In Virginia, Speakers of the House have a lot of power in the way they steer bills to particular committees, and the way bills they don’t like can land before one of the gatekeeping subcommittees that meet at 7:30 a.m., according to Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.“You ignore your 10 extremists and just govern,” just as former Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, did when he had super- and near-super majorities, Farnsworth said.
