Bill Bolling may prove Woody Allen’s axiom: “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.“ As a lieutenant governor running for re-election, Bolling may be in the best position of any of his ticket mates to win in November. That’s because the Republican hasn’t given voters a reason to fire him.

Away this week Jeff E. Schapiro’s column on Virginia government and politics will resume next week.

Even before fellow Republicans blew smoke in his face over tougher controls on puffing in public, Bill Howell was reminded that, like Rodney Dangerfield, he sometimes gets no respect. Despite a brief, embarrassing revolt, Howell ultimately steered his feisty and fractious caucus behind restrictions on smoking in restaurants, providing the glib but prickly House speaker and Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine potent talking points for November.

Looking for a quick way into the General Assembly Building? Bring a gun. You don’t have to use it; won’t have to brandish it. If you have a concealed-weapons permit, you can use the equivalent of an express lane—but only on Jan. 19, when the legislature is expected to be overrun by thousands in town for, among other things, the final public hearing on the out-of-whack budget.

Terry McAuliffe doesn’t need the money, but he wants the job. The boisterous multimillionaire national political operative yesterday formally entered the Democratic contest for governor, concluding a five-month campaign strip tease.

A Democratic political strategist is making the race for lieutenant governor and making education the centerpiece of his campaign.

The declining economy is having a trickle-down effect on the Democratic contest for Virginia governor. The three rivals for the party’s nomination—to be decided in an open-to-all-voters primary June 9—said last night that economic recovery is essential to protecting state jobs and services from further cuts. Sen. R. Creigh Deeds of Bath, former Del. Brian J. Moran of Alexandria and former Democratic national chairman Terry McAuliffe of McLean appeared on WVTF-FM’s “Evening Edition.“

Republican legislators are throwing everything but their shoes at Tim Kaine’s budget-balancing plan. It includes a proposal that, depending on your perspective, brings out the best or worst in GOP delegates and senators: new taxes on a favored industry, Big Tobacco. Kaine, who since he was sworn in as governor in 2006 has proposed higher taxes with the frequency of a chain smoker who insists he’s swearing off the habit, gave Republicans—so they believe—an early Christmas present: something to run against in next November’s House and gubernatorial elections.

If it’s not a conspiracy, it sure looks like one. The Big Three of the state Democratic Party—Tim Kaine, Jim Webb and Mark Warner—are signaling separately they’re doing the same thing: nothing, when it comes to the 2009 nomination for governor.

Today would have been Ernest H. “Judge” Williams Jr.‘s 94th birthday. The famed lobbyist, who died in 2003, had a keen appreciation for a bottom-line tenet of his craft: There’s a difference between being friends and being friendly. It’s something to keep in mind as Richmond’s incoming mayor, Dwight Jones, assembles his administration. The heavily perfumed pastor-politician, now a state delegate, is looking to lobbyists on how to do just that.

On Nov. 13, what remains of the House of Delegates Republican majority met—safe from the prying eyes of the press and always-open pocketbooks of lobbyists—at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen for a post-election, pre-General Assembly skull session.