Lt. gov.: few duties, but steppingstone to higher office?

CAMPAIGN 2009

The part-time job pays $36,321 a year and has only two constitutionally mandated duties.

Virginia’s lieutenant governor presides over the Virginia Senate, breaking tie votes, and must be ready to take over if a governor should resign or die in office.

Yet that short job description hasn’t stopped Republican Bill Bolling or Democrat Jody Wagner from spending millions of dollars to win election to the office.

Virginia’s lieutenant governor plays another important role—gearing up to run for governor. Since 1971, each of Virginia’s lieutenant governors has run for governor, and three have won the top job—Republican John N. Dalton and Democrats Charles S. Robb and L. Douglas Wilder.

Bolling is seeking re-election, having decided 18 months ago not to compete with Bob McDonnell, then Virginia’s attorney general, for the GOP nomination.

Wagner, a Democrat, resigned as the state’s secretary of finance in August 2008 to pursue the office.

As lieutenant governor, Bolling has cast 10 tie-breaking votes, usually taking the more conservative side of an issue. With a closely divided state Senate of 21 Democrats and 19 Republicans, Tuesday’s winner might break ties on several contentious issues.

A proposed budget amendment has been introduced in recent Senate sessions to eliminate state funding for Planned Parenthood. Wagner says she would cast a tie-breaker to kill the amendment. Bolling says he would support the amendment.

Bolling would support a bill to let holders of concealed-weapons permits carry concealed firearms into bars and restaurants. Wagner says she would vote to kill the bill.

Both say they would vote against a bill to raise the gasoline tax.

Wagner and Bolling are wrapping up an at-times bitter campaign that finds Bolling in a lead that appears to be so comfortable that he is warning against complacency.

“I am very pleased with how things are evolving, but we have to work just as hard in the next week as we did over the past 18 months,“ he said in a telephone interview from Fairfax County.

Wagner, in a telephone interview from her office in Virginia Beach, said she, too, was optimistic.

Although the campaigns have focused on Bolling’s alleged absenteeism from advisory commissions and Wagner’s alleged misforecasting of state revenue, both candidates say they have been talking about broader issues.

Bolling’s business has become an issue in the campaign. Wagner says Bolling is a health-care executive. Bolling says he has nothing to do with the health-care industry but is vice president for a company—Riggs, Counselman, Michaels, and Downes—that sells property and casualty insurance.

Wagner was a corporate lawyer before she moved into state politics and government. She now operates a gourmet popcorn shop in Virginia Beach that specializes in caramel corn.

Bolling was born in the coalfields of southeastern West Virginia, where his father was a strip miner. His father belonged to the United Mine Workers union. His mother waited tables. The Bollings lived in a mobile home.

Bolling’s father was a Democrat. But when Democrat John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV ran for governor in 1972 on a platform to abolish strip mining, Bolling, who was 15 at the time, helped run the local campaign office for Republican Arch Moore. Moore defeated Rockefeller, now a U.S. senator, for the governorship.

Bolling became the first member of his family to attend college. He worked his way through the University of Charleston in West Virginia, partly by selling insurance. There, too, he met his wife, Jean Ann.

Out of college, they looked for a place to work and make a home. That brought them to Hanover County in 1981. Bolling had gotten a job with a now-defunct insurance company based in Henrico County.

In 1991, Bolling said, he was sitting with his Hanover friends “grumbling about government.“ He decided that if he wanted to do something about it, he should run for office.

Bolling won the Chickahominy District seat on the Hanover Board of Supervisors in 1991 and soon became board chairman. In 1995, then-Gov. George Allen talked Bolling into running for the state Senate. He won three times before being elected lieutenant governor in 2005.

As a state senator and then lieutenant governor, he gained a reputation as a conservative and affable lawmaker who made few enemies.

Wagner, born in Canton, Ohio, took a different route to the race. She came to Virginia Beach 26 years ago when her physician husband completed his residency there.

“We fell in love with the community,“ she said.

A law graduate of Vanderbilt University, Wagner spent 18 years with the Norfolk law firm Kaufman & Canoles, primarily in the areas of securities, corporate and banking law, and she began to involve herself in community affairs.

Wagner became president of the Jewish Family Service, a social-services agency that serves Hampton Roads. She became a member of the Virginia College Building Authority and was appointed to the board of visitors of Eastern Virginia Medical School.

In 2000, Democrats persuaded her to run for an open seat in the 2nd Congressional District. She lost to Republican Ed Schrock by 7,500 votes out of 188,000 cast.

Then-Gov. Mark R. Warner brought her to Richmond as the state treasurer in 2002. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine appointed her secretary of finance in 2006. She resigned in August 2008 to pursue a bid for the lieutenant governor’s nomination. She defeated Mike Signer in the June 9 Democratic primary.

Wagner says she served in two Democratic administrations that have won awards naming Virginia the best-managed state.

The petite Wagner stood on a stool Oct. 29, when she and Bolling faced off at Roanoke College in their only debate.

Bolling, who is 5-foot-8, made a well-publicized weight-loss commitment in 2006. He stepped on a scale at the downtown Richmond YMCA and saw that he registered 274.5 pounds. He said he wanted to drop 30 pounds.

He says now he has lost 26 pounds and plans to lose more after the election.

Bolling is not above poking fun at his battle of the bulge. On Feb. 25, Virginia legislators honored Pro Football Hall of Fame selection Bruce Smith.

Bolling joked that Smith, a defensive lineman who played at Virginia Tech, was “the sack man” but Bolling is known as “the snack man.“

Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or .