Bolling Alone: A Virginia GOP politician finds himself in an impossible spot
One day in mid-February, Virginia General Assembly Delegate Robert Marshall was at the Richmond offices of the Family Foundation—a conservative Virginia organization—when he happened to spot a fellow GOP politician in the hallway. It was Bill Bolling, Virginia’s lieutenant governor and president of the state Senate. At the time, Marshall was pushing a controversial “personhood” amendment, which would have given legal rights to a fetus starting at conception. Eager to secure Bolling’s support, Marshall and his wife hurried after him. But Bolling seemed bent on beating a hasty retreat. While Marshall was still speaking, Bolling stepped into the elevator, smiled, told the couple it had been nice to see them, and allowed the doors to close. “I never heard from him about it,” Marshall told me.
It might not have been the most polite way to deal with the situation; but, before you judge Bill Bolling, consider that he may have the worst combination of jobs of any semi-obscure, state-level politician in the country—and hard-right conservatives like Marshall aren’t making things any easier.
THE FIRST THING to know about Bolling is that his record is essentially moderate. A paunchy, clean-cut man with severe eyebrows and a light Southern lilt to his voice, Bolling became a state senator in 1995. Though he was reliably pro-life and opposed to gay marriage, Senate colleagues recall that his interests lay elsewhere. He authored a bill (which ultimately stalled) that would have allowed Virginia to distribute almost $500 million in bonds for environmental programs. And he proposed a measure—eventually put into practice by Democratic Governor Mark Warner—that vastly expanded the number of children eligible for a Medicaid-like program.