Profile: Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — How Dick Saslaw got to the top of the Virginia Senate's power structure sometimes amazes even Dick Saslaw.

He despises warm and fuzzy.

The leader of the Senate's thin Democratic majority is not given to glad-handing and doesn't suffer fools gladly. He can fix an adversary in a stare as hard and cold as a gun barrel and pelt him with rapid-fire questions.

Minutes later, he can speak evocatively for the needs of autistic children or warmly praise a Republican colleague minutes after a spirited rhetorical clash on the Senate floor.

At 71, after 46 years in the General Assembly, Fairfax County's senior state legislator is both reviled and respected, admired and abhorred, always relevant, always direct, and never taken for granted by friend or foe. He is a self-made millionaire and a perennial force on Capitol Square, an all-star pro in the impersonal contact sport of politics.

"You know, I told somebody one time that there is no one on this planet capable of insulting me," Saslaw said in an interview last week. "It means my hide is so thick I am oblivious to it."

But Saslaw is certainly capable of insulting those who put their aims and beliefs on a collision trajectory with his, and often he does it as subtly as a bulldozer.

Consider his assessment of Virginia's politics should Republican conservatives succeed in taking the majority away from Saslaw's Senate Democrats, who now occupy 22 of the chamber's 40 seats.

"That's easy: we're Alabama. Alabama or Mississippi," he said, ridiculing two Deep South rural states whose conservative laws on immigration and state sovereignty in particular he considers regressive. The only impediment to similar policies in Virginia, he says, has been the Senate, the last Democratic toehold on power in Virginia.

"I mean, look at the bills we've killed," he said, referring to culturally conservative measures that sailed through a Republican House only to be derailed by Democrats before getting to the state's conservative Republican governor, Bob McDonnell.

Among them were bills that would have forced drug screening for welfare recipients; barred undocumented immigrants from Virginia's public colleges; allowed the state to nullify federal laws; repealed Virginia's 20-year-old law allowing only one handgun purchase a month; and established an alternative currency for the state should the Federal Reserve collapse.

Conservatives have chafed at Saslaw, particularly the past four years when Democrats controlled the Senate's committees and dictated where bills are routed.

"There's been a lot of punishment Democrats have inflicted under his leadership," said Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt, a first-term conservative whose frustration with Saslaw and the dominant Democrats came to a boil during the Senate redistricting skirmishes in the spring.

"Until this year, I thought Dick was a pleasant man," Smith said. "They told us that they basically wanted our (GOP conservatives') seats, and were going to figure out a way to take them and we couldn't possibly return."

Despite new districts advantageous to Democrats overall, Republicans are a threat to take out some Democratic incumbents in several high-stakes races. Saslaw, facing a little-known Republican and an independent in his Nov. 8 re-election bid, has raised more than $1.6 million the past four years and, as of Sept. 30, had spent almost $1.5 million, mostly in defense of his Democratic majority.

Saslaw airily dismissed predictions that Republicans, buoyed by Democratic President Barack Obama's low popularity and a grim economy under his watch, will gain the three Democratic seats they need to take an outright majority and control of the Senate's committees.

"Our backs aren't to the wall," he said. "Everybody expects us to go down and I think there are going to be some surprised people on election night."

But if he's wrong, Smith said, "then I think there's going to be some payback somewhere along the way."

Saslaw isn't on his party's left flank.

Virginia FREE, a coalition representing about 500 business owners, corporations and trade groups that issues an annual scorecard rating lawmakers' votes, has Saslaw in the middle of the pack among all senators in its 2011 cumulative business ratings, with two Democrats and 18 Republicans ahead of him, but it ranked him No. 1 in the Senate in terms of effectiveness when he supports legislation that business favors.

"Dick is a strong and capable business guy, so when he's thinking in terms of the budget and what makes sense from a business perspective, he's on point, but sometimes it's hard to maintain his focus," said Sen. Walter A. Stosch, a Henrico accountant who is the Finance Committee's ranking Republican.

For more than 10 years, he's been a leading advocate of new taxes as part of a package of reforms for financing Virginia's chronically underfunded highway system, but he had a handful of moderate Senate Republicans for company until 2007. One of them was John H. Chichester, a business-friendly Republican from Fredericksburg.

In 2004, Saslaw and his caucus joined forces with GOP Senate moderates led by Chichester, then chairman of the budget-writing Finance Committee, to enact budget-balancing fiscal reforms that boosted state taxes by about $1 billion annually.

"Dick would get his back up on certain things, and he didn't hesitate to do that," Chichester said. He would let Saslaw, then in the minority, vent for a bit, lecturing or even haranguing someone arguing for a bill he couldn't abide.

"I'd have to tap on the gavel a little bit, especially if it was a member of the House. He didn't pick on anybody from the Senate," said Chichester, who supports three Democrats in this year's Senate races and one Republican now running as an independent. "When somebody would waltz over from the House with a pot of right-wing marbles and spill them on the floor of the Senate, Dick would have to have his say about it."

He has angered some within his own caucus, too. In a bitter 2003 legislative fight over the reappointment of Judge Verbena Askew amid claims she made unwanted advances to a female subordinate, Saslaw sided with Republicans in voting against her. Black members of his caucus were furious over the African-American jurist's treatment, and Saslaw temporarily gave up his leadership post within the caucus.

Are there times when he has regretted his outbursts? "No more than about twice a day," he said, "and for about 15 seconds each time."

He is who he is, and he's comfortable with it. He still runs several miles a day, even during long, grueling legislative days in the dead of winter in Richmond.

Before Saslaw retired a few years back as owner of a chain of northern Virginia service stations, he was as comfortable there in grease-stained mechanics' coveralls as he is in Richmond in the trim gray business suits and black dress shoes with metal heel taps that are his trademark.

"It's just part of my personality makeup," he said.

___

Bob Lewis has covered Virginia politics and government since 2000.