RICHMOND — The Virginia Senate rejected Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s picks for the state’s parole board on Thursday, extending a partisan tit-for-tat that started with the chamber’s rejection of a Trump administration official for the Republican’s Cabinet.
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In a party-line 21-to-19 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected four Youngkin appointees to the parole board and a single nominee to the state Safety and Health Codes Board.
Democrats acknowledged that the move was payback for the increasingly hardball tactics Youngkin and the Republican-led House have employed since the Senate rejected one of the governor’s Cabinet picks — Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who led a rollback of Obama-era environmental regulations as President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief.
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Those tactics included a threat last month to unseat more than 1,000 Democratic appointees from state regulatory and governing boards. Republicans largely backed down, removing a far smaller number — 11 — but the move still allows Youngkin to increase his influence on the Virginia Board of Education and other key boards.
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“I think that the House needs to be taught a lesson,” said Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), accusing that chamber of participating in a “raw attempt to grab power” by unseating the 11 nominees, some of whom had served nearly a year in their roles.
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Senate Republicans expressed dismay that Democrats would escalate the dispute, with some invoking the notion — popular on their side of the Capitol — that the upper chamber holds itself to higher standards than the one down the hall.
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“Why are we taking hostages right now when, quite frankly, it’s so unbecoming of us to do so?” said Sen. William Stanley (R-Franklin). “Someone here has to be the bigger person. Somebody here has to be the better body.”
Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) blamed the House for seeking more and more revenge for Wheeler, whose service for Trump gave Democrats what they said were sincere concerns about his commitment to the environment. The Senate approved the rest of Youngkin’s Cabinet.
“This whole thing could have ended,” Saslaw said. “What escalated the war, it wasn’t us.”
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Ever since the Senate rejected Wheeler for secretary of natural and historic resources last month, the House and Youngkin have sought payback. They started by holding up the reappointment of a State Corporation Commission judge favored by Democrats and blocking elections for two state Supreme Court justices.
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Thing escalated from there, with the House threatening last month to unseat about 1,000 Democratic appointees to state regulatory and governing boards — an unprecedented move.
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Democrat Ralph Northam, whose term as governor expired in January, made the appointments to about 300 boards over his last year in office. The General Assembly typically signs off on such appointments, even after a governor has left office, unless there is some concern about an individual’s qualifications or performance.
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The House largely backed down on the threat within a matter of hours, leaving the vast majority of the appointees in place but rejecting 11 from the Board of Education, the Air Pollution Control Board, the Water Control Board, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and the Safety and Health Codes Board.
Democrats initially called for Youngkin to reappoint the 11 nominees, but Ebbin said Thursday that they have since concluded that the state constitution prohibits any nominee rejected by the legislature from being renominated to the same board — ever.
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Ebbin said Democrats have shifted to asking that Youngkin work with them to find consensus nominees, particularly for the Board of Education, which lost three of its nine members in the move. But he said there has been no progress on that front.
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Republicans warned that rejecting Youngkin’s nominees would leave the state without a functioning parole board, after Youngkin issued an executive order removing every member of the body on his first day in office. (Anticipating the move, the members had actually resigned prior to his inauguration.) The move fulfilled a campaign promise, stemming from controversy over the board’s release in 2020 of a man serving a life sentence for the 1979 killing of a Richmond police officer.
Sen. Mark Obenshain (R-Rockingham), typically a tough-on-crime voice, said the vacant board would hurt prisoners who “deserve grace and deserve parole.”
Democrats countered that Youngkin’s picks were unlikely to grant prisoners parole anyway.
Once the General Assembly adjourns, Youngkin will be able to appoint new board members who will be able to serve without confirmation until 30 days into the next regular legislature reconvenes.