Virginia is the only state in which the governor cannot succeed himself. Despite efforts to change this, the General Assembly has resisted the idea. Today’s sidebar in The Virginian Pilot focuses on this issue. Interesting to see who supports it and who is against it. (Click to enlarge. Graphic credit: The Virginian Pilot)
8 thoughts on “Where the candidates stand: two-term governor”
Comments are closed.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
OK, I will take the position of the majority of Virginians: I will support a two term governor, but only if the term length is reduced to TWO YEARS!
Interesting that not only do the vast majority of these candidates support the idea of a governor being able to serve two consecutive terms, but the only ones that disagree are Republicans.
With all due respect to the Pilot, this question is so oversimplified that it’s useless. Legislators may to some degree believe in two terms, but we’re left to ponder what they want for it. The answer,of course, is significant reductions in the power of the Governor. Details, details….
For me, the deciding factor is that if the governor cannot run for reelection, he cannot be punished for breaking promises.
One has to wonder if Warner would have been so quick to reverse his promise to not raise taxes if he was looking forward to a second term.
Accountability. That’s why we need two terms.
Accountability is fine – but won’t it only work for the first term? The other side of that coin is that one term could encourage a Governor to act in what he thinks is really the best interest of VA instead doing what he thinks will win him another term. Call me Pollyanna.
When I say “accountability” I mean more than just keeping campaign promises. As I mentioned in the linked post up at the top, one of my chief concerns is the budget and the fact that the governor really only gets to do one during his term. Can you imagine if Gilmore had had to clean up his own mess after that car tax junk?
As for the Pilot’s simplification – I don’t think that their position was all of the question. As Dr. Tabor mentioned earlier, the Pilot drew the “agree/disagree” from their interviews with the candidates.
No, I can’t imagine that. But I can imagine Gilmore having four more years to make an even bigger mess 🙂
I hop from side to side on the one term issue. On one hand, I’m generally against term limits – people ought to be able to vote for whomever they like. For example, it was a shame that VA couldn’t get 8 years of Warner instead of 4. On the other, there has to be some benefit from the “well, I’ve got nothing to lose” stance that a one term limit puts a governor in.