Episode 48: What powers does the Virginia governor really have?
Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin campaigned on a raft of culture war issues. But it still takes the General Assembly to pass new laws, and Virginia's State Senate still has a Democratic majority. So what powers does the Virginia governor really have? What can a governor do even without new legislation?
This week, Bold Dominion sits down with a pair of UVA politics professors for a deeper look at these civics questions that are suddenly relevant to Virginia.
Machine-generated transcript:
Nathan Moore 0:00
This is Bold Dominon, an explainer for state politics and changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore. When Democrats talk amongst themselves, they often point out that a strong correlation exists between voter turnout and the election of Democrats. That is, when turnout soft, it means that occasionally voters don't vote and those occasional voters tend to be Democrat. So for them, turnout is key. Or at least that's the way the story usually goes. But it did not go that way. This year in Virginia. Virginia just held statewide elections two weeks ago, and voter turnout was very strong, more than 55%. That's the highest voter turnout for a gubernatorial election in almost three decades in this state. And Republican Glenn Younkin. One young can campaigned on a number of things, but it was culture war issues around schools, and otherwise that motivated a lot of Republican voters. But Youngkin doesn't get to pass laws on his own. That still happens at the General Assembly. Republicans now control the House of Delegates, but Democrats still have a majority in the State Senate. So it gets us wondering, what will Youngkin’s interaction look like with the state legislature? And what can he do on his own? What powers does the Virginia Governor really have?
Andrew Pennock 1:14
You know, governors don't always get to decide what they focus on, as the Coronavirus has shown. And so, you know, there will be other challenges that what kind of regime
Nathan Moore 1:22
that was Andrew Pennock. He's an associate professor of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. We'll hear more from him in the second half of this episode. First, we turn to Justin Kirkland. He's an associate professor of policy and politics at the University of Virginia. Both professors spoke with our producer Catherine Hansen, to give us a breakdown of the powers of Virginia's governor.
Justin Kirkland 1:51
My name is Justin Kirkland. I'm an associate professor of policy and politics at the University of Virginia.
Katherine Hansen 1:56
And what are the powers of the Virginia governorship.
Justin Kirkland 2:00
So the Virginia governorship is a little unusual in the Virginia governor does have strong veto powers that is they can veto legislation that comes from the legislative branch and they have a line item veto, which means they can send specific recommendations back to the legislature. This is a relatively common power in governor's and the President had this power for a short amount of time. And what makes the governor of Virginia a little unusual amongst more institutionally powerful governors is that the Virginia Governor can only serve one term at a time and so that is a unique feature that when a Governor vetoes a bill, there's not like an eight year time horizon for them to negotiate with the legislature. They've got four years two budgets to get things done. And that's the end of things. The Virginia governor also has some considerable budgetary power. Not all governors have the ability to propose a budget first. Oftentimes the first proposed budget comes from the legislature rather than from the governor. But in the state of Virginia. The governor gets to propose a budget that the legislature then debates and then changes. Enter institutionally the governor is also reasonably powerful in that the Virginia State Legislature is a citizen or amateur legislature held by part time legislators rather than a professional legislature, like a place in California, and having a citizen or amateur legislature tends to make the governor stronger because policy typically emerges from professional politicians, rather than from amateurs and amateur legislators have less experience and less time to fight back against a governor that they might disagree with, because they're only in session for 30 to 60 days, every other year. The Virginia governor is also a little unique electorally in the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General are elected independently of the Virginia governor. And so he's not or she's not sort of the head of a unified cabinet, you can have a situation in which the governor and the lieutenant governor and the Attorney General are all different parties. And so they're not all on the same page. And that limits the governor's own executive control over the rest of the executive branch. She's not the head of a unified branch of government, everybody else has their own electoral prospects.
