Virginia Law And Government

The current governor of Virginia is Tim Kaine. The State Capitol building in Richmond was designed by Thomas Jefferson, and the cornerstone was laid by Governor Patrick Henry in 1785.

In colonial Virginia, the lower house of the legislature was called the House of Burgesses. Together with the Governor's Council, the House of Burgesses made up the General Assembly. The Governor's Council was composed of 12 men appointed by the British Monarch to advise the Governor. The Council also served as the General Court of the colony, a colonial equivalent of a Supreme Court. Members of the House of Burgesses were chosen by all those who could vote in the colony. Each county chose two people or burgesses to represent it, while the College of William and Mary and the cities of Norfolk, Williamsburg, and Jamestown each chose one burgess. The Burgesses met to make laws for the colony and set the direction for its future growth; the Council would then review the laws and either approve or disapprove them. The approval of the Burgesses, the Council, and the governor was needed to pass a law. The idea of electing burgesses was important and new. It gave Virginians a chance to control their own government for the first time. At first, the burgesses were elected by all free men in the colony. Women, indentured servants, and Native Americans could not vote. Later the rules for voting changed, making it necessary for men to own at least fifty acres (200,000 m²) of land in order to vote. Founded in 1619, the Virginia General Assembly is still in existence as the oldest legislature in the New World. Today, the General Assembly is made up of the Senate and the House of Delegates.

Like many other states, by the 1850s Virginia featured a state legislature, several executive officers, and an independent judiciary. By the time of the Constitution of 1901, which lasted longer than any other state constitution, the General Assembly continued as the legislature, the Supreme Court of Appeals acted as the judiciary, and the eight elected executive officers were the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of the Commonwealth, State Treasurer, Auditor of Public Accounts, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Commissioner of Agriculture and Immigration. The Constitution of 1901 was amended many times, notably in the 1930s and 1950s, before it was abandoned in favor of more modern government, with fewer elected officials, reformed local governments and a more streamlined judiciary.

Virginia currently functions under the 1971 Constitution of Virginia. It is the Commonwealth's seventh constitution. Under the Constitution, the government is composed of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.

Virginia is one of only five states that elects its state officials in odd numbered years (The others are Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey). Virginia holds elections for these offices every 4 years in the years following Presidential election years. Thus, the last year when Virginia elected a Governor was 2005; the next gubernatorial election will occur in 2009, with future gubernatorial elections to take place in 2013, 2017, 2021, etc. Since 1977, Virginia has elected a Governor of the opposite political party compared to the current President of the United States of the time.

The legislative branch or state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly, a bicameral body whose 140 members make all laws of the Commonwealth. Members of the Virginia House of Delegates serve two-year terms, while members of the Virginia Senate serve four-year terms. The General Assembly also selects the Commonwealth's Auditor of Public Accounts. The statutory law enacted by the General Assembly is codified in the Code of Virginia.

The executive branch comprises the Governor of Virginia, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, and the Attorney General of Virginia. All three officers are separately elected to four-year terms in years following Presidential elections (1997, 2001, 2005, etc) and take office in January of the following year.

The governor serves as chief executive officer of the Commonwealth and as commander-in-chief of its militia. Virginia law forbids any governor from serving consecutive terms (although a governor may serve multiple non-consecutive terms). The lieutenant governor, who is not elected on the same ticket as the governor, serves as president of the Senate of Virginia and is first in the line of succession to the governor. The attorney general is chief legal advisor to the governor and the General Assembly, chief lawyer of the Commonwealth and the head of the Department of Law. The attorney general is second in the line of succession to the governor. Whenever there is a vacancy in all three executive offices of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, then the Speaker of the House of the Virginia House of Delegates becomes governor.

The Office of the Governor's Secretaries helps manage the Governor's Cabinet, comprised of the following individuals, all appointed by the governor:

• Governor's Chief of Staff
• Secretary of Administration
• Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry
• Secretary of Commerce and Trade
• Secretary of the Commonwealth
• Secretary of Education
• Secretary of Finance
• Secretary of Health and Human Resources
• Secretary of Natural Resources
• Secretary of Public Safety
• Secretary of Technology
• Secretary of Transportation
• Assistant to the Governor for Commonwealth Preparedness
• Counselor to the Governor

Many executive branch agencies have the authority to promulgate regulations. Proposals to create or amend state regulations are often subject to review by the executive branch. The Virginia Regulatory Town Hall (www.townhall.virginia.gov) is a comprehensive source of information about regulatory changes under consideration in Virginia.

The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Virginia Court of Appeals, the General District Courts and the Circuit Courts. The Virginia Supreme Court, composed of the chief justice and six other judges is the highest court in the Commonwealth (although, as with all the states, the U.S. Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction over decisions by the Virginia Supreme Court involving substantial questions of U.S. Constitution law or constitutional rights). The Chief Justice and the Virginia Supreme Court also serve as the administrative body for the entire Virginia court system.

