Political Life in Virginia

On November 4, Virginians will make history as we elect a woman to serve as the state’s governor for the first time. Political life in Virginia has undergone many changes since the English settled at Jamestown in 1607. These changes have often involved debates about who could vote and who could not. The enlargement of the franchise—the right to vote—from an exclusive group of white, male landowners to almost all Virginians over the age of eighteen reflects the changes that have affected the lives of Virginians since the founding of the colony. Being excluded from voting has not always meant being without a voice in politics, and Virginians who lacked the vote often influenced the course of politics in other ways. They made speeches, wrote pamphlets, published books, took part in parades, petitioned the General Assembly, and even engaged in riots. The gradual enlargement of the franchise is a hallmark of Virginia’s political history.

Two political cultures existed side by side in Virginia in 1607: the Powhatan chiefdom and the English colony. For both, the art of government, or politics, existed under the overall authority of a single person. For the Indigenous peoples in the eastern region, the paramount chief, known as Powhatan, ruled over a territory consisting of allied tribes, each with its own local ruler, and towns. All were subordinate to his ultimate authority through custom and payment of tribute. The Powhatan chiefdom disintegrated later in the century, although Pamunkey chief Cockacoeske reunited several tribes under her control for a period.

For the English colonists, the king in England authorized his agents to govern in accordance with the laws of the kingdom and the charter of the corporation, the Virginia Company of London, that financed the settlement. From the establishment of the General Assembly in 1619 to becoming a royal colony in 1624, English political practices evolved into the distinctive political culture of Virginia. Ultimate authority rested with the Crown until 1776, but royal governors acting on behalf of the Crown shared responsibility with locally elected representatives of the colony’s population, the House of Burgesses, as well as the councilors chosen by the governor, who together formed the General Assembly and who enacted laws to govern the colony.

During the middle of the 17th century, royal governor Sir William Berkeley allowed the General Assembly to develop into a mature parliamentary body—one that legislated in the interests of the great planter families who dominated Virginia politics. While serving as governor of Virginia longer than any other man (1642–1652 and 1660–1677), Berkeley advocated economic diversification, discouraged religious persecution, and promoted trade between the colonists and Virginia’s Indigenous Peoples. Although Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 almost destroyed Berkeley’s legacy, the propertied white male political culture that Berkeley helped create survived for almost two centuries.

Only adult white men who owned property and a few who rented substantial farms were permitted to vote for representatives in the lower house of the General Assembly.

The only elected officials in colonial Virginia were the members of the House of Burgesses. Even though only a minority of the population was eligible to vote and an even smaller minority—the prosperous and better-educated men—was represented in the General Assembly, politics was always a public event. On election days, many Virginians congregated to watch the voting, which was done viva voce—announced out loud by the voter in front of the crowd—and to enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere. Candidates for the Assembly were forbidden by law to influence voters, although bowls of rum punch were often shared among everyone who was present.

The American Revolution broke the legal and political ties between Virginia and Great Britain. The Virginia Constitution of 1776  abolished the royal form of government and created a republic, and ratification of the United States Constitution in 1789 created a cohesive national government and affirmed that ultimate political authority rested with the people. Participation in political life through voting and holding public office in Virginia remained restricted to the minority of adult white property-owning men. Political power was concentrated in the House of Delegates, and the General Assembly elected the governor and all the judges. Local government continued to be dominated by the justices of the peace, who were appointed by the governor. Yet after the Revolution, Virginians from many walks of life took a keen interest in public affairs in the state and in the new nation, and Virginians helped create the first American political party system.

Patrick Henry was the first Virginian to gain fame as a persuasive political orator and is best known for his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech in 1775. His oratorical style helped create a new form of politics in Virginia. Before Henry, candidates for office did not speak directly to the voters; after Henry, candidates for office almost always addressed the voters. Attendance at political rallies became a popular aspect of the democratic political culture, and oratorical ability was often essential for political success. James Madison made perhaps the greatest contributions to American political theory, helping write the first two Virginia Constitutions, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. As a congressman during the formative years of the republic, Madison was the country’s first great legislative leader in creating the new nation. Thomas Jefferson earned a reputation during the American Revolution as a forceful advocate of revolutionary principles, articulated most famously in the Declaration of Independence. Generations of Virginians have taken his words that “all men are created equal” to heart and fought to make a reality of the implied promise that the Declaration applies to everyone.

