'Injecting bleach into your system doesn't do it for you'
More than 400 years after the first execution in Virginia -- of Captain George Kendall, accused in 1608 of spying for Spain -- the Old Dominion is on the cusp of becoming the first former Confederate state to abolish the death penalty.
Virginia was long a zealous executioner, putting more people to death than any other state. It was notorious for offering death-row inmates a poor defense and for its disproportionate executions of Black prisoners. In the 20th Century, 296 African Americans suffered the death penalty compared to 79 Whites. “It’s time we stop this machinery of death,” Ralph Northam, Virginia’s governor, said in a joint statement with the Democratic leaders of the state House and Senate after bills banning capital punishment passed on Monday.
The death penalty’s demise is the latest sign of the sharp shift in politics in Virginia, which until recently was a conservative, southern bastion. Barack Obama’s win in the commonwealth in 2008 was decisive evidence that America was ready to elect a Black President. Democrats won Virginia in every presidential election since, and now control the governorship and the state legislature. The state is a testing ground for enacting liberal policies on race, gun control and climate with a thin legislative majority. Joe Biden has no doubt been paying attention.
The transformation reflects the fungible political map of a nation with internal migration in its DNA. While Virginia swings left, Ohio, the quintessential battleground state, voted twice for Donald Trump.
Virginia’s move left was rooted in fast-developing suburbs around Washington, DC, which drew government workers, highly educated professionals and medical and scientific specialists who were more liberal and ethnically diverse than rural Virginians who long dictated the state’s politics. Its blueprint is being copied by some other southern Republican states like Georgia.
Virginia traditionally provides a gut check on a new White House, as it holds its gubernatorial election a year after a presidential contest. Voters must this year decide whether they are happy with Democratic domination. The GOP primary showdown will be a Petri dish for the national clash between pro- and anti-Trump forces, and will test what Republicans can offer the suburban voters changing the character of American life.
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