A month ago, a trio of ambitous members of the Virginia Legislature, elected just two years ago, led an effort to oust House Democratic Leader Eileen Filler-Corn and House Democratic Caucus Chair Charnielle Herring. They succeeded in removing Leader Filler-Corn, the first woman and first person of Jewish faith ever to serve as Virginia House Speaker, and came close to removing Chair Herring, who served in the most senior position of any African American in the House.
This action doesn’t appear to have been done for ideological reasons — the challengers, Delegates Sally Hudson, Dan Helmer, and Don Scott claim to be progressives, and Leader Filler-Corn as Speaker passed into law more progressive legislation than any Speaker in memory. Rather, it appears that these three legislators did not savor the prospect of waiting longer than two years past their arrival in the House to serve in leadership roles in the House Democratic Caucus.
But beyond the inside-baseball politics of the Virginia House is a much more concerning impact for the Democratic Party nationally. This trio has positioned, as their candidate for House Democratic Leader, Delegate Don Scott, who served seven years in Federal prison on crack cocaine distribution charges.
Little has been written about Delegate Scott’s felony conviction, save for a piece written in 2018 shortly before he first ran for office in the Virginian-Pilot (www.pilotonline.com/...), which has the makings of an sympathetic innoculation piece placed by his publicist.
In reality, much of the hundreds of pages of court materials associated with Don Leonard Scott’s indictment, prosecution, and subsequent plea-bargain has never been released publicly. The 1994 indictment is available online — it shows that Don Scott and two accomplices “willfully, knowingly, and unlawfully did conspire with each other and with other persons, who names are unknown to the Grand Jury, to knowingly and intentionally possess with intent to distribute a Schedule II controlled substance,” crack cocaine. The two-count indictment shows as a penality of 10 years to life in prison.
Don Scott pled guilty to one of these felony counts, and accepted a 7 year prison sentence, so as to avoid the trial on the broader indictments.
This begs the question — what did the Justice Department have on Don Scott to make him plead down to a 7-year felony sentence?
One thing is clear — if Virginia House Democrats don’t find out the answer to this question before electing him as their leader, national Republicans will find that answer soon enough. And Republicans will plaster these facts not only onto every Virginia Democratic legislator, but on the Democratic Party as a whole.
We all want convicted felons to be able to return to society after they have paid their dues. But does this mean that the 48 members of the Virginia House Democratic Caucus should say that Don Scott is the best among them to be their leader? If they say that, what does it say about the rest of them?