And what’s not. Not easy, but necessary.

by Gordon C. Morse

All the business about John Reid, the Republican candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor – who did what and why — has made for a strange week.

There’s a sense (a little more than that, actually) that things said, asserted and claimed may suffer from rebuttal.

These would be the same things said, asserted and claimed that a confused collection of commentators swallowed whole.

What I mean is that they went full “hook, line and sinker” — and, wow, why do that?

Does it matter who runs for lieutenant governor? In the long run, yes. You’re giving that person a platform to run for governor.

But will it matter to the outcome this fall? Not likely.

John Reid has long lived by his wits, never borne any public responsibility for anything and, for the sake of holding a part-time job presiding over the Virginia Senate, put his vocal cords to full use over the last seven days. If he’s now caught out for having been creative with the facts, he will end being a hard right-wing, gay candidate for lieutenant governor and that’s all.

The top of the ticket – the race for governor — is the thing and has always been the thing. It drives the election results down-ticket. There have been exceptions. In 1977, Chuck Robb won the race for lieutenant governor, the only Democrat to prevail for statewide office that year, and it laid the basis for a stunning turnaround in Democratic Party fortunes over the next 15 years.

But that was unusual.

We’re presently wrestling with our moral limits. It’s about line-drawing. The line moves always. It seldom sits still and it can often be profoundly difficult to nail down.

Thirty years ago, a Republican state legislator apologized to the Virginia House of Delegates for taking a leak near the James River. He was relaxing in the woods, he said, when “the rushing river had its effect on my bladder.”

As it happened, when he went to relieve himself, the next thing he knew a plainclothes police officer was peering over his shoulder and “struggling to see me.” He was quickly arrested.

The delegate, a Republican, admitted to his House colleagues that it was embarrassing and hence the apology. The police simply let it be known that there had been 186 arrests for sex-related offenses in that particular area in 1995 alone.

Today? Who apologizes for anything anymore? Who even gets embarrassed?

When Gov. Youngkin last week intervened into L’affaire John Reid, he did so on a reasonable basis. The Republican Party, much like the Democratic Party, amounts to a coalition of disparate parts, not all perfectly, harmoniously combined.

Youngkin wished to stem the political damage of Reid having advanced the circulation of photographs that Youngkin took to be morally offensive at a minimum. Reid loudly denies this, but Youngkin clearly believed that Reid’s candidacy could end up being a big problem.

You can argue over how effectively the governor accomplished his objectives, but as the Virginia GOP’s highest elected official, he had a duty to tend to the situation as he perceived it.

By the time of the fall elections, it may not make a difference. Other things, more dramatic, more influential, will likely have happened and current events will have lost relevance.

But the discussion over moral line-drawing will continue.

The 1995 episode is interesting because Robert F. McDonnell – a prominent conservative member of the House of Delegates then — he would be elected governor in 2009 — told The Washington Post that, “There is overwhelming support for [the arrested delegate]. I don’t think any one of us would like to be in that situation . . . [but] all of us are supportive.”

Who stepped out in support of John Reid this week? Former Republican Gov. George Allen.

That’s the libertarian end of the GOP speaking. Libertarian conservatism harnesses the greatest possible economic liberty to the least possible government regulation of social life.

But “least possible” seldom, if ever, translates into none-at-all. The line still has to be drawn somewhere.

The effectiveness and acceptance of such boundaries depend on their alignment with community consensus and broader societal norms, as well as respect for legal and constitutional limits. Communities use these shared moral standards to guide behavior, discourage harmful actions, and foster cooperation.

Two years ago, a central Virginia Democrat, running for a crucial seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates,” as The Washington Post reported at the time, “performed sex acts with her husband for a live online audience and encouraged viewers to pay them with ‘tips’ for specific requests.”

This past week, the Richmond newspaper allocated space to that same Democrat. She’s still upset she lost her race in 2023, identifies with Reid’s predicament and argues that she and others should be able to do private things – whatever they like – and keep them private on the single most powerful public electronic distribution system known in the history of the world.

When Gov. Youngkin got involved in Reid’s bid for statewide office, a Richmond commentator characterized him as a “priggish bully.” I disagree. That’s unfair and it is wrong.

Youngkin’s impulses on this were admirable. Lines have to be drawn and, in his position, Youngkin was doing precisely what you should be doing: He was leading,

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.