Katherine Hansen 4:05
So you you mentioned the lieutenant governor, and this the power that the governor has over the legislature, but also he serves one term. So how does how is power evenly distributed throughout Virginia state government? Yeah, so
Justin Kirkland 4:21
Virginia's government is a little unusual, and much of it is a relic of colonial legislative rule and colonial governorships. And so the governor is. So I tried to think about these things from a sort of comparative state politics perspective, thinking about Virginia relative to like Maryland, North Carolina and places like that. And the Virginia governor is unique in that he or she wields a lot of authority and power but has a very short time horizon right. So the the budgetary powers in the line item veto powers, make the governor powerful within policy negotiations between himself and the rest of the executive branch or himself. In the legislature, but the timeline on which they have to act is very fast. So the Virginia government has a biannual budget process, they passed a new budget every two years. That means a governor only gets two budgets to get things done. Right. And that's a that's a pretty minimal amount of time.
Katherine Hansen 5:15
So how can a Governor's priorities impact various issues even without new legislation?
Justin Kirkland 5:21
Yeah, so the governors can because they have those sort of proposal and budgetary powers, emphasize areas of administration more than a legislature can so legislatures gotta pass law and then rely on an executive to implement it. So the governor can, you know, increase police presence is by increasing funding for, you know, state police in the in the Commonwealth, or can change, you know, higher education because they can increase proposed to increase funding to universities, all of those proposal powers and all of those abilities to sort of move money around and tell executive agency heads what to do, gives the governor a lot of ability to sort of these are the things that are important to me, these are my priorities, and you don't actually have to wait for the legislature to pass anything to know what those priorities are.
Katherine Hansen 6:09
One particular issue raised on both sides during the campaign was, you know, critical race theory and what we're going to do with our school board, so you know, every county has its own school board, what is Glen Younkin? Or any governor able to do?
Justin Kirkland 6:22
Yeah, so the school board determines a lot of local curriculum. And for most of the 20th century, curriculums were controlled by local boards over time, thanks to a variety of state legislation, and indeed, national legislation like No Child Left Behind. School boards have had decreasing amounts of authority over local curriculum. So a lot of curriculums in the country and indeed, here in Virginia, are at least on paper in the hands of local school boards, but because schools rely so heavily on states for funding rather than just local property taxes, that provides people like Youngkin the ability to manipulate local curriculums, even if the final authority is vested in local school boards. And so it will turn out to be the case that Youngkin has some power to make curriculum changes, not directly, but he can pressure school boards to make changes in the direction that he supports, and threatened to withhold funding from those schools if they don't comply. That's a perfectly common and normal tactic that governors use to deal with school boards across the country. It's really common in Texas, and in North Carolina, the places that I lived before Virginia. So there's nothing untoward about it. It's just a tool that a governor has to make school boards happen. Younkin has also talked a lot about increasing teacher pay. And that is actually said pretty carefully by states, because states fund so much of teacher education, and they spend so much of what school boards are allowed to hire or fire or things like that all that money comes directly from the state. And so that money can actually help bring in teachers of certain types, right or more encouraged teachers of other types.
Katherine Hansen 7:55
So am I correct that the Democrats have a majority in the Senate? 51 to 49? Or is it 52-48?
Justin Kirkland 8:01
I believe that is 51-49.
Katherine Hansen 8:04
so now what now we have a Republican governor, what does this mean for Democrats in the Senate?
Justin Kirkland 8:09
Do you mean in terms of policy negotiations or electoral ...?
Katherine Hansen 8:13
Policy negotiation
Justin Kirkland 8:14
I mean, the governor of Virginia is the primary Policy Center in Virginia, in other states, like Texas, the governor is much weaker, and much of what happens occurs at senatorial discretion rather than gubernatorial discretion. But the Virginia Senate is only in session for anywhere from 30 to 60 days in a particular year. In that amount of time, they have to pass any new legislation that they want to pass, they have to negotiate budgets with the governor, they have to, you know, deal with partisan infighting, they have to approve appointments, they just have a tremendous amount of work to do in 60 days, that gives them very little opportunity to innovate, to come up with new ideas to change things the way that they want, particularly if they are fighting with a governor of the opposing power. Right. And so my guess is that in upcoming negotiations between the Democratic majority in the Senate and the Governor, that the governor will win most of the time, it's also the case that the veto override in Virginia is two thirds of both houses, right. So to override a veto from Youngkin, the Democrats would have to convince a very large number of Republicans to side with them.
