Del. Bobby Orrock is a cancer survivor, gospel radio disc jockey, volunteer EMT and retired agriculture teacher.
But there’s one title he won’t have come January, for the first time in almost four decades: elected official.
The 70-year-old Republican, who represents parts of Spotsylvania and Caroline counties, lost a re-election bid last month to Spotsylvania School Board member Nicole Cole, a Democrat.
However, at an open house celebrating Orrock’s 36-year service Thursday, he seemed surprisingly OK with the outcome as he sat and chatted with friends and supporters gathered in a circle of folding chairs.
And — he didn’t rule out a return to public service.
“We’ll talk about that in a year,” Orrock said.
He said that every two years, the decision about whether to run again was one made in consultation with his family and God.
“I said, ‘Well, if God called me to run, then it was either for me to win, or to have a dose of humility,’” Orrock said. “So I guess I got the latter this time around.”
The lawmaker said that the GOP caucus knew early on that President Donald Trump and voters’ dislike of his policies would make it hard for Republicans to get elected or re-elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.
During a House election in Trump’s first term, Republicans lost seats — as they did this year — and at that time, it wasn’t that constituents were voting against their delegates, Orrock said.
“They were voting against the president,” he said.
Another takeaway from this year’s election, he said, is that “polls don’t mean squat.”
“Two weeks out from the election, our polling showed me at 49 [%],” Orrock said, “she was at 43.”
Cole ended up with 52% of the vote to Orrock’s 48%, and Orrock acknowledges that his 66th District was targeted by Democrats as a potential seat that could be flipped.
Still, the legislator anticipated a victory margin of two points in his favor. But, he said, mail-in absentee votes ended up breaking three-to-one for Cole.
She also spent nearly five times more money on her campaign than Orrock did: $2.5 million for the challenger to $542,651 for the incumbent, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, which tracks money in politics.
Mainly, though, Orrock said, there was an anti-Trump sentiment that was prominent in the election, and plenty of previous Trump voters didn’t cast a ballot last month.
“Of the 13 House seats we lost,” he said of Republicans, “if the Trump voters had come out, we would have lost [only] four.”
Polarization of the political parties also has traveled down Interstate 95 from Washington to Richmond, said Orrock, with the state capital now being a place where there’s less working-across-the-aisle consensus than in years past.
Significant accomplishments
In terms of his legislative accomplishments, Orrock mentioned two bills.
He carried legislation that he said all but banned puppy mills in the Old Dominion.
“Virginia had a problem of being a major source of puppy mills,” Orrock said.
His bill didn’t outright ban the operations, but it said that any animal-breeding facility that produced more than 25 offspring in a year had to register with the state veterinary board and be subject to inspection and local animal control.
One of the problems in the past was that animal-control officers didn’t know where the breeding facilities were, so they couldn’t inspect them to make sure they were operating humanely.
In this case, Orrock said, the proponents of regulation thought he was being too weak, and the opponents thought he was being too intrusive.
But the legislation was signed into law in the 1990s, and Orrock was given an Amish hat as a sort of prize because it turned out that a lot of puppy mills were on Amish farms, he said.
More recently, he patroned a bill that put in place nursing-home staffing ratios to make sure patients were served by an adequate number of people.
The legislation was based on more of a carrot than stick approach, he said. If a facility meets targets, they get enhanced state funding. If they don’t, they aren’t shut down, but the state comes in and works with them to improve.
Sometimes, it’s hard to find workers for these facilities, Orrock noted, especially in less-populated areas.
Well wishes
Dr. Bridgette Williams organized Thursday’s gathering and held it at the office of her business, Angelo Recovery & Counseling Services, near Four Mile Fork in Spotsylvania. Her workspace is next door to Orrock’s local office.
Among those who showed up to wish the delegate well were Spotsylvania Commonwealth’s Attorney Ryan Mehaffey and his predecessor, Travis Bird, as well as Joe Wickens, executive director of the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board.
In an interview with the Free Press after the event, Wickens said he was impressed by Orrock’s knowledge of public affairs and his care for constituents.
“So, you know, I just think he was a fine politician, and he represented his district very well,” he said.
Mehaffey said that Orrock is “universally respected and admired.”
“It’s rare that you hear anybody say anything bad about Bobby,” the prosecutor continued. “He’s somebody that I admire. If I leave my term of office, and I leave with half the dignity and professionalism that he brought to his office, I think that would be a great accomplishment.”
And, of course, maybe Orrock isn’t leaving public service forever. Maybe there’ll be another campaign.
“I put my signs away,” he said. “I haven’t burned them yet.”
