RICHMOND — Virginia’s top legislative leaders are often the two most colorful commentators on the Senate floor, but Tuesday’s session took it to a new level.
During debate on whether to drug test welfare recipients, Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, insisted the state would become the laughing stock of late-night TV if the bill passed. Florida took a lot of heat when it approved a similar measure.
“I would hope that we would not want to set ourselves to be ridiculed by either Jon Stewart or [Stephen] Colbert or [Jay] Leno or [David] Letterman or any of that crap,” Saslaw said.
The bill eventually passed 21-20 on a party-line vote with Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, the Senate’s presiding officer and a Republican, breaking the tie.
But Saslaw’s counterpart across the aisle, Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City, was not to be outdone. Norment asked the Senate to delay a vote on whether to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He then suggested that Sen. Janet Howell, D-Reston, was among the bra-burning feminists who first championed the ERA 40 years ago.
“I was asked by the senior senator from Fairfax [Saslaw] why we were [delaying] this and I commented to his seatmate [Howell], who I recall was an activist back during her college years, is that she still needs some more time to gather up some lingerie to burn and protest on this,” Norment said.
The Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress 40 years ago but never reached the 38-state ratification threshold to take affect. The Senate voted to make Virginia the 36th state to ratify the constitutional amendment.
Norment later admitted the remark could have been construed as inappropriate and apologized for it on the Senate floor.