Katherine Hansen 9:27
Can you speak to the communication between the federal government in Virginia as governor?
Justin Kirkland 9:32
I mean, I can I can talk about inter level federalism, it tends to be the case that states rely a lot on federal funding for accomplishing a lot of things. And that's not a surprise to anybody, but communication tends to be rather limited. governors and state legislators generally prefer not to look like they're relying on DC for the administration of their state. They prefer to keep an image of not being professional politicians. And it turns out leaning on the federal government for a lot of support and bragging about how you're leaning on the federal government for a lot of support can create a sort of public image that you are what we might think of as a welfare state, a state that can't manage its own finances. And so it tends to be the case that like any kind of communication that happens between governors and the White House, or any appeals for support or help that aren't related to national emergencies are much quieter appeals. Right. So the National Governors Association is actually one of the more powerful lobbying organizations of the federal government in the country that the vast majority of the public has never heard of, right, because they they try to do their work in a very quiet way that very few people will notice. So the governors don't look like they're relying on the federal government for a ton of stuff. Yong Kim doesn't seem like the sort of fellow based on his campaign ads, that's going to have a cozy relationship with Joe Biden. So I would suspect that there's not going to be a lot of harmony between those two groups when they're when it comes to communicating. But Yong Kim will certainly have some allies in Congress and in the Senate.
Katherine Hansen 11:01
This is just, you know, sort of fielding for your opinion, but how do you do you have any predictions for how you know, Youngkin’s governorship is going to differ from Governor Northam? Yeah. So
Justin Kirkland 11:11
I mean, I suspect that so Youngkin is a pretty, pretty right leaning conservative politician, I suspect that he will emphasize things popular things like teacher pay, I suspect he will emphasize cutting a lot of what he might think of his entitlement programs. I think of sort of both McAuliffe and Youngkin as throwbacks to politicians from the early 2000s, and are more likely to sort of live in the practical politics rather than symbolic politics. I suspect the Youngkin's real frustrations with critical race theory as a sort of touchstone were sort of symbolic in nature to rile up voters but that he doesn't actually have a great deal of interest in Richmond telling local school boards what they can and cannot teach. That's, that's a very sort of unconservative position to have that kind of top down, authoritarian approach to what local governments are doing. So I suspect that it'll be sort of less of a cornerstone of his administration than maybe his ads would have led people to believe, I suspect that you'll see a lot more support for growing police presences in a variety of places, and the relationship between communities and law enforcement is strained right now. And Younkin is pretty clearly in the camp of sort of a stronger police presence and a more robust police presence in many places. That's certainly not what North amore McAuliffe would have preferred. So I suspect we'll see some more emphasis on that sort of stuff. And, you know, Virginia is economy has generally been doing well, sort of in spite of COVID or better than other places that are suffering pretty readily from COVID. I imagine he'll try and keep that ship moving the way that it is,
Katherine Hansen 12:59
Has the governor of Virginia become more or less powerful over the state's history.
Justin Kirkland 13:03
So the Virginia governor's institutional powers have existed in a pretty static state since about 1860 1850. I can't remember which whenever was whenever West Virginia broke off. Virginia had to write a new constitution. Since then, the constitutional powers of Virginia have stayed pretty steadily the same. The interesting fact is thing I didn't know until a couple of days ago, when I was doing my homework for this interview, the early colonial assemblies and the early version of the Virginia Legislature elected the governor directly like a parliamentary system as opposed to the sort of presidential style system that we have now and so voted for state legislature, the state legislature got together and they chose the Governor as opposed to directly being elected by the public. In the 1850s and 1860s, a sort of democratic movement, small d democratic movement across the country was encouraging direct elections of executives and so Virginia when they wrote their new constitution as a result of the loss of at West Virginia, moved in that direct election way. Virginia is a sort of state that doesn't muck around and its institutions very much that is the sort of formal powers of government very much. Virginia's governor is generally thought of as sort of middle powerful, right and sort of in the middle of the spectrum of gubernatorial power, and has stayed in that spot for most of Virginia's history post Civil War.
