Sorensen report.

Man, nothing wears me down like a Sorensen weekend. Twenty four hours — 3pm Friday until 3pm Saturday — with more packed into that time than damned near anything else a body can do. Not only do we have a good number of speakers, activities and discussions, but my fellow fellows are just amazing. Frankly, I’m not altogether sure how I got accepted, given the caliber of my peers.

Just look at these bios. Kenny Golden, one-time candidate for Lieutenant Governor (for this election cycle) and Navy badass. Lou Arnatt, Assistant Secretary of the Commonwealth. Dyana Mason, executive director of Equality Virginia. Edward Mullen, Governor Warner’s right-hand man. And the folks without first-blush amazing resume items are all remarkable in fascinating ways. Casey Peters, high wire flying extraordinaire. Linda Crandell, Democratic nominee for the 99th District House of Delegates seat, on the Northern Neck. Everybody’s got at least one remarkable attribute.

Anyhow, yeah, I just got back from that. Last night, Larry Sabato spoke about Virginia’s primaries, November elections, and our potential role in national elections in 2008. Though I disagree with him about a great deal, he’s the professional pundit and I’m not and, more important, I appreciate the perspective. Afterwards, we all headed out to the Buddhist Biker Bar. I headed home a bit before 1am so I could get five hours of sleep before returning.

Today, we had two guests speak on the topic of education. Neither was particularly engaging, and many of us got the sense that the content could have been presented in a considerably more compact format. To be fair, though, the room we were in at UVa was stiflingly hot and humid, which made us all a little short on patience. Interestingly, we had a joint session today — it was those of us in the Political Leaders Program as well as those in the College Leaders Program. The CLP kids are in an intensive, month-long program. They live at UVa, have class seven days a week for 10-12 hours each day with a half-day on Sunday. They really pack it in. The mix of the two programs was good — it was nice to see some familiar faces from Virginia Tech (Toby Quaranta of the Young Democrats, most notably).

After a great lunch, we reconvened for an afternoon session on the topic of communication, with an emphasis on public speaking. We took an assessment to come up with a number ranking how comfortable that we are speaking, whether one-on-one, in meetings, small groups, or in front of large audiences. A “normal” score is something like 60-70. People who rank 70+ are uneasy speaking. People who rank from 50-60 are uncommonly comfortable. I scored a 41. (I chose not to volunteer this information to the class. I’m not sure what that says about my score.)

Now that we’re a few months into the program, I’ve found that the relationships with other fellows have become particularly important. We’re all quite comfortable with each other, party lines have become largely irrelevant, and I certainly get the sense that we’re all being very frank with one another about where we’re at in life, what our aspirations are, etc.

Having gotten to know some of the folks in the 2004 Sorensen class, too, I feel pretty good about the political future of Virginia, if just a fraction of these folks end up in positions of power. While what many of them could do on their own is impressive, what Sorensen alumni could do working together in the Virginia government will surely be even more impressive. If a Republican Delegate asks me to support a bill that he’s working on, I might, as a Democrat think twice. “Is this a trap?” “What if it bites me in the ass?” “What’s the catch?” But if Jeff Ahn or Rick Claybrook or Mary Loose DeViney or Cyn Romero asked me to support a bill of theirs, well, sure, I’d do that. That is, I’d like to think, not because of a fraternal bond or the fact that we’re increasingly well acquainted, but because of the trust that Sorensen Institute fellows should all feel that we can place in one another by virtue of our training and presumed dedication to commonwealth over party and results over politics.

Check back with me in 15 years.