Political power, when it comes to legislative bodies, is sometimes described this way: To determine who truly wields authority, just look for those who never have to raise their voices to get things done – and to get their way.
Such is the case of state Sen. Janet Howell, who announced last week that she’d be retiring from the upper house of the General Assembly after 32 years in office.
Howell recently was described to us, by someone even higher up the political food chain, as the most powerful woman in Virginia government. And it certainly seems so: Her longevity coupled with her talent has made Howell a key figure on budget issues.
In a sense, and we’re not sure that she’d agree with, or love, the comparison, Howell at the state level is akin to U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd Sr., who for the 15 or so years prior to his death in the mid-1960s was the seminal figure on the Senate Committee on Finance.
(At one point, an exasperated aide to President Kennedy, angered over Byrd’s unwillingness to budge on a fiscal matter, asked why the president didn’t just go around him on the matter. An older, wiser staffer correctly responded: “Son, nobody goes AROUND Harry Byrd.” Same is true with Howell.)
Howell is just one of a number of venerable legislators who have opted against seeking re-election. In Northern Virginia alone, the departures include Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw and the longest serving member of the lower house, Del. Ken Plum. That’s a lot of seniority and a lot of institutional knowledge that is departing.
Before we become all teary-eyed with nostalgia, it is worth bringing in a few salient points:
• First, while the GazetteLeader may be new, the news team is not – we are to Northern Virginia politicians what J. Edgar Hoover was to presidents. We watch ’em come and we watch ’em go. Sometimes we’re impressed, sometimes not.
• Second, longevity alone does not make a great legislator, let alone a statesman. Plenty of long-timers end up jaded and disengaged, or believe the rules don’t apply to them.
In the case of Howell, however, it’s clear she has remained true to maintaining a degree of pragmatism over partisanship. And with the current split government in Richmond, that’s stood her well.
There is the little matter of actually adopting a biennial state budget before legislators can close the book on 2023, but it’ll get there.
As for Howell, we’ll be sorry to see her go, but she’s earned the opportunity to try some new things in the next phase of life.