Nathan Moore 14:21
Justin Kirkland is an associate professor of politics and policy at the University of Virginia. Stick around in the second half of this episode, we'll hear more from Professor Andrew pinic. At the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA. You're listening to Bold Dominon mistake politics explainer for changing Virginia. Visit us online at Bold dominon.org. Have a friend who's trying to get into state politics. Well tell him about this show, and then subscribe. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever find podcasts are served up. Hey, and while you're there, go ahead and leave us a five star review. We love those Bold Dominon is a member of the Virginia audio collector From wt JU 91.1 FM, we're online at Virginia audio.org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective from science to wellness, to audio dramas, to music to local politics. Check them out, listen and subscribe all at Virginia audio.org. Earlier in this episode Bold Dominon Producer Catherine Hanson spoke with Justin Kirkland about the powers of the Virginia governor. We now turn to an analysis from Andrew pinic. He's an associate professor of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.
Andrew Pennock 15:36
My name is Andy Pennock. I'm an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.
Katherine Hansen 15:44
What are the duties of the Virginia governor?
Andrew Pennock 15:47
To make appointments, so there's all the Cabinet officials and all the secretary heads. And about one or two layers below them are all appointed personnel as policies, the governor has a lot of purview for who he or she appoints in those positions. The governor, you know, money is how we express our values, both in our personal lives and also in the state budget. And so the budget is put together through those agencies. And the governor has priorities and he or she cares a lot about what those priorities are and wants to make sure that those that the new monies that are available are available toward to really put towards those ends. And that when there are cuts and bad years, which there will be bad economic times, again for the state budget is pretty pretty nice right now. And then in the bad years that those priorities are protected. When the budget legislation comes forth from the House and the Senate, and it comes to the governor's desk, the governor has a line item veto, in which he or she can line item veto any part of the budget which of course can be overridden by the house in the Senate with a two thirds vote. But that's another one of the powers and then the general veto is another power and duty. So the governor wants to be able to think about is this a good law for the Commonwealth is this, you know, aligned with my political priorities. One other powers of course, the power of Executive Order, which we see in a lot of at the federal level, there's also occur at the state level. So you can think about like the governor's mask mandate, you and I are wearing masks here at the University of Virginia, we're doing that on orders from the Governor, us, you know, my kids are doing in public schools as well.
Katherine Hansen 17:13
You mentioned that Virginia governor's are not allowed to serve consecutive terms. How does that affect their work?
Andrew Pennock 17:19
Well, it's pretty interesting. You know, it's a four year cycle. Like many other states, I believe New Hampshire and Vermont are the only two year cycles everyone else is on a four year cycle. Time is moving quickly. You're a lame duck relatively early in the process compared to governors who can have an eight year you know, they'd have to be elected a second time, but they can have an eight year time horizon to begin moving things forward. You can imagine at the federal level where most people are familiar with the President could only serve one term. There's a lot that happens. And one of the things in Virginia that's interesting is that we don't have a vice president that runs on the presidential ticket. We have an independently elected Lieutenant Governor. So the Lieutenant Governor's independently elected in the primary process and then runs in the same party as the governor. In this case, Lieutenant Governor elect winsome Spears is our newly elected first African American woman ever to be elected to a statewide office at the Commonwealth, that Lieutenant governorship is, you know, often that's viewed as a stepping stone to run for governor. So there are lots of other people who want to be governor. And knowing that Governor like will not be governor five years from now, there are lots of people who are competing for those priorities. The other way that I think that the four year cycle is challenging for governors is staff retention, starting at the beginning of year for staff recognize that even if the governor new governors of the same party, that new governor may have a different set of priorities even within the same party. And so they people begin to look around and say, Do I need to hop up to the federal level? Do I need to go to one of the universities or somewhere else in state government that's not appointed. And so we've already seen some of Northam staff have left within the last 18 months, not just since the election. But before that, and that's really challenging to continue to carry out your policy priorities when you've lost key staff who have relationships, knowledge, and have been moving things through for you for a number of years. So it's a real, it's a real challenge to get things moving. And if that power is not with the governor, it's with somebody else, right. And so state legislators who have much more continuity and longevity in state government are empowered by this shorter system.
