There's a mantra here in the Cheap Seats that gets repeated often during this time of year, particularly when covering congressional races. It's short, and simple and speaks to what the ultimate goal of any political reporter should be.

"Be your own man." Pithy, isn't it?

This fantastic bit of wisdom was given to me by my father, an East Tennessee tobacco farmer and welder, in lieu of the traditional middle school speech about bridges and friends and everyone jumping.

While I can't recall exactly what dangerous or stupid fad or trend I was heading for that prompted this statement, I will always remember the moment he looked down at me and said, "Son, be your own man." And then we went back to work in the tobacco patch.

Congressional campaigns are marvelous things. They're federal races with national impact -- win enough seats in Congress and you're driving a $3 trillion budget with the power to make war. Not a bad prize. But it all comes down to what are essentially local elections.

Reporters who cover these races know the players. Congressional campaigns are smallish things, made up of a few key staffers and a handful of volunteers. And when you're in a smallish media market, you get to know all of them.

Thus begins the verbal judo, the "he said, she said" of day to day message control. Campaign staffers feign indignity at the previous day's story, while trying to use mental and emotional kung-fu to connect the voters with the message they want conveyed for free in tomorrow's paper.

Sorting it all out and putting the news, not the spin, before the readers takes a certain amount of anti-social behavior -- you're going to make someone very, very angry, even if it is just until Nov. 4.

So when you read our congressional coverage, know that what you're seeing is the end result of an emotional and logical joust between candidate and reporter, candidate and candidate, all in an effort to impress the final arbiter of it all, you, the voter.

In the end, that what every reporter should strive for, regardless of how many staffers, candidates and members of the party faithful we leave seething in our wake.

"Be your own man."

Thanks, Dad.

That's what it looks like here in the Cheap Seats, at least.

Some things are expected when you make a living covering politics: Congressional candidates blasting e-mails and faxes looking for coverage, statewide candidates swooping in to the Lee-Jackson Banquet Room every so often to either make inroads or shore up their base in the Shenandoah Valley.

But weirdness is also part of the job: statewide politicians just "dropping by to talk" in Strasburg, the odd letter with no return address alleging that a sitting member of Congress is has been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan or finding a $500 donation from an ESPN sportscaster to a state-level candidate.

Chalk this last week up into the "weirdness" category. With Virginia in play for the first time since LBJ, national campaigns are peppering local media outlets with contacts, press conferences, press releases, videos and radio actualities like they're running for governor, rather than president.

My McCain-Obama e-mail vault is quickly starting to look like my Kaine-Kilgore archive from 2005, except with many more YouTube videos.

But there is a stark difference -- partisans on both sides are far more passionate, if not angry, than I ever witnessed during the last gubernatorial go-round here in Virginia. And it's not even August yet.

Stay tuned. At the rate we're going now, Barack Obama and John McCain will both swing by Cheap Seats HQ "just to chat" sometime around the World Series.

When I folded up the live blog and boarded Cheap Seats One for Strasburg last night, I was all but certain that I'd be able to log on and see the minutes of the concluded special session when I got home at about 11:30 p.m.

Turns out I was off. By two hours.

Neither the House nor the Senate completed their work until after 1:30 a.m., hammering on issues like a constitutional "lock box" for transportation trust fund dollars, offshore oil drilling and HB 6055, the somewhat infamous "Son of HB 3202."

HB 6055 had been the source of a great deal of heartburn on the GOP side of the aisle. A number of anti-tax legislators said they had serious problems with raising  taxes -- even if they were just in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads -- during an economic downturn.

But delegates from those two regions were anxious to re-start some sort of regional funding mechanism after the Virginia Supreme Court in February struck down those provisions of House Bill 3202. In the end, the GOP settled on a funding mechanism that didn't require a tax increase.

The measure was scuttled in the Senate, but in this instance, that's immaterial. For the first time since the great tax fight of 2004, the GOP caucus held together in the face of pressure from a Senate and governor calling for tax increases.

While the policy implications of the GOP's new-found unity are debatable, the political landscape appears to have changed markedly, at least from where I'm sitting.

The strategy pioneered by Democratic Gov. Mark Warner -- peel off just enough Republicans to pass the bill, then let a disaffected base take it out on the party at the ballot box -- didn't work. Nor did regional divisions in the GOP lead to a bi-partisan tax increase.
 
Couple that with the unity in the Senate's Republican ranks forged by their losses in November 2007, and the complexion of Capitol Square is different today, indeed.

