For Va. state senator, week turns into political and personal roller coaster

RICHMOND — Republican state Sen. Harry B. Blevins, a swing vote on abortion, already has a nickname among lawmakers: He’s the Justice Kennedy of the Virginia Senate.

So nobody’s about to start calling him Leon Panetta.

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Not even after he was whisked by state police helicopter from the Capitol back home to Chesapeake on Wednesday, following his key vote to end the state budget stalemate.

Unlike the defense secretary, whose winging to California has cost taxpayers more than $800,000, Blevins is not taking any heat for his $1,530 flight.

He was rushed back to Chesapeake because the high school sweetheart he married more than 50 years ago was hospitalized for a serious heart problem.

Blevins, 76, didn’t ask for the chopper ride. He was driving to Chesapeake when he was called back to Richmond because a budget deal had been struck.

He drove back to the Capitol, voted and expected to hit the highway again. Then Sen. Ryan T. McDougle (R-Hanover) told him they had found him a quicker ride.

“I had no idea that anything like that would happen,” Blevins said Thursday.

Margie Blevins, who has a pacemaker and whose age is a closely guarded family secret, started experiencing an irregular heartbeat Tuesday, just as her husband was preparing for the two-hour drive to Richmond.

Republicans needed every GOP vote, plus one Democrat’s, for the two-year, $85 billion spending plan to clear the evenly divided Senate. So Blevins felt obligated to be there. He summoned two of his four children, who took their mother to the hospital while he headed north.

Blevins felt confident that medication would solve the problem. He also was hopeful that the Senate would resolve its budget.

For a while, it seemed Blevins was wrong on both counts.

Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William), who was expected to cross party lines, cast a surprise “nay” vote Tuesday. The next day on the Senate floor, Blevins got a text from one of his daughters saying that his wife was not responding to medication. Doctors were talking about using defibrillation paddles to jolt her heart back into rhythm.

“I was helpless. I was in Richmond, and she was there,” Blevins said. “I just thought, ‘I’m out of here.’ . . . I didn’t think it was life-threatening to do that, but it’s scary and I wanted to be there with her.”

Blevins had traveled about 20 minutes down Interstate 95 when his cellphone started buzzing. Party leaders were trying to reach him with the news: Colgan had decided to vote for the budget.

A retired high school principal who observes the rules of the road, Blevins did not want to pick up his phone while driving. Nor was he eager to pull over to the side of the highway to answer.

Unable to reach him, party leaders had state police issue an all-points bulletin for Blevins’s white Nissan Altima.

As he drove, Blevins had no idea that he was, almost certainly for the first time in his life, the subject of a manhunt.

But as the phone continued to buzz away, he figured something was up. He decided to pick up.

“They want you back because they are gonna vote,” a staffer said. Blevins returned, pulling up to the Capitol Square guardhouse. Told to be on the lookout for him, Capitol Police let him park right there. He would be right back for the car, anyway.

Or so he thought. (As it turned out, Republican Sen. Jeffrey McWaters of Virginia Beach had a staffer drive Blevins’s car back to Chesapeake and left it at the hospital.)

Once Blevins reached the chamber, the Senate picked up the budget. It passed without a vote to spare. Then Blevins was out of there again. This time, by air.

State police helicopters do not routinely transport legislators to and from their districts, but Blevins’s situation was by no means routine, police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

“He obviously was desperate to get home to see his wife,” she said.

McDougle declined to discuss the flight, saying only: “We got him a ride.”

But there seemed to be little, if any, objection to it. Even Democrats who opposed the budget did not begrudge Blevins the flight.

“I would hope nobody would object,” Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) said. “He deeply loves his wife and was making a sacrifice to be away from her.”

Blevins touched down on the hospital helipad within an hour of the vote. Doctors did not have to use paddles on Margie Blevins, who started responding to medication and was expected to be discharged soon.

“I’m happy on two counts,” Blevins said. “One, we passed a budget. And number two is that I was able to be there for my wife.”