In case you didn't see this from Sen. Cuccinelli.
Dear Fellow Republicans,
While it may not come as a surprise, it was nevertheless shocking.
About an hour ago, I requested that the Lt. Governor, Tim Kaine, the presiding officer in the Senate, find that Senator Russ Potts had left the Republican Party. This would have been a ruling under Senate Rule 20(a), and Senator Potts would have lost all of his committee assignments as a result.
However, in a desperate attempt to avoid making a ruling, Kaine held that the Virginia Constitution doesn't allow us to consider such "business" as enforcing our own rules during the veto session!
Tim wants to be the leader of the Commonwealth and yet he abandoned the simple leadership obligation of making a ruling as President of the Senate. How's that for leadership?
Naturally, I appealed his ruling to the full Senate. With Senator Potts recusing himself from the vote, and only 37 total Senators present, we only needed 18 votes to prevail. Unfortunately, only 9 Republicans voted to reject Tim Kaine's ruling protecting Russ Potts.
The 8 joining me were Bill Bolling, Jay O'Brien, Brandon Bell, Nick Rerras, Mark Obenshain, Frank Ruff, Steve Martin and Steve Newman.
Some of the Potts/Kaine votes came from Republican Senators that have been publicly professing their intention to take strong action on this issue, and yet when the time came to vote, sadly, they were not with us.
To me, attempting to enforce Senate Rule 20(a) was a simple act of keeping faith with the GOP grassroots. Unfortunately, many others did not agree with my effort, as evidenced by the vote.
On your behalf, I tried. I'm sorry that I did not succeed. But I'll keep fighting for you.
Sincerely,
Senator Ken Cuccinelli