Cheap Seats One is loaded and ready for the trip to Richmond. Now you can participate without having to make the three-hour slog from Strasburg to Capitol Square... join us here for a live blog of the days events.

We're packing up the cooler and preparing to close down the Cheap Seats for a long weekend of grilling, swimming and fireworks, possibly all at the same time.

Independence Day is one of the few times it's safe for a Virginia political reporter to stop paying attention for a few hours. Politicians in Richmond and Washington almost always run for the exits, and campaigns slow to a snail's pace as voters generally stop caring about candidates for a day or so. Barbecue and beaches make health care policy and tax rates take a back seat.

But for someone who spends their days watching and reporting on the political process, the Fourth of July is truly a remarkable holiday.

Maybe it's just reflective of the fact that I grew up in the hills and hollers of East Tennessee, but Richmond and Washington never cease to impress me.

For most of my life, the biggest building I encountered was a 12-story hospital in Johnson City, a sprawling metropolis of about 50,000 at the time. To walk the halls of Thomas Jefferson's Capitol and stand on the South Portico of his Temple on the Hill is truly an awe-inspiring experience. So much more so in D.C.

From here in the Cheap Seats, though, it's hard not to be even more impressed with the fact that the voters have total and complete control over who occupies the seats of power in those monuments. Later this year, the American people can quietly and peacefully walk to the ballot box and, if they so choose, fire almost every one of our elected leaders at once. (Yes, I know we only elect one-third of the Senate at a time, but I've got a theme going here, so work with me.)

Politicians who lose elections in our country may occasionally appeal to the courts, but they don't rally militias, nor do they refuse to leave their office once all is said and done.  One only look at the recent tumult in Zimbabwe to realize that the trappings of democracy do not always a democracy make.

So as we of the Cheap Seats prepare a burnt offering of chicken on a stick, various adult beverages and some gunpowder, we'll also be thinking about the American Revolution -- and the peaceful revolution that has happened every Election Day since then.

I really can't say anything about this link without ruining it for you. All I can do is tell you the title: Pork Invaders.

Sometimes the confluence of the Internet and politics can create strange, strange things.

Hat tip: Bearing Drift.

For better or worse, Virginia has a divided government. That means anything that gets done happens because Republicans and Democrats agree on it.

But as what could well be the final act of the 2008 Transportation Special Session approaches, Democrats appear to be very much in the drivers seat when it comes to the issue of raising taxes for transportation.

Sen. Dick Saslaw, D-Springfield, is the author of the only revenue bill to pass either chamber, Senate Bill 6009. His bill would raise $1 billion or so a year by raising the gas tax by 1 cent per year over six years. It would also raise the general sales tax by 0.25 percent and lower the food tax by 0.5 percent.

That puts Saslaw is in the driver's seat for Democratic plans. Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's $1 billion per year plan was never introduced in the Senate and was summarily executed in a House committee.

That would normally be the fate of a gas-tax hike in the GOP-lead House, but GOP leaders have apparently grown tired of being labeled as obstructionists, and passed the bill on to the floor for an up or down vote, likely on either July 9 or 10.

Democrats in the House would need to peel off only six GOP votes to pass the measure, provided their caucus held together as solidly as their Senate counterparts did. And there are enough Republicans in Democratic trending districts in Northern Virginia to make any nose counts interesting.

A number of GOP delegates have said quietly that there could well be enough defections to push it SB 6009 over the top. But that depends on Democrats holding their 45 members in line to vote for a gas tax hike when gas is more than $4 per gallon.

Ben Tribbett's breakdowns of all 100 House districts here and here are a good place to see where members on both sides might get wobbly.

If the Democrats were to hold their caucus together and find the GOP support they need, the fight moves back into Kaine's front yard. With no bill in the Senate and a House version executed in committee, the governor hasn't had much official legislative input into the bills that are rattling around the square.

That could change quickly, though.

Kaine could amend SB 6009 to fit his own plan, most likely by sending down an "amendment in the form of a substitute," a relatively common practice. Kaine used the same procedure to make changes to last year's House Bill 3202. But there is a limit on how much "amending" can be done. If a majority of members in either House find that a package of amendments is not "specific and severable," they can disregard them and send back the original bill.

A re-write by Kaine would move the fight back to the Senate, where the Democratic majority would have to choose whose vision they wanted to implement -- Kaine's or Saslaw's. That could be an uncomfortable vote for Democrats, indeed.

Next week is going to be interesting.