The gradual democratization of politics during the following decades brought about many more changes. Political parties stimulated a broader participation in public life. Important public questions such as education, temperance, transportation, and slavery became focal points for political debate. Some women took part in shaping public discussion on these and other important issues and thereby influenced the political life of Virginia although they could not vote.

Public participation in political events became a popular activity during the 19th century. That participation gave the population as a whole—including those who could not vote—opportunities to make known their opinions and to influence the course of public events. People who could not vote often attended political rallies, marched in election parades, and by their presence at other public events compelled political leaders to respond to public demands for improved schools, better transportation, or economic relief during hard times. The period from the 1830s to the 1850s was the high point of partisan journalism in the United States, and newspaper editors like Thomas Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer helped both state and national political leaders formulate their policies and sell those policies and candidates to the voters. Over the course of the 19th century, the inauguration of a new governor every fourth year became a large outdoor civic ceremony in which the citizens shared in the installation of their chosen leaders.

Virginia’s wealthy landowners continued to control the General Assembly, but as more people settled in western areas of the state, they employed the Revolutionary-era language of equal liberty to demand more equitable representation in government. It was not until 1851, when Virginia’s third state constitution was adopted, that the property qualification for voting was removed and that the voters—still only adult white men—were permitted to elect the governor, attorney general, judges, and local officials. The new constitution also required the General Assembly to reapportion the districts of the House of Delegates and Senate of Virginia every ten years after 1865. More men could vote, more public offices were filled by elections, and modern political parties evolved in response to local, state, and national events.

The Civil War brought about radical change. The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, enfranchised African American men. In Virginia, Black men first voted on October 22, 1867, in an election to determine whether to hold a convention to write a new constitution as required by Congress and to select delegates to that convention if it was approved. Twenty-four Black men—about half of whom had been enslaved—participated in writing a new state constitution that once again changed political practices in the state.

Among the most important changes were the creation of a new public school system and a reorganization of the local government structure to enable a larger number of elected citizens to participate in governing the counties, towns, and cities of Virginia. The constitution also required that voting be done by ballot instead of by voice, as had been the case before the Civil War.

When voters ratified the new state constitution on July 6, 1869, they also elected 24 Black men to the 138-member House of Delegates and six to the 43-member Senate of Virginia. Through the end of the 19th century, 92 African Americans would be elected to the General Assembly. Almost half of those men, as well as many others, held local offices, such as on city councils or county boards of supervisors, overseers of the poor, road commissioners, and county justices of the peace.

The Black officeholding and Readjuster biracial coalition revived fears of Radical Republican domination of the state. During the closing years of the 19th century, Virginia’s traditional political leaders sought to drive African Americans and the Republican Party out of politics. They succeeded with the Constitution of 1902, which imposed strict and complicated voter registration procedures designed to reduce or eliminate African American men from political life and also to limit the number of poor and uneducated white men who could take part.

During the early years of the 20th century, the Black voting rolls fell from about 147,000 to fewer than 10,000, and both African Americans and Republicans had few opportunities to have a direct impact on Virginia politics.

In the reforming atmosphere of the 1860s, a small number of white Virginians advocated granting the vote to women. In 1870, Anna Whitehead Bodeker, of Richmond, founded the Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association, the first organization in the state to advocate votes for women. It included several notable Radical Republican reformers. On November 7, 1871, Bodeker tried to vote but was refused.

During the early decades of the 20th century, Lila Meade Valentine led a new generation of Virginia women who sought leadership roles in public life. One of the founders of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, she also directed campaigns for improvements in public education and public health. The campaign for women’s voting rights succeeded in 1920 with the adoption of the 19th Amendment, although Virginia’s General Assembly voted against its ratification. Three years later Sarah Lee Fain and Helen Timmons Henderson became the first two women to win election to the General Assembly.

