History
While the Populist call for “more democracy” was gaining strength
throughout most of the nation, Virginia’s ruling Democratic Party was
giving its citizens less democracy. In May 1901, voters elected 100
delegates to a state constitutional convention, 89 of them Democrats. The
new constitution they approved included a poll tax and a literacy test,
both designed to prevent poor whites and blacks from voting. The
delegates did not even submit the new constitution to the voters for
ratification, having it take effect instead “by [their own] proclamation.” In
this context, it is surprising not that Virginia’s Progressives failed to amend
their state constitution to include I&R, but that they even tried.
The Progressives’ hopes for a statewide I&R amendment ran highest in
1914, when state Attorney General John Garland Pollard was elected
president of the newly formed Progressive Democratic League, which
included I&R on its reform agenda. That same year the House of
Delegates approved an I&R amendment by a lopsided 64 to 24 vote, but
the measure died in the senate.
The next serious discussion of a statewide I&R amendment came 50
years later, in 1969, when Norfolk State Senator (and unsuccessful 1977
gubernatorial candidate) Henry Howell and Fairfax delegate Vincent
Callahan proposed it again without success.
In 1980, three northern Virginians - Gwendolyn F. Cody, James W.
Roncaglione, and Harley M. Williams - organized Virginians for Initiative
and Referendum. In 1981, both houses passed a bill adding I&R provisions
to the city charter of Hampton, which were approved by voters of that
city by a greater than three to one margin. Cody won election to the
House of Delegates; I&R endorser Charles Robb became governor. But
Cody was unable to get the statewide L&R bill out of committee, and
Robb did nothing to support it. Prospects dimmed further with the death
of Williams in 1986.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.