Cabo Fish Taco, a popular eatery in the Roanoke and New River valleys, has closed its downtown Roanoke location and begun a search for a new location elsewhere in Roanoke or Salem.
In a statement posted on Facebook, the restaurant said: “Unfortunately, Downtown Roanoke has not been completely able to recover after the pandemic, forcing a lot of local businesses to make heartbreaking decisions.” It also went on to cite “staffing issues,” which we all know have become more acute since the pandemic.
This is but one example of how the COVID-19 pandemic — with its business shutdowns, its stay-at-home orders, its shift to remote work — has altered the shape of American life long after people have ditched their masks.
That’s one of the many reasons why a new book from former state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax County, is so interesting. It’s entitled “Rebel,” a title that works on many levels in this case. Petersen went to Fairfax High School, whose nickname used to be the Rebels. And through much of his time in the legislature — which came to an end with a primary defeat last year — he was a rebel against somebody or something. At first, that was the state’s business establishment, particularly Dominion Energy. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors but donors have no say in news decisions; here’s our policy, but this column is also proof of that.) In later years, he was a rebel against his own party, which is what hastened his political demise. Petersen traces all that, so if nothing else, his book serves as a data point for those studying the Virginia politics of the 21st century — how did an up-and-coming politician once touted as a potential candidate for governor come to be turned away by his own party?
However, much of the book is about how Petersen bucked fellow Democrats by fighting against the restrictions of the pandemic area. Indeed, his 308-page book (published by Independent News Press) is subtitled: “The story of a Democratic state senator who fought against the COVID-19 lockdowns.”
I am not here to pass literary judgment on Petersen’s prose or political judgment on his career. I am here to call attention to his work and to pose a question that we’ll get to shortly. As a journalist who follows Virginia politics, I always find political insights fascinating — Petersen’s are amplified by the fact that they are relatively recent (relatively being, well, a relative term). Political activists from both parties will appreciate this kind of detail: Petersen described how, in his early 20s, he was responsible for organizing the Bill Clinton campaign in Charlottesville. In those days, Virginia Democrats picked their convention delegates through mass meetings, not primaries; and in 1992 Clinton’s big challenger was California Gov. Jerry Brown, who was strong in Charlottesville. “At one point, I had to run out to 7-Eleven to buy juice for a crying baby so the mother would not leave and cost us a vote.” Clinton won Charlottesville by a single vote, so Petersen can claim credit for that.
He describes the frenzy of launching his first (and unsuccessful) campaign for the General Assembly — a special election after an incumbent died — in the pre-social media era of 1996 when there were no tweets, no posts, only hard-copy fliers that had to get printed at Kinko’s. Petersen eventually won a House of Delegates seat in 2001, was out of the House after a failed run for the party’s lieutenant governor nomination in 2005, and then returned to office by winning a state Senate seat in 2007.
Petersen also has behind-the-scenes insights into some of the politicians he dealt with. He describes his freshman orientation in the House when Republican Vance Wilkins of Amherst County was speaker. “What he lacked in size, he made up for in intensity. During the orientation, he informed us that if he found that anybody was trading votes for money, he would personally come up to our office and pull us out of there by our collar — Republican or Democrat. We believed him without reservation. He was terrifying.”
He had less kind words for Eileen Filler-Corn, a Democrat who was speaker in the 2020-2021 session — “a shallow vessel of progressive truisms” who “usually pandered to the loudest voices in the Democratic Party.” Tell us how you really feel, Chap.
One theme running through the book is Petersen’s growing estrangement from his own party — he has more unkind words for fellow Democrats than he does for Republicans. One exception is Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, whom Petersen calls “an effective advocate for western Virginia” as well as “a terrific basketball player” for the General Assembly’s annual charity basketball game. That may strike some today as an odd pairing — Rasoul runs very much in the “progressive” lane while Petersen found himself out of step with Democrats by more and more with Republicans — but remember that Petersen began as a staunch critic of Dominion Energy, something that once endeared him to those on the left before he fell out of favor.
By the time he ran in last year’s Democratic primary — and lost to now-state Sen. Saddam Salim — Petersen was being called a “conservative,” which might be considered a compliment in the rural parts of the state but definitely isn’t in deep blue Northern Virginia. In truth, Petersen is not a conservative. He is one of those people whose positions are hard to categorize. In the book, he describes why he thinks taxing plastic bags is good for protecting the environment, which marks him as both a tree-hugger and a tax-and-spend liberal, while repeatedly decrying “woke” politicians with the frequency of a Fox News contributor. For those who like their politicians in neat pigeonholes, this is confusing. Petersen calls himself an “independent thinker.” He also points out that being an independent thinker is rarely rewarded in politics.
That independent thinking was very much on display in Petersen’s challenge to the state’s COVID-19 restrictions. He filed suit against the state on behalf of a Fredericksburg-area restaurant that was shut down because its hibachi-style grills were not mentioned in the governor’s executive order. He led the charge in the General Assembly to end the state’s mask mandate in schools. And throughout, he railed against the state’s crackdowns with more fervor than I heard from Republicans at the time. To Petersen, many of these restrictions were not based on science, and reflected what he believes is an unconstitutional infringement on civil liberties. He does not discuss the science in his book, only the politics — and let me hasten to add that I’m not a scientist, so am in no position to judge what worked and what didn’t. I’d also gently suggest that most people aren’t scientists, either, and shouldn’t attempt to play one on social media.
On the political front, Petersen is merciless against almost everyone who backed or carried out the restrictions. Then-Gov. Ralph Northam “chose to make himself a dictator. And nobody tried to stop him.” He contends that Northam by that point was more interested in legalizing retail cannabis than thinking about the consequences of his actions that he says effectively put people “under house arrest.”
Again, Petersen doesn’t discuss the science, but says this sets a worrisome precedent that could have consequences beyond a virus.
Petersen faults the American Civil Liberties Union for not challenging the restrictions — “the actual protection of civil liberties was too controversial for their donor base.” He says that judges were “timid” in reacting and that the news media didn’t ask enough questions.. He blames the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for making “a random guess.” He goes after fellow Democrats who he feels were reflexively backing the restrictions. Again, I’m not a scientist so I can’t say whether Petersen is scientifically right or wrong.
And that brings me to my point: Shouldn’t we try to find out? Not whether a former state legislator is right or wrong, but what aspects of our pandemic response worked, and what aspects didn’t. It is bizarre to me that all of it became politicized, but these days everything seems to get politicized. The military, though, puts together after-action reports to review every battle. Shouldn’t there be some kind of formal after-action report here? Ultimately, I’m not interested in what politicians have to say about the science; I’m curious what scientists have to say. I’m surprised that at neither the federal level nor the state level that anyone has empaneled the stereotypical blue-ribbon commission to review every aspect of our COVID response. Did closing schools and shutting down spring sports in spring 2020 do any good? What about the stay-at-home orders? What about masking? What about lots of things? A quick review online turns up lots of studies that suggest masking really did slow the spread of the virus — I’m looking at ones from Stanford and Yale. Those reports, however scientifically sound, don’t carry the moral authority of a formal government commission. (There is a legislative commission in Virginia that has been looking at the state response but it’s composed primarily of legislators.)
I suspect I know why this hasn’t happened: Nobody wants to risk being proven wrong. My guess — and, again, I’m not a scientist — is that the results might come back mixed. Some restrictions worked; some probably didn’t. It would be good to know all this for the sake of history. However, it would be better to know this for the sake of the future — for the next time a pandemic comes around.
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