Editing Virgil Goode (section)

==Virginia Senate==
Goode grew up as a Democrat.<ref name="Hull">{{cite news| title=Delegate Hull's Richmond Report | author=Bob Hull, Virginia House of Delegates | date=December 28, 2006 | url= http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=672&Itemid=34| publisher= Falls Church News-Press}} Retrieved on December 28, 2006</ref> He entered politics soon after graduating from law school. At the age of 27, he won a special election to the state Senate from a Southside district as an independent after the death of the multi-term Democratic incumbent, [[William F. Stone]]. One of Goode's major campaign focuses was advocacy for the [[Equal Rights Amendment]].<ref name="Shear&Craig">{{cite news|title=Goode Has Often Inspired Political Ire|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] | date=December 23, 2006| url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/22/AR2006122201351.html|author=Michael D. Shear And Tim Craig}} Retrieved on December 29, 2006</ref> Soon after being elected, he joined the Democrats.

Goode was very conservative even by Virginia Democratic standards of the time. As such, he wore his party ties very loosely. He supported the tobacco industry, worrying that "his elderly mother would be denied 'the one last pleasure' of smoking a cigarette on her hospital deathbed."<ref name="Shear&Craig"/> Goode ardently defended gun rights while also enthusiastically supporting [[Douglas Wilder|L. Douglas Wilder]], who later became the first elected black governor of Virginia. At the Democratic Party's state political convention in 1985, Goode nominated Wilder for lieutenant governor. However, while governor, Wilder cracked down on gun sales in the state.<ref name="Shear&Craig"/>

After the 1995 elections resulted in a 20–20 split between Democrats and Republicans in the State Senate, Goode seriously considered voting with the Republicans on organizing the chamber. Had he done so, the State Senate would have been under Republican control for the first time since [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] (Republicans ultimately won control outright in 1999). Goode's actions at the time "forced his party to share power with Republican lawmakers in the state legislature," which further upset the Democratic Party.<ref name="Shear&Craig"/>