Richmond’s politics have long been something of a circus — full of flamboyant characters and elected officials with checkered pasts.
To wit: Joe Morrissey, the brawling, twice-disbarred former commonwealth’s attorney turned state senator who won re-election to the House of Delegates in 2015 while incarcerated in a Henrico jail, a year prior to running — and losing — his bid for Richmond mayor; Sa’ad El-Amin, another disbarred attorney and former City Council member, imprisoned for tax fraud in 2003; Gwen Hedgepeth, who was sentenced to federal prison in 2004 for taking bribes while serving on City Council; longtime Council member Chuck Richardson, who resigned his seat after an arrest for heroin distribution in 1995; and, of course, firebrand Reva Trammell, one of the longest-serving members of the current council, whose personal relations with city police officers often spilled into the public square.
Editorial: In Richmond, a failing bureaucracy was always the point…