Politicians really aren’t as bad as their opponents’ TV ads make them out to be, but you couldn’t prove it by the ads.

Virginians who pay attention to politics are not likely to be disappointed this year if they like competitive elections.

What happens when news coverage of campaigns and state and local governments starts to dry up?

At the 60-year-old social event attended by many statewide hopefuls and activists of all stripes, candidates are expected to reach out and speak lightly, offer a glimpse of their personality and save the toughest red-meat rhetoric for more partisan crowds.

Virginia, once the mother of presidents, is now the proud parent of a boatload of political figures who insist there is “no higher honor” than serving as governor.
Virginia also is the only state remaining with a one-term-and-gone governorship, perhaps to en-courage the long line of would-be governors who seek to occupy the two statewide governor-in-waiting positions.

Cleaning out a desk after 31 years, OK, four desks really, but this one is quite the messiest, yields nice little nuggets of what made yesterday’s news a few years back, having escaped the fleeting flirtation of an editor’s knife and the lure of the landfill.

“Opportunity Time, a Memoir by Gov. Linwood Holton” tackles the difficulties he and others encountered trying to win statewide office in the 1960s South for those like him who opposed segregation.

Becoming a victim of one of the nation’s fastest-growing crimes - identity theft - can be a pain.

No one has coined a really good name for the recently concluded and not-yet-missed 2008 General Assembly session.

U.S. Sen. George Allen, R-Fairfax County, first won in a nail-biter and finally lost 24 years later in a nail-biter.