RICHMOND — The oldest continuous lawmaking body in the New World adjourned Friday in honor of J.C. Penney.
Norment is the Senate’s most prominent dandy, known for sporting dazzlingly pastel ties, suspenders and dapper three-piece suits. He also is one of the chamber’s less statuesque members.
Lucas, also a clothes horse but more fond of sparkle than tweed, went after Norment on style and stature. J.C. Penney was collateral damage.
“You keep your . . . little J.C. Penney-little-boys’-department-wearing-suits out of my [expletive] face,” she remembered telling him during a blowup just off the Senate floor.
Lucas recalled the argument in an interview with The Washington Post. She was discussing serious issues: her perception that Senate Democrats have ignored the concerns of black senators and how that long-simmering frustration erupted in a way that nearly changed who sits on the state Supreme Court (she briefly sided with Republicans in a long-running judicial-appointments battle and then returned to the Democratic fold).
Despite that serious context, J.C. Penney became an instant laugh line in Richmond.
Calling Norment a J.C. Penney shopper “was probably the most injurious thing written in that article,” said Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who took the brunt of Lucas’s leadership criticism but escaped a fashion critique.
Even Norment embraced the sartorial slur.
“If we have less money,” Norment said in the middle of a gas-tax debate Friday, “people like me will have to wear J.C. Penney suits.”
Sen. William M. Stanley Jr. (R-Franklin) rose at the end of the day to ask that the Senate honor “one of the great American merchants of the 20th century.”
“On this day in 1971,” Stanley said, “James Cash Penney, the founder of J.C. Penney stores, died at the age of 95.”
He went on to summarize the retailer’s history, display a red J.C. Penney coupon and urge senators to take advantage of the stores’ Presidents’ Day sale on furniture and mattresses.
“I am told that there are also some really good sales in the little boys’ suits department,” Stanley said.
Norment laughed throughout Stanley’s speech and was still chuckling as he ducked out of the chamber without speaking to reporters. Lucas hid her face behind her Senate calendar, a magazine-size booklet listing bills.
“I didn’t know if the joke was on me or him,” she said later. But she laughed when Stanley came to see her at her desk after the session, his red J.C. Penney coupon still in hand.
