They say past is prologue. Let’s hope so in this fall’s election for Virginia attorney general. In a state of so many founders that advanced the cause of individual liberty, religious freedom and the rule of law, Republican John Adams is running for attorney general on a record and platform that fully embraces this cause. Not only does Virginia’s John Adams share the Massachusetts founder’s name and principles, but he’s actually related to Presidents John and John Quincy Adams.
The original John Adams talked famously of “a government of laws, and not of men,” and his son John Quincy remarked that nipping “the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.” If both were alive today, they would undoubtedly point to the Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring as example of arbitrary power and a government of men, not laws.
Virginia’s John Adams certainly is in his race against Herring.
First, however, it’s important to point out that Virginia John Adams is more than a name or bloodline. Much more. He’s a Virginian of great accomplishment, Born and raised in Chesterfield County, he attended local public schools before graduating with distinction (economics) from the Virginia Military Institute. At that time, he received his commission as on officer in the U.S. Navy. When his service there ended, Adams attended the University of Virginia School of Law on the GI Bill. Honors followed. He was managing editor the Virginia Law Review earned clerkships on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He then worked as an Associate White House Counsel for President George W. Bush, while living in Arlington and starting his family with his Chesterfield born-and bread wife, Lisa. They moved back to Richmond after John’s White House years. He led a team of more than 50 lawyers in the United States and abroad, and the Adams’…
