"For those who wanted a quick lesson in why powerful Virginia state legislators almost never get elected attorney general, lieutenant governor or governor, watching Speaker of the House of Delegates Vance Wilkins's futile effort to avoid resigning his post was the political equivalent of a laboratory experiment.

Legislative politics and statewide elective politics, normally separate worlds, collided as the sexual harassment controversy involving Wilkins moved into the court of public opinion last week.

As is typical of powerful legislative politicians, the speaker believed his fate was in the hands of his fellow legislators, much the way he viewed the fate of legislation debated during General Assembly sessions. In Wilkins's world, the public's role in legislative politics was something to be tolerated but was rarely decisive. So, naturally, his immediate response to the sexual harassment charges was to stonewall, figuring his fate would be decided by his fellow Republican legislators meeting in private.

Of course, he was wrong. Once the sexual harassment issue hit the front page, public opinion decided his fate. Members of the public cared nothing about Wilkins's powerful legislative position. To them, he was just another politician facing troubling accusations. Wilkins might have been able to make or break the career of a legislator or legislation with a furrow of the brow, but the most powerful Republican in state government -- a man who once saw himself as a co-governor with Mark Warner -- was unprepared for the wrath of the average citizen who wasn't beholden to powerful Richmond lobbyists.

Yet, true to form, Wilkins did not seem to understand this. He didn't see that if he stayed on as speaker, the GOP would be in political trouble in next year's 2003 statewide elections and that the party's image would be badly hurt for the 2005 statewide election for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Still, his myopia was not unusual in a powerful legislator. My own party likewise failed in the past to understand the difference between legislative and statewide elective politics. This is the major reason Democratic legislators, long in the majority, fell so far so fast in the past few years. Many powerful Democratic state legislators failed to even get their party's nomination for statewide office, losing to either unknowns or junior legislators. The only exception: former state senator Doug Wilder, who was given no chance of winning the governorship by his own General Assembly members or by the political pundits.

This dueling dynamic also helps explain landslide losses for governor in 1993 and 1997, as Democratic gubernatorial candidates echoed the politics of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly. Indeed, in 2001, for the first time in Virginia history, all three winners in the statewide elections had no legislative experience, and all three losers were either former or current lawmakers.

Vance Wilkins was a skillful state legislator, perhaps the most capable Republican in terms of General Assembly politics of any in Virginia history. But once he stepped into the realm where statewide elective politics rule, his fate, however cruel and unfathomable to him, passed out of his hands." (Paul Goldman, The Washington Post, June 16, 2002).