Last night the three Republican candidates for Attorney General met in Roanoke for the second debate of this primary season.
I followed the live blog feed, and even from the vantage point of someone reading the debates as blogged by someone else, it was apparent to me that all three candidates have honed their presentations and have focused on the best arguments for their candidacies such that all three are now stronger candidates than they were two months ago at the first debates.
The single most important revelation of the night was this–all three men pledged to spend at least two terms in office (provided, of course, that the good people of Virginia will return them to office in 2013). Regular readers of this blog know that I have continually harped on the phenomenon of the one-term AG, which has been a tradition in Virginia for at least the last 36 years.
I have pointed out that groups like NAMFCU (National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units) and NAAG (National Association of Attorney Generals) who study issues related to the 50 state AG positions all agree that single term AGs are less effective than multiple term AGs. States with a tradition of one-term AGs fall prey to a host of ills that do not plague states with long-serving AGs.
(You don’t have to read a dry academic study to see this concept on a general scale–one of the chief reasons we have term limits on Virginia Governors is that the Virginia House of Delegates, which wields most of the power in Virginia government, likes to keep the Governor right where they want him. A two-term Governor would, without question, be more powerful than a one-termer).
The bottom line is this–state government, like government at every level, has grown more and more complex and more and more demanding to administer. State AGs have a number of very pressing demands that did not exist just four or five years ago. The position of AG is no longer a sleeper office, and it is no longer the kind of office that can see rotating AGs every four years–at least not if the Commonwealth is going to have the kind of government it deserves.
The obligations of our state AGs will undoubtedly grow in the coming four years. With the Obama Administration preparing to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into state economies, fighting fraud in our state budget is going to be an increasingly important part of the state AGs job. The very history of the federal False Claims Act and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act confirm that whenever there is a government rush to spend money, fraud on government coffers will increase exponentially.
So, while I do not pretend that this blog can take credit for interjecting this major point into the Attorney General debates–because that credit belongs to John Brownlee, who first made the pledge to change the tradition of the one-term AG–I feel strongly that Virginia will better off in the long run as a result of the other two candidates stepping forward and matching Brownlee’s promise to end this tradition.
This will also give whoever gets the nomination a strong practical point against Democrat Steve Shannon, who wears his ambition to be Governor very openly. I think any one of the three men competing for the Republican nomination will give Shannon a real fight in a general election–and I also think any of the three men in the running for the Republican nomination have a very important distinction from Shannon, but that is another story for another day.
Now, here is my read on the AG’s race overall. I think it is clear, after last night, that John Brownlee has become the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Without a doubt, John Brownlee has the strongest legal background and has always been the most qualified candidate for the job, but those things alone do not make him the front-runner.
Brownlee has pulled away from the pack and is now the front-runner because he is now setting the terms of the debate. The issue of the one-term AG is just one example. In a number of other ways, Brownlee is now setting the terms of the debate and that, ladies and gentlemen, is where any politician wants to be.
In any strategic, competitive endeavor–whether it is war, football, complex litigation, or a political campaign–the winner may seem like the one who wins the most battles, or scores the most touchdowns, but in reality those things are just a corollary to winning. The simple truth is that you win by controlling the momentum of the contest. If you control the momentum, scoring points, or winning battles, or getting votes, simply falls into place. You have to begin a football game assuming the other side is going to score–but you absolutely have to have some control over when, where, why, and how they score.
This is not by accident, of course–Brownlee has the deepest reservoir of legal knowledge, has the most experience running a large office of litigators, and the most experience with the sort of issues our state AG will face in the coming years. It is thus only natural that he would dictate the terms of the debates, and set the standards for the others to follow.