The woman suffrage movement coincided with major national reform movements seeking to improve public education, create public health programs, regulate business and industrial practices, and establish standards to ensure pure food and public water supplies. Public debate on these issues and simultaneous demands for better roads and public services transformed politics in Virginia yet again and brought into the political process people who had not been active participants during the 19th century. Black women participated in many of these reform efforts, although separately from white women. Even though far fewer Black women successfully registered to vote, community leaders and civil rights activists such as Janie Porter Barrett, Ora Brown Stokes, and Maggie L. Walker regularly exhorted Black women and men to exercise their voting rights.

Members of Virginia’s Indian tribes also faced barriers to voting. Although Indigenous Americans were made citizens of the United States in 1924, it was not until 1948 that the Office of Indian Affairs ruled that Indigenous peoples throughout the United States had the right to vote in federal elections. Virginia required tribal members to pay a poll tax until 1954, when the state acknowledged that such taxes violated treaties signed with tribes in the 17th century.

The participation in political activity of increasing numbers of women and, after World War II, of African Americans tied Virginia politics to national politics more closely than ever before. Through such political organizations as the League of Women Voters, which became one of the state’s most influential political organizations, many Virginians campaigned for issues of importance to them and their families. Virginians used both the court system and political organizations such as the NAACP to press for an end to racial segregation and for the abolition of poll taxes and other restrictions on access to the political process.

For much of the century this political process was dominated by Harry Flood Byrd, whose political organization and pay-as-you-go philosophy kept taxes and public spending low, but as a consequence road construction, public education, and public health programs remained below national standards. The dominant Byrd organization collapsed following his death and the disastrous Massive Resistance efforts to obstruct federal court orders in the 1950s and 1960s to desegregate the state’s public schools.

Mills Edwin Godwin was the only modern two-term governor of Virginia, serving as a Democrat (1966–1970) and as a Republican (1974–1978). He had been a leading advocate of Massive Resistance, but during his first term as governor he supported increased taxes and public school improvements. Godwin’s abandonment of the pay-as-you-go philosophy and switching political parties demonstrated how much Virginia politics changed during the 20th century.

By the final decades of the 20th century, political life in Virginia scarcely resembled that of colonial Virginia. Following the abolition of the poll tax in the 1960s, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the lowering of the voting age to 18 in 1970, the number of Virginia voters increased significantly. In 1996 Virginia enacted “motor voter” registration after having unsuccessfully challenged the National Voter Registration Act passed by Congress three years earlier. During this period, the growth of the suburbs and the rapid development of Northern Virginia as a major population center shifted the center of political gravity in Virginia away from the rural areas and old cities to the suburbs. African Americans and women won election to many more local and state offices, and the Republican Party, which had been weak in Virginia since the 1890s, enjoyed unprecedented success.

In 1967, William Ferguson Reid became the first African American elected to the House of Delegates in the 20th century. Two years later Linwood Holton won election as governor of Virginia, the first Republican to hold the office since the 1870s. In 1985, L. Douglas Wilder and Mary Sue Terry were elected lieutenant governor and attorney general, respectively, making them the first African American and woman elected to statewide office in Virginia. Four years later Wilder, who had become the first Black member of the Senate of Virginia in the 20th century, won election as the first African American governor in the United States.

Voting is one of the fundamental ways that Americans participate in politics. In the 21st century, Virginia’s General Assembly has approved legislation to make voting easier, such as expanding early voting, allowing same-day voter registration, and requiring mail-ballot drop boxes. The Virginia Voting Rights Act passed in 2021 requires local election officials to get approval from the state attorney general before making changes to how elections are conducted and allows voters to sue local government officials suspected of suppressing voter turnout.

However, Virginia still restricts voting in certain ways. It is one of only three states whose constitution permanently disfranchises citizens with felony convictions unless the governor restores an individual’s voting rights, a policy that dates to 19th-century efforts to suppress the Black vote.

As Virginia moves towards electing its first female governor, other notable elections have occurred in recent years. In 2020, Eileen Filler-Corn became the first woman and Jewish person to serve as Speaker of the House of Delegates. Winsome Earle-Sears won election as lieutenant governor in 2021, making her the first woman to hold that position and the first Black woman to hold statewide office in Virginia.

In 2023 Jennifer McClellan was elected as the first Black woman elected to Congress from the state, and the following year Don Scott became the first African American Speaker of the House of Delegates in the General Assembly’s 400-year history.

-Mari Julienne and John Deal