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Colgan And Potts Demonstrate Ineffectiveness
By Greg L | 8 February 2007 | 29th VA Senate | 2 Comments
One reason many voters might consider keeping a senior Senator like Charles Colgan or Russ Potts in the Virginia Senate is that their seniority gives them the heft to strongly protect the interests of their consituents. The General Assembly is like most other political bodies, where seniority means raw political power, and having a senior legislator represent your district usually means that you’re going to be taken care of better than if you had a freshman representative. With these two Senators, we can either lay that notion to rest, or attribute it to a lack of motivation for these senior representatives to actually “bring home the bacon” that they promise their seniority allows.
Few issues have rallied voters into utter outrage than the proposal by Dominion Power to build a half million volt transmission line roughly from Winchester to Loudoun County. Thousands are up in arms, posting yard signs, and engaging in boisterous protests. Local legislators and even school boards have passed resolutions against the transmission line, and our congressional delegation has stated it’s opposition. So voters went to their elected officials, including these senior Virginia senators, and demanded they do something to protect them. Time to deliver on the promises, senators.
Chuck Colgan introduced two pieces of legislation on this. One was killed in committee. SB 1362 survived committe, but became so watered down that all it would require is that Dominion post maps of it’s proposed route on their website and that they would have to justify why they need to build the line. The legislation which has emerged is largely worthless, and won’t at all protect the interests of their consituents: they have utterly failed to deliver the goods that their campaign promises guarantee we will receive.
Colgan and Potts were reduced to pleading that “their ox was getting gored” before the Senate, as the Gainesville Times reports:
Winchester Sen. Russ Potts (R-27th) said something has to be done and he reminded his colleagues that their constituents are watching the situation very closely. Potts said that this is the first time he’s seen residents this upset in his 16 years in the Senate.
“I have never seen as emotional of an issue as this,” he said. “All politics is local. It depends on whose ox is being gored and I tell you right now, my ox is being gored, Mr. Chairman.”
Colgan, who sits on the committee with Potts, jumped in to agree.
“My ox is being gored too,” he called out. “I just hope Dominion Power is listening. They should pick a route that is not as controversial and that has less impact. These people are their constituents; they keep them in business.”
Perhaps their right. If they fail to deliver the goods promised by their senior status, they do in fact risk getting gored in the next election, when voters have this painful demonstration of their ineffectiveness to remind them that replacing them is not nearly as fraught with downsides as they will undoubtably represent. In the end, if you don’t do your job, the voters are going to throw you out.
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Ha think, ole Pottsie would have learned what his constituents really care about after 16 years. I am guessing he will be retiring into the sunset with his plush education fundraising job.
I do think Mark Tate will win the nomination to replace him. I have heard some out of the 27th say they think Holtzman who along with Tate is running is way too liberal on social issues because she has taken many of Pott’s big supporters for governor and past senate races and is generally very cautious about criticizing Pott’s directly in public. I don’t think we will see Pott’s endorse her but I do think Pott’s has probably given his people permission to go over since he is about to retire. It will be very interesting to watch the Pott’s race unfold.
Here’s some “bacon” Chuck Colgan, ranking Democrat on Senate Finance has brought back: the widening of Rt. 234 from Dumfries to Manassas, the Rt. 234 Bypass, the money for every building of the Prince William Campus of George Mason University and the current widening project now occurring at I-66, and money for the Marine Museum at Quantico.
Chuck has been a budget conferee for years. What this means is when the House and Senate negotiate a budget, it is the conferees who decides what money goes where. Chuck has literally been directly responsible for literally hundreds of millions dollars coming back to Prince William. Seriously, there are dozens of other good projects he has funded.
Out of 140 legislators, 11 negotiate the budget. Prince William and Manassas have been extremely lucky to have Colgan as one of those 11. As far as not being able to deliver a transportation, unfortunately there are a lot more politics involved.
I like this blog a lot, especially when it tackles more more “nuetral” issues. Unfortunately, your party preference gets in the way of reason (as it does for most partisan bloggers) when it comes to seriously addressing some real world political situations.