Southside Virginia Overlooked Again

Our judgment of the successes and failures of exited Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is colored from top to bottom by a parochial concern: From our viewpoint, he did little or nothing to improve the lot of ordinary residents of Southside Virginia. Yet again, a governor of the commonwealth has come, served, and has left office with hardly a record of accomplishment in this region.

During the last four years, as we did with Gov. Mark Warner before Mr. Kaine, we grew weary seeing press releases from the Governor’s Office telling us of all the good and splendid deeds the chief executive and his administration were doing in the commonwealth’s other stepchild region, the Southwest mountains. But hardly a crumb was thrown our way in Southside.

It is the same old story. We either elect the wrong folks to office to represent us in Richmond. Or we fail to band together as a region to increase our clout. Whatever the problems, and there are several, to be sure, Southside Virginia is largely ignored until the state’s big shots want to locate a prison or sex predator’s unit here. Then they cheer on good old Southside in a fashion reminiscent of a Hokies rally.

We come to these conclusions as a decided “outsider” in these parts. Let’s face it: Southside Virginia is the stepchild of the commonwealth. Too many Virginia officials think Southside Virginia begins and ends in Danville!

We had a chance, really we did, to begin changing this sorry situation, but not enough Virginians voted for Democrat Creigh Deeds in the November general election.
We voted for Mr. Kaine four years ago and for Mr. Deeds this past November. Deep down, we knew Mr. Kaine would disappoint us, just as Governor Warner had done. So little has changed, and we seriously doubt if it changes under Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell.

Beyond all of these parochial interests, we do see Governor Kaine as an intellectual and compassionate state official. He showed enormous humanity, for example, in dealing with the aftermath of the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech in which 32 students and faculty were mercilessly gunned down. He spent more than a little time with the families’ victims, even giving some of them his personal cell phone number.

He had to deal with Know-Nothing Republicans during his four years in office. Yet he appeared to remain civil to them and to everyone else in his daily work.

He drew more businesses to Virginia even during the economic calamities that haunted the commonwealth and nation.

Governor Kaine pushed through reforms in such areas a pre-natal care, foster care and mental health.

He helped Virginia maintain its ranking as one of the best-managed states in the country even in an era of declining state revenues.

We did not like his serving a chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and we said as much in this space. He seems to be a round peg placed in a square hole in that job. But it will last only so long and perhaps he will find other, more useful work in the future. We simply wish he had gotten to know us in Southside Virginia a little better and done a little more to lift the struggling region that has enormous potential but far too little leadership to reach it.

Republican Wins In Bay State

Last year at this time, the nation was celebrating the inauguration of its first African-American president. This year, that new president and his party are reeling, wondering what to do. The latest, and clearly not the last blow, came when Massachusetts voted for a Republican to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy. A Republican, Scott Brown, defeated Democrat Martha Coaxley. The finger-pointing among Democrats is heating up. The euphoria of Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration appears to be very long ago.
Surprised? Only a little. It is hard to believe that the seat occupied for 47 years by Edward Kennedy now will be held by Republican Brown, who had the perfect answer when he said the seat does not belong to Senator Kennedy, but to the people. Exactly.
Meanwhile, health-care bill in the U.S. Senate is on the ropes, and maybe it should be. It represents little more than a sellout by the Democrats to the health insurance profiteers. With Senator-elect Brown now taking his Senate seat, perhaps the filibuster-proof majority in the upper house is null and void. Perhaps, too, it would be a public service to send the health-care bill to the deep six.
Health reform is a worthy goal, but the Democrats have messed it up. They failed simply to extend Medicare to the uninsured and failed to provide a public option that would have held down costs. Instead, the country would get police tactics in holding a gun to Americans' heads if they fail to ante up with a health care plan. It is called a shakedown and it is high time the Democrats in Congress and the president were called out on it. Bay State voters started the process by electing Mr. Brown.