Virginia Faces the Ballot

WITH NO FEDERAL or statewide offices or questions on the ballot, it would be easy to overlook Virginia's elections next month. In fact the Nov. 6 ballot, for state legislative as well as local government offices, comes at a critical juncture. It may represent a tipping point that could put Democrats, specifically Northern Virginia Democrats, into positions of power in a state legislature that has been dominated by downstate Republicans for years.

That matters not for partisan reasons but because the state Republican Party's internal splits have been so venomous in recent years. Rather than addressing Virginia's most pressing problem, a deteriorating transportation system, moderate Republicans in the state Senate and conservatives in the House of Delegates wasted two years on intraparty squabbling. Desperate to avert electoral disaster, they finally cobbled together a plan this year. But the funding they provided is scarcely half what transportation planners considered minimally adequate for Northern Virginia, the state's most clogged region. And rather than using statewide taxes -- the method by which new roads and transit have been financed for decades -- the GOP instead told Northern Virginians that they were free to tax themselves.

Rather than dwelling on their dubious transportation achievement, Republicans in Northern Virginia have turned their attention to illegal immigrants. They hope to capitalize on legitimate concerns on the part of neighborhoods uneasy with the presence of illegal immigrants living in group houses, and of local governments struggling to provide education and other services to undocumented workers and their families. But the bitter truth is that the state can do relatively little about a problem whose causes lie squarely with the federal government's, and Congress's, failure to devise a workable national immigration policy. Rather than presenting a platform to improve education, public safety and health care in Virginia, many Republicans are hoping that a program of hounding illegal immigrants is the key to electoral success. It shouldn't be.

The Democrats have a different story to tell, including the victories of two straight Democratic governors, Mark R. Warner and Timothy M. Kaine, whose solid, relatively nonpartisan competence has stood in contrast to the GOP's squabbling. If the Democrats retake control of the Senate, which they lost a decade ago, at least three senior Northern Virginia senators -- Richard L. Saslaw, Charles J. Colgan and Mary Margaret Whipple -- would assume key leadership positions. That would give the region the kind of clout in Richmond it has lacked for years.