Analysis: With Joe Morrissey dealt out, will casino chips fall in line for Petersburg?

Among the questions facing us in the run-up to the Jan. 10 start of the Virginia General Assembly:

• Kim will be representing the area in the House of Delegates, but which one?

• Will it be like riding a bike for Lashrecse Aird when she returns to the Capitol after six years at the other end of the building?

• Will no Joe be the go-go for the casino?

We must wait for definite answers on the first two. The last one, however … let’s say for right now, the chances could be far better than 50-50 that Petersburg will get that long sought-after referendum if for no other reason that Joe Morrissey is out of the picture.

The incoming chairperson of the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee – the place where Petersburg’s dreams died the last two sessions – has said as much.

“Joe Morrissey was trying to take the original bill we had and make it his bill,” Sen. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth told The Progress-Index at a Democratic fundraiser last September in Petersburg. “The original bill only has five casinos in it, and we had promised ourselves we were not going to go beyond that five for a period of time.”

Louise Lucas is a person who has made her political bones by pulling no punches in speaking her mind. If you remove the political spin filter from the above sentence, you get the summation that one of the main reasons Petersburg failed on the casino was not because of the message but because of the messenger.

The lead messenger.

“Fighting Joe” Morrissey. A politician with all the subtlety of a charging bull. A politician who overcame personal setbacks – and I use the word “setbacks” even though they would be catastrophes if it were anyone else – to spend time in two places where only a select few have gone over the years in the House of Delegates and the Senate. A man whose perceived attitude about the opposite sex has made him more than his share of enemies among that gender.

That Joe Morrissey.

Speak softly?

When Petersburg announced its legislative laundry list for 2024, the casino was on it, but it was not highlighted, trumpeted or saved until the end of the presentation to accommodate a soundtrack of swelling violins. It was the second item on the list and mentioned in such a matter-of-fact way that if you had not been listening intently, you might have missed it.

Contrast that with two years ago. We were less than one day removed from the 1,500-vote defeat of the Richmond casino referendum when Morrissey shifted into high gear. Looking very much like the Energizer Bunny hooked up to a car battery, Morrissey rallied the troops, drove the narrative, pulled all the strings and led the charge.

In the words of Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s gonna be a bumpy night.”

And it was. Petersburg had no choice but to fall in line.

I need not remind you how that turned out. It was in all the papers. Richmond did not go down without a fight and in the end, it got the do-over it wanted and triumphed.

Except at the November ballot box. Not only did it lose, it lost with more than six of every 10 voters opposing it.

Suddenly, the big wide-open space on Wagner Road – a place that seemed destined to be developed in a non-referendum reliant way (Buc-ee's, perhaps?) – was, dare we say, slotted back in as the landing for Virginia’s fifth casino.

Even though it’s less than two months before 140 legislators invade Richmond for the annual lawmaking lovefest we call the session, we still are far away from determining how Petersburg tiptoes the mine-laden field of lobbying for this cause. But I’m playing my hunch (see where I’m going there with the gambling alliteration?) that the bravado will be dialed way down … as in library-decibel levels … this time around.

Even the casino request iself sounds less than Morrissey-ish in that the referendum would be held in 2025. When Morrissey picked up the ball and ran with it two years ago, the referendum was requested for the end of 2021.

Talk about striking a hot iron.

Petersburg has issued only one statement about the need for the casino referendum, and that came immediately after Tuesday’s unanimous vote for it. There would be no off-the-cuff reactions or statements from Mayor Sam Parham or anyone else on council because the city’s communications department seems adamant that the less said, the better.

Going forward ...

I think this low-key approach will carry over into how the city moves forward with the issue. City government was chastised, and rightfully so, for the cloak-and-dagger plan it followed last time of essentially deciding on every single detail of the proposal through frosted rather than clear glass. Give Richmond and the other four cities originally picked to host casinos credit, because they knew that if they were going to ask their voters to decide, then those voters had every right to be involved in all the front-end decision-making.

Instead of being parents making the decisions for their children and sending them off to bed, those governments were partners with their citizens. It worked – in four of them, at least. That’s still an 80% return on the approach.

Call it lessons learned, humble pie, eating crow, put in place, whatever. I foresee Petersburg’s 2024 path to the casino referendum will be much quieter, less boisterous, with few headline-grabbing comments or actions. Second chances do not come along often, and Petersburg should use this second chance to take a different tack than the Morrissey Method.

We already know that the players at the state government are not as outspoken or polarizing as Morrissey. The thrust-and-parry of the discussions will have a Super-Glued rubber tip on the sharp end of the fencing foils.

Lashrecse Aird and her fellow Democrats really took care of that when she soundly defeated Morrissey in last June’s Democratic primary. Aird has gone on record as saying the people of Petersburg should have the right to vote on whether a casino should come to town.

Even Morrissey nemesis Louise Lucas has softened on Petersburg. She told The Progress-Index that if the Richmond referendum were to fail, “we can look at Petersburg." And this is coming from the senator who at the very last minute in this year’s Senate Finance vote made a substitute motion to kill Petersburg’s casino that ultimately passed.

Already an influential voice in the Senate, her pulpit will be even larger this time around.

Instead of bravado for a casino, I see Petersburg taking more of a George H.W. Bush “kinder, gentler” approach this time around. And in keeping with the Bush theme, the end result could be a complex with far more than “a thousand points of light” attached to it.

When you have a name that so easily rhymes with other words, as in the “Roe, Not Joe” chants that echoed through Democratic primary rallies, I could easily see the mantra that could turn a lot of lawmaker votes in Petersburg’s direction.

“No Joe? Let’s go!”

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: An analysis of Petersburg's casino chances post-Morrissey