Katherine Hansen 19:25
So for my understanding, there's a Republican majority in the House and a Democratic majority 5149 in the Senate. What does this mean for a Republican governor?
Andrew Pennock 19:35
Well, on both sides, it means that he's going to have to be able to pull people into the center. He's gonna have to put forward centrist legislation that's going to be able to pull either somebody from the and the Senate side, he's gonna have to bring at least one Democrat over because the tiebreaker goes to Lieutenant Governor like winsome Spears who will be able to both preside over the chamber and cast the tie breaking vote. So if you can bring one sort of Joe mansion ask Senate Republican over then he can advance legislation that empowers the centrist Democrats in a really profound way in the Senate, it will definitely be interesting to see how centrist the legislation that comes out of the house is on any given issue. I think it will be very difficult to move legislation through whether or not you know, centrist I think is the best bet, given the split up between the two houses. But it's going to be very difficult to move things through be that like repealing Virginia's Clean Energy Act from a couple years ago, that really reshaped the way that electricity is purchased and sourced in the Commonwealth, or any of that, you know, the Democrats had a very progressive legislative agenda that they move through controlling all three, both houses and the governorship. They move fast. They put a lot of legislation through and I don't think he's going to be able to roll that back without a majority in both houses.
Katherine Hansen 20:59
What is the role of the lieutenant governor in this process?
Andrew Pennock 21:04
The Senate governor has relatively few roles. The most important is to be the tie breaking vote. And so that means in practice that the Republicans only need to bring one Democrat over instead of two. And the Lieutenant Governor presides over the running of the chamber. They have relatively little ability to influence what happens in the chamber like they don't control which law bills come forward. You know, they don't run the committees are all run by the majority leader. But she will have she will have a vote, she will have a voice. And she also of course has, particularly given who she is will have something of a bully pulpit. I'm not sure bully pulpit is exactly the right word. But she has the ability to command public attention via her being one of the three only elected offices and being the first African American woman or woman of color to be elected to a statewide office. That's going to demand media attention, and it has already been demanded media attention. And so she has a platform for how she wants to use it. So do you think she has maybe more power there than many of the previous lieutenant governor's obviously the lieutenant previously Senate governor was mired with accusations of sexual misconduct. Governor Northam? Listen, Senate Governor previously he was a pretty low key figure effective, low key I don't think anyone would say he was, you know, making a any of the national papers are national networks on a regular basis as a Senate governor, I think when some spirits has the ability to do that, if if she chooses to,
Katherine Hansen 22:33
how is the role of the governorship changed over our state's history?
Andrew Pennock 22:37
Dramatically. As you can imagine, we have a very long history. We've had a number of constitutions. I believe that current constitution dates from the 70s, the single consecutive terms has stuck around. We have a part time legislature that only meets 30 and 45 days and alternate years. And that has a real impact on what kind of lawmaking they're able to do, what kind of information they have, how effective they can be. There when they're gone. The governor's in charge, I think Governor gets to decide the legislature appropriates the money, the governor spends it. And I think, just like the presidency, the advent of modern media has totally transformed what the governor can do. So the governor's communication strategies and ability to reach the populace in a regular way and have conversations about that is totally different. So I think that media outreaches changed a lot as well.
Katherine Hansen 23:27
Can you speak to the communication between the Virginia governor and the federal government?
