Roanoke Times contributor Dwayne Yancey asks “what’s Ward Armstrong running for?” It’s a sensible question, as during the last General Assembly session, there was plenty of speculation that the House minority leader was positioning himself to run for either the lieutenant governor or governor in 2013. It even gave House Speaker Bill Howell the opportunity to poke fun at Armstrong on the House floor.
Armstrong may be an interesting candidate for property rights supporters. During the last session, he carried legislation that would have allowed property owners to present evidence in court for damages resulting from changed access to a property. Great stuff. Such evidence is inadmissible under current law. His measure was opposed by VDOT, as well as a host of local government lobbyists. But even in defeat, Armstrong gained some stature on the right (Armstrong even joked that he was bucking for the conservative Family Foundation’s legislator of the year award).
He’s also picked a few fights with high-profile Republicans, including Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, both over the AG’s controversial donations from a suspect Navy veterans group (which Cuccinelli has since donated to veterans’ charities) and over his refusal to join the amicus brief of 48 other attorneys general in the Snyder v. Phelps Supreme Court case (Armstrong was unaware, at the time, that neither of the state’s U.S. Senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, had yet signed onto a similar brief from other Senators. They promptly did once their oversight was exposed).
But since then, Armstrong has been relatively quiet on the statewide scene. Could he still nurse higher ambitions? Of course. But one has to go back quite far in Virginia’s history to find a state legislator making the leap to the Governor’s Mansion (John Battle was the last to do so…in 1949). So if Armstrong does have the statewide bug, he might set his sights on lieutenant governor or attorney general – the latter office, in particular, has been a favorite launching pad for gubernatorial candidates.
Why talk about this now? Well, with redistricting looming large in the next legislative session, and the lines in southside Virginia (Armstrong is from Henry County) likely to change substantially to reflect population shifts to the state’s urban crescent, it’s not out of the question that Armstrong might cast his eyes statewide rather than have to contend with a district that might not be as friendly to him as it is now.
And considering the time and financial demands of running statewide, the sooner Armstrong gets underway, the better positioned he will be to run a credible campaign.
