Politics in the Shadow of Va. Tech
By Jeff E Schapiro
Democrat Brian Moran, running for governor when he’s not practicing his 100-watt smile, scrubbed an Alexandria-to-Wakefield dash to the Shad Planking, the annual schooling of good ol’ boys and girls.
A Republican with a similarly handsome grin, Joe Blackburn
delayed announcing the endorsement from retiring Del. Jack Reid in Blackburn’s cul-de-sac-to-cul-de-sac primary battle with Sen. Walter Stosch of Henrico County.
In a state where every year brings another election, the mass shootings at Virginia Tech are overshadowing politics. But even in the penumbra of last week’s tragedy, politics continues.
The carnage will color House and Senate elections and, by extension, the business of the 2008 General Assembly. But it’s too easy, perhaps naive, to say that agenda will only include new proposals to restrict firearms.
Gov. Tim Kaine, who pledged as a candidate to resist expanded gun control, and a firearms-friendly legislature face a trickier issue, one less emotive than Glocks: how Virginia, in particular its colleges and courts, deal with the mentally ill.
With a small, divided constituency and smaller presence in a lobbying corps largely fatted at the corporate trough, mental health has long been a stepchild of state government, fussed over after the fact.
If mental health is under-represented among lobbyists, it underwhelms most legislators. Their attitude: The issue generates few campaign donations, fewer votes.
You can count on one hand the lawmakers who understand mental health. Among them: Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol, and Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News. Both are bucking for money-committee chairmanships, where they could do on a continuing basis for mental health what only crisis has done.
Since the mid-1980s, two governors, Democrat Jerry Baliles and Republican Jim Gilmore, increased spending for mental health because there was no way to avoid it.
Baliles responded to management headaches inherited from predecessor Chuck Robb; Gilmore, to Justice Department worries over patient deaths because of possible neglect or mistreatment.
Kaine’s challenge is about more than money; it’s about modernization – and better meshing mental health and public safety. Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho spotlighted gaps in both.
For example, how do taxpayer-supported entities such as Tech screen students, faculty and staff for possible and actual aberrant behavior before they harm themselves or others?
And could the state unintentionally erect an obstacle by barring public universities from expelling or punishing students for attempting suicide or seeking treatment for suicidal thoughts or behaviors?
The just-enacted, apparently first-in-the-nation law, by Del. Al Eisenberg, D-Arlington, may have been seen as a civil-rights measure – protection for the individual against excesses of the state.
Another gray area: the overlap of the background-check law for firearms purchases with statutes governing court-directed treatment for mental disorders.
It’s unclear whether Cho’s brief treatment in 2005 for suspected suicidal tendencies should have popped up during the records check, which otherwise include court orders that might be a bar to buying a gun.
Well ahead of the news flash from Blacksburg, Virginia Chief Justice Leroy Hassell initiated a study on the murky intersection of mental-health and criminal-justice issues. Few noticed the announcement last year.
Perhaps someone was thinking about the deadly potential for confusion before it yielded to sad reality.
Contact staff writer Jeff E. Schapiro at jschapiro@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6814. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).
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