Mr. Gilmore's Senate Try
The former governor and abortive presidential candidate sets his sights anew.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

JAMES S. GILMORE III, one of the most confrontational and irresponsible governors in recent Virginia history, is running for the U.S. Senate. Given his record in office and the bad blood he conjured on both sides of the aisle, it is astonishing that he is the presumptive Republican nominee.

Or maybe not so astonishing. Virginia's Republican Party has been riven for years by an internal feud pitting inflexible conservatives like Mr. Gilmore against pragmatic centrists who understand that government -- as in Virginia since he left office -- can be a constructive force. At the moment, the internecine fight is being won by the hard-liners, which goes a long way toward explaining why the GOP has been shellacked in successive state elections. It is a sad commentary on the party's health that Mr. Gilmore is running for the seat being vacated by the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R), whose statesmanship, courtesy and decency now seem a quaint relic of another age when set against the Gilmore wing's scorched-earth style.

In Richmond, Mr. Gilmore is remembered chiefly for his high-handed insistence on a tax cut that cost the state $1 billion a year and left Virginia broke by the time he left office almost six years ago. Beyond forcing an unprecedented budgetary impasse and costing his own party the governor's office in 2001, the effects of his fiscal incompetence were felt chiefly in Northern Virginia, which, despite having helped elect Mr. Gilmore governor, got the shaft from him once he was in office. Northern Virginia commuters who are furious that the state for years did too little to build new roads and transit, even in boom times, have Mr. Gilmore to blame. In his waning years in office, he took to referring to the region as "the northern part of Virginia," as if it were a hostile, foreign territory. Little wonder that his abortive campaign for president earlier this year generated so little interest or funding.

In opting for a convention rather than a primary to choose their party's nominee, the conservative insiders who control Virginia's GOP kept their death grip on the party's apparatus and probably further undermined its future. In a primary, a broader array of the party's rank and file might have opted for a moderate with wider appeal such as Rep. Thomas M. Davis III. In the general election, Mr. Gilmore is likely to face his gubernatorial successor, Mark R. Warner (D), who will justifiably be able to tell Virginians that he spent much of his time in office fixing Mr. Gilmore's mess and getting the state back on track.