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Spotsylvania state Sen. Edd Houck and White Stone Del. Albert Pollard display the type of political independence that our politics could use more of. Date published: 10/31/2003
AMERICA--the nation and its parts--suffers mightily from "constellation politics." Just as by a star or two the sky watcher can surmise every twinkling world in Orion or Taurus, so by a position or two the citizen often can predict a politician's views on every issue. The practical result of this linkage is partisan warfare on all fronts and the overbittering of political life. Thus, voters generally should favor candidates whose stars shoot into unexpected directions. On Tuesday that would be Democrats Edd Houck and Albert Pollard. As it happens, Sen. Houck of Spotsylvania and Del. Pollard of White Stone are the only two candidates for state office in the region with serious competition. (Del. Mark Cole of Spotsylvania, a conservative Republican in a district of the same persuasion, should win in a walk.) Mr. Houck, a 20-year Senate veteran, faces the hurdle of a GOP redistricting plan that made him a stranger to one of every three voters in reconfigured Senate District 17. Mr. Pollard, mean-while, surprised the experts by winning, in a Republican year (1999), the seat for House District 99. However, given the district's leanings--Mr. Pollard is just the third Democrat since the 1970s whom the 99th has anointed for state or national office--he can never set his re-election campaign on cruise control. While Mr. Houck is no closet Republican--he believes in the power of government to make life better for the mass of citizens, and he has used his position to boost both the public schools and, locally, Mary Washington College--he is off the Democratic reservation in several areas. Although sensibly advocating, along with GOP Sen. John Chichester of Stafford County, a freeze on the phaseout of the car tax until Virginia's economy rebounds, he broke with Democratic Gov. Mark Warner to vote to repeal the estate tax--a patently unfair levy on the already-taxed assets of the dead.
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