the true conservatives,” Moxley said. “If you read what’s out there now, there are many on the establishment side who suggest we need to change the way of viewing things on issues like immigration and amnesty. The conservative side doesn’t feel that.”

“In terms of discussions about immigration, we don’t have a problem with people coming in properly, but opening the door to 12 million illegals with a wave of a wand is a problem,” Moxley said. “We’d like to see Bob oppose that.”

You can read the full letter to Goodlatte after the jump. And as always, we invite you to weigh in with your thoughts.

– Mason Adams

Read more »

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s popularity didn’t suffer for his association with a losing presidential candidate, according to a statewide poll released today.

McDonnell has a 53 percent job approval rating in a poll of Virginia voters conducted by Quinnipiac University. Women voters approve of McDonnell by a margin of 48 percent to 26 percent.

McDonnell’s approval rating remains positive after he served as a high-profile surrogate for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who lost Virginia and the national election to President Barack Obama.

“As Gov. Bob McDonnell enters his final year in office, he remains one of the nation’s more popular chief state executives,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.  “He is the only Republican office-holder in the seven states surveyed by Quinnipiac University who get positive ratings from women, almost 2-1 in this case, and a plus score from black voters.  A 2-1 approval rating among young voters doesn’t hurt.”

“Are national GOP leaders paying attention here?” Brown said.

The results come from telephone interviews with 1,469 registered voters conducted between Nov. 8 and Monday. The survey has a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points.

The survey also tested voters’ opinions on issues that are likely to come up in the 2013 General Assembly, including uranium mining. State lawmakers will decide early next year whether to lift the state’s 30-year-old moratorium on uranium mining and milling, a first step toward allowing a uranium mining proposal in Pittsylvania County to go forward.

The poll indicates that voters remain divided on the issue, with 42 percent saying that mining should be permitted and 40 percent saying that it should be banned . In the western part of the state, 46 percent said mining should occur and 38 percent said it should not.

On transportation funding, a majority of voters said they prefer highway tolls to higher gas taxes to generate funds for road improvements. But 57 percent also said that a proposal to put tolls on Interstate 95 is a bad idea.

Bu a margin of 51 percent to 43 percent, voters said that having year-round public schools is a bad idea.

The complete poll results are available here.

– Michael Sluss

Just a week after an election in which many Virginia voters endured hours-long lines, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is co-sponsoring legislation that would give states incentives to make voting easier.

Warner and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., announced today that they have  introduced the Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act of 2012. The legislation would create a competitive grant program to encourage states to reform their election laws to expedite voting and simplify registration. In a Senate floor speech today, Warner said the long lines amounted to  a “21st century poll tax” by keeping voters away from their jobs.

“The extremely long lines and wait times that many Virginia voters experienced at the polls last week were completely unacceptable,” Warner said in a news release. “The FAST Voting Act addresses this issue in a responsible way: it does not impose new mandates, and authorizes additional resources for those states which step up with commonsense reforms to make voting faster and accessible to more voters.

“I encourage Virginia’s elected leaders to embrace this opportunity to improve access for Virginia voters, who should not have to wait in line for hours to exercise their right to cast a ballot.”

The Warner-Coons bill would create a federal program that awards grants based on how well states can improve access to the polls in specific ways, such as :

• Providing flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration;
• Allowing early voting, at a minimum of 9 of the 10 calendar days preceding an election;
• Improving absentee voting, including no-excuse absentee voting;
• Assisting voters who don’t speak English as a primary language;
• Assisting voters with disabilities;
• Providing effective access to military voters;
• Providing formal training of election officials, including state and county election administrators and volunteers;
• Auditing and reducing waiting times at polling stations;
• Creating contingency plans for a natural or other disaster.

Coons said that “too many voters waited far too long to cast their ballots in this last election.”

“Long lines are a form of voter disenfranchisement, a polling place running out of ballots is a form of voter suppression, and making it harder for citizens to vote is a violation of voters’ civil rights,” Coons said. “The FAST Voting Act is a creative way to jump-start states’ election reform efforts and ensure that what happened last week doesn’t happen again.”

– Michael Sluss

Gov. Bob McDonnell wants the Obama administration to give states more time to decide whether to create their own health insurance exchanges to comply with the federal health care overhaul.

McDonnell, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, asked President Barack Obama in a letter to extend the Friday deadline for states to declare whether to run their own exchanges, create a partnership exchange or default to a federally run exchange. The exchange would function as a database where individuals and small businesses could shop for insurance coverage.

McDonnell and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who will become RGA chairman in 2013, wrote the letter on behalf of GOP governors. In it, they argued that the deadlines and many provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act “are simply unworkable.”

“With the pending deadline of November 16 for governors to make a decision on state based health insurance exchanges, we ask you to push back the date until your team has answered the numerous previous questions for governors and other groups, and promulgated the final regulations, so that all stakeholders have had the opportunity to comment, and those comments have been incorporated into a final rule,” the governors wrote.

McDonnell and Jindal asked Obama to meet with governors to discuss states’ obligations under the health care law.

The Department of Health and Human Services last week extended the deadline for states to submit plans for state-based health insurance exchanges until Dec. 14. But states still have to notify HHS by Friday whether they plan to set up their own exchanges.

McDonnell said in a post-election news conference last week that state officials still lack sufficient information about a federal insurance exchange to determine which option is better for Virginia. Without more guidance from the administration, McDonnell said, Virginia initially will default to a federal exchange and leave open the possibility of setting up its own system.

“The lack of a complete and open rulemaking process and the deficit of information being shared with states have created a virtual roadblock for governors, who must decipher what type of exchange is appropriate for their state,” McDonnell said in a RGA news release. “We are asking for the president to intervene with HHS, push the deadline and engage directly with governors of both parties in a serious dialogue about healthcare exchanges and overall healthcare reform in our states.”

In the letter, the GOP governors also complained the PPACA does not include “much-needed Medicaid or Medicare reform designed to control costs.” McDonnell has said that he opposes a provision to expand eligibility for Medicaid — even though the federal government would pay most of the cost — unless the expansion comes with cost-cutting reforms.

“As has been stated many times, before making any final policy decisions, governors must carefully consider the short and long-term implications of an expanded entitlement program and the consequences of significantly increasing the size of government to manage these programs,” the governors’ letter states.

– Michael Sluss