The 95 counties and the 39 independent cities all have their own governments, usually a county board of supervisors or city council which choose a city manager or county administrator to serve as a professional, non-political chief administrator under the council-manager form of government. There are exceptions, notably Richmond, which has a popularly-elected mayor who serves as chief executive separate from the city council.

Virginia is an alcoholic beverage control state. Distilled spirits, plus wine greater than 14% alcohol by volume, are available for off-premises sale solely in state-owned and -operated retail outlets.

After William Mahone and the Readjuster Party lost control of Virginia politics around 1883, the Democratic Party held a nearly unchallenged majority position of state and most federal offices through the middle of the 20th century. The Byrd Organization headed by Harry F. Byrd Sr. largely controlled statewide politics. In 1970, Republican A. Linwood Holton Jr. became the first Republican governor in the 20th century effectively ending the influence of the Byrd Organization. Holton was succeeded by two other Republican governors in the 1970s. Virginia has voted for Republicans in every presidential election since 1952 except for the Democratic landslide in 1964. Virginia's current streak of voting for Republicans in ten consecutive presidential elections since 1968, when Richard Nixon began the Southern Strategy, is the longest among the former Confederate States. Virginia was the only such state to vote for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Despite Virginia's support of Republican presidential candidates and reputation as a conservative state, Democrats won all three gubernatorial elections in the 1980s and maintained large majorities in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, however many Democrats from rural and suburban districts had conservative stances on various issues. Virginia experienced a political realignment in the 1990s as conservative Republicans George Allen and Jim Gilmore held the Governorship from 1994 until 2002. Republicans captured both houses of the General Assembly and built large majorities. Conservative and moderate Democrats from rural and suburban areas were largely replaced by Republicans. Within the Republican party, the remnants of the less conservative "mountain-valley" faction of Holton, so named because many members were from the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia, were supplanted by more conservative office holders.

Recently, Democrats have been gaining votes in Virginia. The Republican majorities in the General Assembly have narrowed, particularly in the Senate where Democrats now occupy 17 out of the 40 seats. In 2004, John Kerry won 45.48% of the vote in Virginia, the highest percentage of any Democrat since Jimmy Carter. Kerry won Fairfax County, long a Republican stronghold, and fared much better in the rest of Northern Virginia than Al Gore did in 2000. Though Northern Virginia continues to trend Democratic, most of rural Virginia, once a Democratic stronghold, has been trending Republican, balancing out the state's politics and reflecting the national urban-rural split. Portions of Southwest Virginia influenced by unionized coal mines, college towns such as Charlottesville and Blacksburg, and southeastern counties in the Black Belt Region have remained more likely to vote Democratic. As the population has increased in Northern Virginia, so has the number of Democratic voters. In 2005 and 2006, Tim Kaine and Jim Webb won nearly all jurisdictions within the region, which was not accomplished by Alexandria resident Mark Warner in 2001. Warner performed comparatively strongly in rural areas, particularly Southwest Virginia, as his campaign stressed respect for rural cultural values and strategies for economic development. Some political analysts have predicted that Virginia could become a more competitive state in future presidential elections as the number of Democrats in the north are beginning to counterbalance the number of Republicans elsewhere. The election of Jim Webb as one of Virginia's two U.S. Senators in the Congressional midterm elections of 2006 reinforced this prediction. In that midterm election, the Virginia Senate race was the last decided and secured the Democratic Party a majority in the United States Senate.

John Warner, a moderate Republican, holds Virginia's other seat in the U.S. Senate. Republicans also hold 8 out of 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, which some attribute to gerrymandering during redistricting after the 2000 Census. In Northern Virginia, the most staunchly Democratic areas were placed in the 8th Congressional District represented by Jim Moran leaving behind traditionally Republican leaning areas in the 11th Congressional District represented by Thomas M. Davis and the 10th Congressional District represented by Frank Wolf. The predominately African American 3rd Congressional District represented by Robert C. Scott stretches from the Richmond metropolitan area to Hampton Roads and is surrounded by Republican controlled districts. Virginia's Lieutenant Governor is a Republican. Republican Robert McDonnell became Attorney General of Virginia by 360 votes following a legally mandated recount of ballots for that race in 2005. Most elected official in the state's largest city, Virginia Beach, which has a population in excess of 450,000, are Republicans. Most elected officials, including a majority of the county board of supervisors, in the state's most populous locality, Fairfax County, with a population in excess of one million, are Democrats.

Incumbent Virginia governors cannot run for re-election under the state constitution, and in the November 2005 election to succeed Democratic Governor Mark Warner, Democrat Tim Kaine (Richmond) beat Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (Scott County) and longtime Republican State Senator Russ Potts (Winchester), who ran as an independent. Kaine was inaugurated as governor on January 14, 2006.