McDonnell verdict will test Va.’s political self-image, and perhaps change ethics laws
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Version 0 of 1. RICHMOND — With the decisive convictions Thursday of former governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Virginia finds itself in unfamiliar territory: deeply tainted by public corruption and open to tough new ethics rules that state leaders long insisted were not needed here. But whether the dramatic outcome of the McDonnells’ corruption trial has a lasting effect on how Virginia’s political class behaves and polices itself — even sees itself — remains uncertain. Some say the humiliating display of what went on behind the doors of the governor’s mansion could have a real impact on how officeholders, and their spouses, conduct themselves. Others say the convictions show the system worked, with sufficient laws already on the books to rein in excesses. The scandal has already had a chilling effect on legal but sometimes unseemly gift-giving that goes on in plain sight when the Virginia General Assembly is in session. It has made lawmakers more sensitive to the practice and triggered an initial round of ethics reforms. On his first day in office in January, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) put a $100 cap on gifts that he, his family and members of the executive branch could accept, and he has said he wants to strengthen the relatively weak restrictions lawmakers put on themselves. House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said he’s on board. “It is clear that the public’s trust and confidence has been shaken, and that’s unacceptable,” he said. “I am fully committed to taking the necessary steps to restore that trust and confidence. There are issues that I expect the General Assembly to revisit next session, and I think everyone recognizes that.” During the period when the McDonnells were being showered with loans and gifts by a Richmond businessman, Virginia law allowed officeholders to accept gifts of unlimited value as long as they disclosed those worth more than $50. After the McDonnells were charged, the General Assembly put a cap of $250 on the value of acceptable gifts. Trips and meals remained limitless. Details from the trial, especially the dramatic images of a Ferrari joy ride, Rolex watch on Christmas morning and an Oscar de la Renta dress, put on stark display Virginia’s status as one of a handful of states that, until this year, still let lawmakers take personal gifts of unlimited value. House Minority Leader David J. Toscano (D-Charlottesville) said a second round of reforms should address all-expense-paid trips, which he suggested be subject to review by an independent ethics commission, as well as campaign donations, on which there is no cap. “I would love to go to the Masters [golf tournament], but I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to take Dominion’s money to do it,” he said. Other Democrats said the McDonnell case is proof that current curbs work. Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) called the conviction a shock, but he said it should trigger only a tinkering with the state’s gift and campaign-finance laws. Others said it’s still appropriate to set Virginia apart from other places where high-level corruption has been more prevalent. “We’re still a relatively clean state as far as our politics, and we want to keep it that way. And I think everyone who participates in it is conscious of the reputation and how important it is,” said Bob Gibson, executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. “In New Jersey, they need buses for a political bust.” Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said the prominent role Virginians played in the founding of the nation set a high bar for politicians. “Virginia is the beneficiary of its own propaganda — ‘The Old Dominion,’ ‘Virginia Gentleman’ — that sort of thing,” he said. “If you were looking for a state that was unusually pure, Virginia would be in the top quintile, and New Jersey would be in the bottom.” But the McDonnell trial has eradicated any sense, he said, that the state is somehow different. Though rare, mini-scandals have piled up in Virginia. In 2011, former state delegate Phillip A. Hamilton, a Republican from Newport News, was convicted of bribery and extortion for steering a $500,000 earmark to Old Dominion University in exchange for a $40,000-a-year job for himself at the school. He is serving a 91 / 2-year prison term. And this summer, former state senator Phillip P. Puckett, a Democrat from Russell County, caused a controversy when he resigned just in time to throw control of the narrowly divided Senate to Republicans and deflate McAuliffe’s Medicaid expansion plan. At the time, Puckett was prepared to take a job that had been arranged for him at the tobacco commission, controlled by Republicans, but after the deal became public, he withdrew his interest. He denied a quid pro quo, but federal investigators are looking into it. Then came the McDonnells. They were indicted in January, just as the General Assembly debated and ultimately passed a $250 limit on tangible gifts. Although lawmakers accepted gifts during the year-long reporting period that included the 2014 legislative session, data recently made available by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project show that when the lawmakers were in session, none accepted gifts exceeding the $50 reporting threshold. That changed when they left Richmond. Gibson explained why the long history of gifts going to the state’s part-time legislature has not been questioned until now. “Public officials feel that they aren’t paid very much and that they put in longer hours than people realize, and some of them can take that as sort of a justification for the gifts that come their way. And the reporting is really so loose and so infrequent, the people aren’t expecting to see it in the newspaper the next day,” he said. “One of the rules of politics should be ‘Don’t do it if you don’t want to see it on the front page.’ ” Toscano said the spectacle of the trial — which put the first lady’s mercurial demeanor and the McDonnells’ marriage on display — will keep legislators and political spouses on their toes. “I think everybody’s going to look more carefully at what they do,” he said. “And I think that’s a good thing. It has raised lots of questions in people’s minds. And they will think very carefully about whether what they’re doing is appropriate, even if it’s not illegal.” McDonnell became the first governor charged with a crime in Virginia, which now joins a string of states with misbehaving or potentially misbehaving governors. Opinions varied on whether what has changed in Virginia is the behavior of politicians or the decision by prosecutors to go after that behavior. U.S. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) said: “Clearly the McDonnells lost their way. The good news for Virginia is it does not characterize our polity.” But former Virginia congressman Tom Davis, a Republican whom Connolly replaced in 2008, said the law was permissive for a long time before prosecutors — under a Democratic president, in his view — began targeting Republican governors. “Remember, you had a number of attorneys general saying they didn’t think a crime was committed here,” Davis said of the McDonnell case. “You have federal prosecutors going after the guy who’s the head of the Republican Governors Association.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie , the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, liked to joke that when he was a federal prosecutor, people would ask him if New Jersey was the most corrupt state. His reply: “Thank God for Illinois and Louisiana.” Now the same U.S. attorney’s office is investigating the Christie administration for closing lanes to the George Washington Bridge as retribution against a Democratic mayor. But when it comes to the true test of a state — its economic climate — Virginia’s proximity to the District and the ocean as a tourist destination as well as its relatively low regulatory environment could outweigh the recent spate of wrongdoing and the McDonnells’ spectacular fall. “Businesses are interested in professionally run, efficiently run state governments,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg. Until that changes, he said, lawmakers will continue to take the lofty ideals of Virginia’s founding fathers to heart. |