Commentary: Her time has come -- Virginia will, after four centuries, have a woman governor

It’s only taken Virginia 400-plus years to get around to it, but a fairly routine political event last weekend made it nearly an absolute certainty that next January, the commonwealth will inaugurate its first woman governor.

The Republican Party of Virginia announced on Saturday that former state Sen. Amanda Chase, a right-wing lightning rod who described herself as “Trump in heels,” had failed to gather enough signatures on qualifying petitions by that day’s deadline to appear on the Republican gubernatorial primary ballot.

That made Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears the party’s nominee, obviating the necessity for a Republican Primary in June. That created a direct, head-to-head general election match-up in November with former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

But for unforeseen, tragic circumstances, the boys’ club that has been the office of governor since Patrick Henry in 1776 (or 1610 if you count colonial governors) will finally lose its monopoly. The glass ceiling will be shattered in a million jagged, crystalline pieces, waiting to be swept up and rightfully dumped into the dustbin of history.

It’s about time. Fifty-four women have served as governors in 32 states and two U.S. territories beginning with Wyoming’s Nellie Tayloe Ross in 1925, according to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. That includes 13 now serving as governors.

In Virginia, this is the first time both major parties will offer female nominees. One woman got within sight of the pinnacle without planting her flag on the summit.

In 1993, Democratic Attorney General Mary Sue Terry was considered an early shoo-in to succeed Gov. Doug Wilder, who had made history in 1989 as the nation’s first elected Black governor.

Terry, who had served in the House of Delegates, was the first woman to win statewide office with her election as attorney general in 1985. She easily won reelection in 1989, and was seen as the virtual incumbent after Democrats had held the Executive Mansion for the previous dozen years. One early poll showed Terry with a 29-percentage point advantage over her Republican foe, a former Virginia congressman known mostly as the namesake son of former Washington Redskins coach George Allen.

Terry was burdened by factors of her own making and those beyond her control. Her campaign often seemed adrift, going through the motions ahead of her inevitable coronation. But three consecutive Democratic administrations in Richmond and disappointment with first-year Democratic President Bill Clinton left voters feeling Virginia was on the wrong track. Wilder’s lingering, high-profile contretemps with Sen. Chuck Robb — a former Democratic governor and son-in-law of President Lyndon Johnson — did the party’s brand no favors, either.

By the closing weeks of the 1993 campaign, it was clear that the wheels had fallen off Terry’s campaign. Allen routed her by 18 percentage points, ending Terry’s political career and christening a Republican renaissance that reached its zenith in 2001 with the party holding every lever of elective government in Virginia for the first time in modern history.

No woman would win statewide office again until Earle-Sears was elected lieutenant governor in a 2021 GOP sweep of all three statewide offices plus a narrow House of Delegates majority. A former Marine who upset a longtime Democratic incumbent to win a House of Delegates seat in 2001, she is also the first African American woman to win statewide election.

I can’t help but wonder, though, about one of the most intriguing and promising candidates I’ve known.

Emily Couric was a Democratic member of the state senate serving Charlottesville, first elected in 1995 and re-elected in 1999.

She was smart and tireless, taking on the task of personally reading every piece of legislation on which she would vote, either in committee or on the floor. It paid off. She would find flaws in bills that would sometimes doom them or send patrons scurrying to make corrective amendments.

Emily was an unflinching Democrat, but she had many admirers on the other side of the aisle. She was a moderate who often found common ground with Republicans. She also had the “it” factor that made her a formidable contender in 2000 when she announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor the following year.

She was blessed with a lightning-quick wit that served her well in debates and could defuse tense, even acrimonious situations. And she had that unmistakable family smile that her kid sister, Katie, had made famous as a national television personality.

To this day, I wonder what if?

Emily had a clear shot at the nomination and, as it turned out, likely would have been elected lieutenant governor in 2001, a rebound year for Democrats with Mark Warner heading the ticket. Two weeks before that election, however, Emily was laid to rest after a determined fight with pancreatic cancer.

When she announced her diagnosis in July 2000, she dropped out of the race but remained in the Senate and, remarkably, signed on as co-chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia despite the toll her treatment exacted. Richmond’s little-known mayor, Tim Kaine, filled her vacancy on the ticket and the seat she might have had on an amazing political odyssey. He served as governor, a vice presidential running mate and is in his third U.S. Senate term.

Every candidate brings different skillsets and choices to each unique election and, if they win, to a subsequent term of office. Political fortunes rise and fall because of them. We will never know if there might have been a Governor Couric. We can only ponder what might have been.

Now, a woman will get that chance. I take comfort knowing that there will be a Governor Spanberger or a Governor Earle-Sears.

Either way, her time has come.

____________________

Courtesy of Virginia Mercury.