Andrew Pennock 23:33
I can't a little bit. The governor does have a staff that is devoted to be federal liaisons. It'll be more interesting now because they're cross party, because the governor and the the both statewide senators are Democrats. Governor like John Ken is obviously Republican. And so that coordination, I mentioned those relationships aren't as easy as it would have been for another Democrat. He does have a staff that Governor Younkin will appoint a staff that is lives in DC. And their job is to, you know, I think we're not allowed to call them lobbyists by state law. I think they're liaisons. But essentially, they're it's their job to represent the Commonwealth, and know what's going on. Oh, it's gonna affect us. The governor also is, of course, a part of the National Governors Association and builds relationships with other governors, to lobby, the Congress, in the Biden administration, on what's good for governors, you know, governors want to keep power at the state level to be able to make decisions to have flexibility, you know, they would much rather have a grant that allows them to have discretion on how to spend Medicaid money than to have money that's has a lot of federal restrictions. Republican Governors Association or lobby on Republican issues at the National Governors Association will lobby to for the kind of the good of the states and administrative the ability to be administratively effective in the federal programs that are devolved to the states.
Katherine Hansen 24:56
How does the Virginia governorship differ from other states?
Andrew Pennock 24:59
A different Ask would be how does this administration's governorship differ from the last one? Because the governor has a lot of flexibility to put his or her impromptu or on the way that it's set up. So I think a lot of the practicalities and what Chief of Staff has chosen, we talked about Lieutenant Governor elect winsome Spears public voice, we have not really talked about the governor elect Youngkin’s ability to use the bully pulpit to bring attention to issues that he cares about. And so he also has the ability to do that, as any governor would. I think the big differences are the shorter term, which we've talked about. The line item veto is not ubiquitous. So that's different. And in many other states, we only have three statewide elected offices, the governor, lieutenant governor, Attorney General, I think North Carolina has nine min. So there's a many more voices that the governor has to manage even within his or her own, her own cabinet and other states, some of which are not even of the same party. There's, I think, been a Republican Commissioner of Labor and agriculture in North Carolina for 30 years and the governorship has definitely gone back and forth. So it's a different dynamic to manage as well. So it's different structurally that way as well.
Katherine Hansen 26:10
What do you predict from the first year of Governor elect Youngkin's term?
Andrew Pennock 26:14
On what dimension?
Katherine Hansen 26:17
Speaking to the question of what's going to differ from Governor Northam term?
Andrew Pennock 26:22
I think some of that depends a lot on where does Younkin want to go next. And there's been a lot of rumblings in the national press about while he was able to win this purple state, he was able to do in a way that Republicans are already starting to model for the 2022 election cycle. You know, does he have national ambitions? And I? I don't know the answer to that. And so I think that his agenda, I have every confidence that he has for Virginia and for the things that he ran on and wants to see good for the Virginia citizenry. He may also have national ambitions, those two things are not necessarily in conflict. You know, I suspect a large emphasis on schools, obviously, given the campaign, some business development and taxes, I think particularly in contrast to where the Democrats have been. And you know, I'm curious where he will take other issues. Governor Northam was from the coast is from the coast and created a pseudo cabinet level position on climate change, instituted some, I think, really effective conversations in coastal communities about how to think about adaptation and resilience in the face of the climate challenges coming to Virginia. The Hampton Roads region is one of the 10 most threatened cities by climate change in the world, because of both the sea level rise and the subsidence of the soil. So those are real and important challenges to Virginians. And I'm not sure where in the priority list Governor Younkin will put that. I would say that, you know, governors don't always get to decide what they focus on, as the Coronavirus has shown. And so, you know, there will be other challenges that will come to Virginia, we may have a major hurricane, it could be some sort of other natural disaster or some sort of public health challenge, some sort of budgetary challenge that could profoundly shape what priorities he gets to choose to focus on. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes.
Nathan Moore 28:14
Andrew pinic is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Thanks to him, and also to Justin Kirkland for joining us this week. Also, thanks to our producer Catherine Hanson, who also interviewed these five professors. My name is Nathan Moore, and I'm the host of Bold Dominon. You can find us online at Bold dominon.org Hey, and don't forget to subscribe. It's just a click away.